Douglas, Reply to Black, Pamphlet, Oct., 1859.
No similar ambiguity, concealment, or bargain was possible at Charleston. There was indeed a whole brood of collateral issues to be left in convenient obscurity, but the central questions must not be shirked. The Lecompton quarrel, the Freeport doctrine, the property theory, the "slave-State" dogma, the Congressional slave code proposal, must be boldly met and squarely adjusted. Even if the delegates had been disposed to trifle with their constituents, the leaders themselves would tolerate no evasion on certain cardinal points. Douglas, in his Dorr letter, had announced that he would suffer no interpolation of new issues into the Democratic creed. In his pamphlet reply to Judge Black he repeated his determination with emphasis. "Suppose it were true that I am a Presidential aspirant; does that fact justify a combination by a host of other Presidential aspirants, each of whom may imagine that his success depends upon my destruction, and the preaching a crusade against me for boldly avowing now the same principles to which they and I were pledged at the last Presidential election! Is this a sufficient excuse for devising a new test of political orthodoxy?... I prefer the position of Senator or even that of a private citizen, where I would be at liberty to defend and maintain the well-defined principles of the Democratic party, to accepting a Presidential nomination upon a platform incompatible with the principle of self-government in the Territories, or the reserved rights of the States, or the perpetuity of the Union under the Constitution."
"Globe," p. 658.
Jefferson Davis, Senate Speech, "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2155.
"Globe", March 1, 1860, p. 935.
This declaration very clearly defined the issue on one side. On the other side it was also formulated with equal distinctness. Jefferson Davis, already recognized as the ablest leader of the Buchanan wing of the Democratic Senators, wrote and submitted to the United States Senate, on February 2, 1860, a series of resolutions designed to constitute the Administration or Southern party doctrines, which were afterwards revised and adopted by a caucus of Democratic Senators. These resolutions expressed the usual party tenets; and on two of the controverted points asserted dogmatically exactly that which Douglas had stigmatized as an intolerable heresy. The fourth resolution declared "That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, whether by direct legislation or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the Territorial condition remains." While the fifth resolution declared "That if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary and executive authority do not possess means to insure adequate protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, and if the Territorial government shall fail or refuse to provide the necessary remedies for that purpose, it will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency."
Party discipline was so strong among the Democrats that public expectation looked confidently to at least a temporary agreement or combination which would enable the factions, by a joint effort, to make a hopeful Presidential campaign. But no progress whatever was made in that direction. As the clans gathered at Charleston, the notable difference developed itself, that while one wing was filled with unbounded enthusiasm for a candidate, the other was animated by an earnest and stubborn devotion to an idea.
Murat Halstead, "Conventions of 1860."
"Douglas was the pivot individual of the Charleston Convention," wrote an observant journalist; "every delegate was for or against him; every motion meant to nominate or not nominate him; every parliamentary war was pro or con Douglas." This was the surface indication, and, indeed, it may be said with truth, it was the actual feeling of the Northern faction of the Democratic party. Douglas was a genuinely popular leader. He had the power to inspire a pure personal enthusiasm. He had aroused such hero-worship as may be possible in modern times and in American polities. Beyond this, however, the Lecompton controversy, and his open persecution by the Buchanan Administration, made his leadership and his candidacy a necessity to the Northern Democrats.
With Southern Democrats the feeling went somewhat deeper. Forgetting how much they owed him in the past, and how much they might still gain through him in the future, they saw only that he was now their stumbling-block, the present obstacle to their full and final success. It was the Douglas doctrine, squatter sovereignty, and "unfriendly legislation," rather than the man, which they had come to oppose, and were determined to put down. Any other individual holding these heresies would have been equally obnoxious. They had no candidate of their own; they worshiped no single leader; but they followed a principle with unfaltering devotion. They clung unswervingly not only to the property theory, but advanced boldly to its logical sequence—Congressional protection to slavery in the Territories.
Of the convention's preliminary work little is worth recording—there were the clamor and protest of contesting delegations and small fire of parliamentary skirmishes, by which factions feel and measure each other's strength. Caleb Cushing was made permanent chairman, for the triple reason that he was from Massachusetts, that he was the ablest presiding officer in the body, and was for the moment filled with blind devotion to Southern views. The actual temper of the convention was made manifest by the ready agreement of both extremes to join battle in making the platform before proceeding to the nomination of candidates. The usual committee of one member from each State was appointed, and to it was referred the deluge of resolutions which had been showered upon the convention.