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

QUARREL OF DEMOCRATIC FACTIONS.

The courage of the Northern Democrats was more conspicuously shown in their resistance to these demands than in the declarations which they desired to substitute. They quietly abandoned all their assertions in regard to popular sovereignty, refrained from any protest against the doctrine that the Constitution carried slavery as far as its jurisdiction extended, and contented themselves with a resolution that "inasmuch as differences of opinion exist in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress under the Constitution of the United States over the institution of slavery within the Territories, the Democratic party will abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States upon questions of Constitutional law." This was perhaps the best device practicable at the time; and had it been adopted with Douglas as the candidate, and a united Democracy supporting him, it is not improbable that a successful campaign might have been made. But it was a makeshift, uncandid, unfair, cunningly contrived to evade the full responsibility of the situation. It was a temporizing expedient, and did not frankly meet the question which was engaging the thoughts of the people. Had it succeeded, nothing would have been settled. Every thing would have been postponed, and the crisis would have inevitably recurred. So far as the Supreme Court could determine the questions at issue, it had already been done in the Dred Scott decision; and that decision, so far from being final, was a part of the current controversy. There was, therefore, neither logic nor principle in the proposition of the Douglas minority. The Southern delegates keenly realized this fact, and refused to accept the compromise. They could not endure the thought of being placed in a position which was not only evasive, but might be deemed cowardly. They were brave men, and wished to meet the question bravely. They knew that the Republicans in their forthcoming convention would explicitly demand the prohibition of slavery in the Territories. To hesitate or falter in making an equally explicit assertion of their own faith would subject them to fatal assault from their slave-holding constituencies.

The Douglas men would not yield. They were enraged by the domineering course of the Southern Democrats. They could not comprehend why they should higgle about the language of the platform when they could carry the slave States on the one form of expression as well as the other. In the North it was impossible for the Democrats to succeed with the Southern platform, but in the South it was, in their judgment, entirely easy to carry the Douglas platform. From the committee the contest was transferred to the convention, and there the Douglas men were in a majority. They did not hesitate to use their strength, and by a vote of 165 to 138 they substituted the minority platform for that of the majority. It was skillfully accomplished under the lead of Henry B. Payne of Ohio and Benjamin Samuels of Iowa. The total vote of the convention was 303,—the number of Presidential electors; and every vote had been cast on the test question. The South voted solidly in the negative, and was aided by the vote of California and Oregon, and a few scattering delegates from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The other fourteen States of the North voted unanimously on the side of Douglas, and gave him a majority of twenty-seven.

The Northern victory brought with it a defeat. A large number of the Southern delegates, though fairly and honorably outvoted, refused to abide by the decision. Seven States—Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas—withdrew from the convention, and organized a separate assemblage, presided over by Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware. By this defection the Douglas men were left in absolute control of the convention. But the friends of Douglas fatally obstructed his program by consenting to the two-thirds rule, so worded as to required that proportion of a full convention to secure a nomination. The first vote disclosed the full strength of Douglas to be 152. He required 202 to be declared the nominee. After an indefinite number of ballots, it was found impossible to make a nomination; and on the 3d of May the convention adjourned to meet in Baltimore on the 18th of June. In the intervening weeks it was hoped that a more harmonious spirit would return to the party. But the expectation was vain. The differences were more pronounced than ever when the convention re-assembled, and, all efforts to find a common basis of action having failed, the convention divided. The Southern delegates with California and Oregon, and with some scattering members from other States, among whom were Caleb Cushing and Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President, and Joseph Lane of Oregon for Vice-President. The Northern convention, with a few scattering votes from the South, nominated Stephen A. Douglas for President, and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice-President. Of the seventeen States that made up the Breckinridge convention, it was deemed probable that he could carry all. Of the sixteen that voted for Douglas, it was difficult to name one in which with a divided party he could be sure of victory. United in support of either candidate, the party could have made a formidable contest, stronger in the North with Douglas, stronger in the South with Breckinridge. Had the Democracy presented Douglas and Breckinridge as their National nominees, they would have combined all the elements of strength in their party. But passion and prejudice prevented. The South was implacable toward Douglas, and deliberately resolved to accept defeat rather than secure a victory under his lead.

DISRUPTION OF THE DEMOCRACY.

