The long contest in Congress over the compromise measures of 1850, and the reluctance of a minority, alike in the North and the South, to accept them, had in reality seriously demoralized both the great political parties of the country. The Democrats especially, defeated by the fresh military laurels of General Taylor in 1848, were much exercised to discover their most available candidate as the presidential election of 1852 approached. The leading names, Cass, Buchanan, and Marcy, having been long before the public, were becoming a little stale. In this contingency, a considerable following grouped itself about an entirely new man, Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois. Emigrating from Vermont to the West, Douglas had run a career remarkable for political success. Only in his thirty-ninth year, he had served as member of the legislature, as State's Attorney, as Secretary of State, and as judge of the Supreme Court in Illinois, and had since been three times elected to Congress and once to the Senate of the United States. Nor did he owe his political fortunes entirely to accident. Among his many qualities of leadership were strong physical endurance, untiring industry, a persistent boldness, a ready facility in public speaking, unfailing political shrewdness, an unusual power in running debate, with liberal instincts and progressive purposes. It was therefore not surprising that he should attract the admiration and support of the young, the ardent, and especially the restless and ambitious members of his party. His career in Congress was sufficiently conspicuous. As Chairman of the Committee on Territories in the Senate, he had borne a prominent part in the enactment of the compromise measures of 1850, and had just met and overcome a threatened party schism in his own State, which that legislation had there produced.
In their eagerness to push his claims to the presidency, the partisans of Douglas committed a great error. Rightly appreciating the growing power of the press, they obtained control of the "Democratic Review," a monthly magazine then prominent as a party organ, and published in it a series of articles attacking the rival Democratic candidates in very flashy rhetoric. These were stigmatized as "old fogies," who must give ground to a nominee of "Young America." They were reminded that the party expects a "new man." "Age is to be honored, but senility is pitiable"; "statesmen of a previous generation must get out of the way"; the Democratic party was owned by a set of "old clothes-horses"; "they couldn't pay their political promises in four Democratic administrations"; and the names of Cass and Marcy, Buchanan and Butler, were freely mixed in with such epithets as "pretenders," "hucksters," "intruders," and "vile charlatans."
Such characterization of such men soon created a flagrant scandal in the Democratic party, which was duly aired both in the newspapers and in Congress. It definitely fixed the phrases "old fogy" and "Young America" in our slang literature. The personal friends of Douglas hastened to explain and assert his innocence of any complicity with this political raid, but they were not more than half believed; and the war of factions, begun in January, raged with increasing bitterness till the Democratic National Convention met at Baltimore in June, and undoubtedly exerted a decisive influence over the deliberations of that body.
The only serious competitors for the nomination were the "old fogies" Cass, Marcy, and Buchanan on the one hand, and Douglas, the pet of "Young America," on the other. It soon became evident that opinion was so divided among these four that a nomination could only be reached through long and tedious ballotings. Beginning with some 20 votes, Douglas steadily gained adherents till on the 30th ballot he received 92. From this point, however, his strength fell away. Unable himself to succeed, he was nevertheless sufficiently powerful to defeat his adversaries. The exasperation had been too great to permit a concentration or compromise on any of the "seniors." Cass reached only 131 votes; Marcy, 98; Buchanan, 104; and finally, on the 49th ballot, occurred the memorable nearly unanimous selection of Franklin Pierce— not because of any merit of his own, but to break the insurmountable dead-lock of factional hatred. Young America gained a nominal triumph, old fogydom a real revenge, and the South a serviceable Northern ally. Douglas and his friends were discomfited but not dismayed. Their management had been exceedingly maladroit, as a more modest championship would without doubt have secured him the coveted nomination. Yet sagacious politicians foresaw that on the whole he was strengthened by his defeat. From that time forward he was a recognized presidential aspirant and competitor, young enough patiently to bide his time, and of sufficient prestige to make his flag the rallying point of all the free-lances in the Democratic party.
It is to this presidential aspiration of Mr. Douglas that we must look as the explanation of his agency in bringing about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. As already said, after some factious opposition the measures of 1850 had been accepted by the people as a finality of the slavery question. Around this alleged settlement, distasteful as it was to many, public opinion gradually crystallized. Both the National Conventions of 1852 solemnly resolved that they would discountenance and resist, in Congress or out of it, whenever, wherever, or however, or under whatever color or shape, any further renewal of the slavery agitation. This determination was echoed and reechoed, affirmed and reaffirmed, by the recognized organs of the public voice—from the village newspaper to the presidential message, from the country debating school to the measured utterances of senatorial discussion.
[Sidenote: Appendix "Congressional Globe" 1851-2, p. 63.]
[Sidenote: Douglas, Senate speech 1850. Appendix, 1849-50 pp. 369 to 372.]
[Sidenote: Douglas, Springfield speech, Oct. 28, 1849. Illinois
"Register.">[
In support of this alleged "finality" no one had taken a more decided stand than Senator Douglas himself. Said he: "In taking leave of this subject I wish, to state that I have determined never to make another speech upon the slavery question; and I will now add the hope that the necessity for it will never exist…. So long as our opponents do not agitate for repeal or modification, why should we agitate for any purpose! We claim that the compromise [of 1850] is a final settlement. Is a final settlement open to discussion and agitation and controversy by its friends? What manner of settlement is that which does not settle the difficulty and quiet the dispute? Are not the friends of the compromise becoming the agitators, and will not the country hold us responsible for that which we condemn and denounce in the abolitionists and Free-soldiers? These are matters worthy of our consideration. Those who preach peace should not be the first to commence and reopen an old quarrel." In his Senate speeches, during the compromise debates of 1850, while generally advocating his theory of "non-intervention," he had sounded the whole gamut of the slavery discussion, defending the various measures of adjustment against the attacks of the Southern extremists, and specifically defending the Missouri Compromise. More than this; he had declared in distinct words that the principle of territorial prohibition was no violation of Southern rights; and denounced the proposition of Calhoun to put a "balance of power" clause into the Constitution as "a retrograde movement in an age of progress that would astonish the world." These repeated affirmations, taken in connection with his famous description of the Missouri Compromise in 1849, in which he declared it to have had "an origin akin to the Constitution," and to have become "canonized in the hearts of the American people as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb," all seemed, in the public mind, to fix his position definitely; no one imagined that Douglas would so soon become the subject of his own anathemas.
The full personal details of this event are lost to history. We have only a faint and shadowy outline of isolated movements of a few chief actors, a few vague suggestions and fragmentary steps in the formation and unfolding of the ill-omened plot.