The presidential election of 1852, tended at first to allay excitement. A New Englander, affiliating closely with Southern men, Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, won the Democratic nomination over competitors much more prominent. Of these competitors Buchanan and Cass had long and intimately been connected with the party leaders of their States in the time of Andrew Jackson; trained in the old school of politics; drawing what strength they had from faithful service. The third competitor, a comparatively new leader in the West, forceful, aggressive and impatient of restraint, Stephen A. Douglas, was of an entirely different type. Determined to make a spoon or spoil a horn, he evolved the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, and with it soon had the country in a turmoil.
The condition was strange. The Georgians had a policy and the lead of a section, but no man among them possessed the qualities essential for such a task, as their bold program of pushing slavery to the Pacific within the Union, demanded. Howell Cobb approached nearer the station of leader than any other man of his State; but he scarcely measured up to what was required. Besides as great as Georgia was among the Southern States, second only to Virginia, in point of population, and quite beyond in wealth and resources, among the States of the Union, in point of population, she barely ranked tenth. From the continuous stream of white immigrants pouring into Illinois that great State was, however, rapidly moving up to the position of fourth in population, while in Stephen A. Douglas, she possessed one of the most audacious and resourceful of politicians who had ever moved in the affairs of the Union, to a great height. Carrying at his heels some forty-two Northern votes in Congress, he appeared to be just the man the Georgians needed, and accordingly in the Congress which met in December, 1853, he introduced his bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska, framing the provisions thereof upon the precedents set in the organization of the territories of Utah and New Mexico four years before. Of this bill, a distinguished author, later president of the United States, has said:
“No bolder or more extraordinary measure had ever been proposed in Congress, and it came upon the country like a thief in the night, without warning or expectation, when parties were trying to sleep off the excitement of former debates about the extension of slavery.”[152]
Mr. Woodrow Wilson was of the opinion that Southern members had never dreamed of demanding such a measure and that no one but Douglas, would have dreamed of offering it to them; but yet he says the President had been consulted and had given his approval to it, upon the ground that “it was founded upon a sound principle which the compromise of 1820 had infringed upon.”[153] And certain it is that the President had consulted, concerning it, that Southerner who was destined to occupy the most prominent position ever held by a Southerner. Jefferson Davis knew of it.
Of the author of the bill, Robert Toombs declared some seven years later, with his characteristic exaggeration, that the Apostle Paul was about his only superior as a leader. While Alexander H. Stephens, with absolute devotion, clung to him, until secession swept them apart, Toombs was less faithful. Forty-four Northern Democrats, and all but nine of the Southern members of the House of Representatives, supported the bill, and in the popular branch of Congress, it prevailed, by a majority of thirteen votes; in the Senate, by a vote of nearly three to one.[154] But Mr. Wilson declares that the Act contained a fatal ambiguity. When was squatter sovereignty to give its decision on the question of slavery?
Here was where the break came, when the Act was being tried out in practical operation.
The Southern members thought that Douglas represented their view. Mr. Davis, Secretary of War at the time of its introduction, distinctly declares, that, at Douglas’s request, he obtained the interview between Douglas’s committee and the President on Sunday, January 22, 1854, by which the President’s approval was secured, and he avers, that from the terms of the bill and arguments used in its support, he thought its purpose was to open the territory “to the people of all the States with every species of property recognized by any of them.”[155]
But Douglas was not simply leading the Southern minority. He was endeavoring to formulate a policy by means of which he could yoke both sections to his triumphal car, and he was just as ready to use the Southerners, as they were to use him. When the Southerners found out how he proposed to over-reach them, Alexander H. Stephens still clung to him; but Toombs, less faithful, vociferated that he “didn’t have a leg to stand upon.”
The truth was, compromise upon compromise had so involved the question, that it was almost impossible to disentangle it without the use of the sword.
In 1787 there had been a compromise, by which slavery and the slave trade had been both recognized; and over the Missouri question in 1820, the Southern States had had a perfect constitutional right to dissolve the Union; but again compromise had been accepted.