The disruption of the Democracy was undoubtedly hastened by the political events which had occurred since the adjournment at Charleston. An organization, styling itself the Constitutional- Union Party, representing the successors of the Old Whigs and Americans, had met in Baltimore, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President. The strength of the party was in the South. In the slave States it formed the only opposition to the Democratic party, and was as firm in defense of the rights of the slave-holder as its rival. Its members had not been so ready to repeal the Missouri Compromise as the Democrats, and they were unrelenting in their hostility to Douglas, and severe in their exposure of his dogma of popular sovereignty. They had effectively aided in bringing both the doctrine and its author into disrepute in the South, and, if the Democrats had ventured to nominate Douglas, they had their weapons ready for vigorous warfare against him.

With a Southern slave-holder like Mr. Bell at the head of the ticket, and a Northern man of Mr. Everett's well-known conservatism associated with him, the Constitutional-Union Party was in a position to make a strong canvass against Douglas in the South. It was this fact which, on the re-assembling of the Democratic convention at Baltimore, had increased the hostility of the South to Douglas, and made their leaders firm in their resolution not to accept him. Had the Union party nominated a Northern man instead of Mr. Bell for President, the case might have been different for Douglas; but the Southern Democrats feared that their party would be endangered in half the slave States if they should present Douglas as a candidate against a native Southerner and slave-holder of Bell's character and standing. If they were to be beaten in the contest for the Presidency, they were determined to retain, if possible, the control of their States, and not to risk their seats in the Senate and the House in a desperate struggle for Douglas. It would be poor recompense to them to recover certain Northern States from the Republicans, if at the same time, and by co-ordinate causes, an equal number of Southern States should be carried by Bell, and the destiny of the South be committed to a conservative party, which would abandon threats and cultivate harmony. Bell's nomination had, therefore, proved the final argument against the acceptance of Douglas by the Southern Democracy.

Meanwhile, between the adjournment of the Democratic convention at Charleston, and its re-assembling at Baltimore, the Republicans had held their national convention at Chicago. It was a representative meeting of the active and able men of both the old parties in the North, who had come together on the one overshadowing issue of the hour. Differing widely on many other questions, inheriting their creeds from antagonistic organizations of the past, they thought alike on the one subject of putting a stop to the extension of slavery. Those who wished to go farther were restrained, and an absolute control of opinion and action was commanded on this one line. In the entire history of party conventions, not one can be found so characteristic, so earnest, so determined to do the wisest thing, so little governed by personal consideration, so entirely devoted to one absorbing idea. It was made up in great part of young men, though there were gray-haired veterans in sufficient number to temper action with discretion. A large proportion of the delegates were afterwards prominent in public life. At least sixty of them, till then unknown beyond their districts, were sent to Congress. Many became governors of their States, and in other ways received marks of popular favor. It was essentially a convention of the free States—undisguisedly sectional in the political nomenclature of the day. The invitation was general, but, in the larger portion of the South, no one could be found who would risk his life by attending as a delegate. Nevertheless, there were delegates present from the five slave States which bordered on the free States, besides a partial and irregular representation from Texas.

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION.

The anti-slavery character of the assemblage was typified by the selection of David Wilmot for temporary chairman, and its conservative side by the choice of an old Webster Whig, in the person of George Ashmun of Massachusetts, for permanent president. This tendency to interweave the radical and conservative elements, and, where practicable, those of Whig with those of Democratic antecedents, was seen in many delegations. John A. Andrew and George S. Boutwell came from Massachusetts, William M. Evarts and Preston King from New York, Thaddeus Stevens and Andrew H. Reeder from Pennsylvania, Thomas Corwin and Joshua R. Giddings from Ohio, David Davis and N. B. Judd from Illinois. Outside of the regular delegations, there were great crowds of earnest men in Chicago, all from the free States. The number in attendance was reckoned by tens of thousands. Considering the restricted facilities for travel at that time, the multitude was surprising and significant. The whole mass was inspired with energy, and believed, without shadow of doubt, that they had come to witness the nomination of the next President of the United States. Confidence of strength is as potential an element in a political canvass as in a military campaign, and never was a more defiant sense of power exhibited than by the Chicago convention of 1860 and by the vast throng which surrounded its meetings. Such a feeling is contagious, and it spread from that centre until it enveloped the free States.