American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

Mr. Calhoun died in the spring of 1850; before the separate bill for the admission of California was taken up. His death took place at Washington, he having reached the age of 68 years. A eulogy upon him was delivered in the Senate by his colleague, Mr. Butler, of South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun was the first great advocate of the doctrine of secession. He was the author of the nullification doctrine, and an advocate of the extreme doctrine of States Rights. He was an eloquent speaker—a man of strong intellect. His speeches were plain, strong, concise, sometimes impassioned, and always severe. Daniel Webster said of him, that “he had the basis, the indispensable basis of all high characters, and that was unspotted integrity, unimpeached honor and character!”

In July of this year an event took place which threw a gloom over the country. The President, General Taylor, contracted a fever from exposure to the hot sun at a celebration of Independence Day, from which he died four days afterwards. He was a man of irreproachable private character, undoubted patriotism, and established reputation for judgment and firmness. His brief career showed no deficiency of political wisdom nor want of political training. His administration was beset with difficulties, with momentous questions pending, and he met the crisis with firmness and determination, resolved to maintain the Federal Union at all hazards. His first and only annual message, the leading points of which have been stated, evinces a spirit to do what was right among all the States. His death was a public calamity. No man could have been more devoted to the Union nor more opposed to the slavery agitation; and his position as a Southern man and a slaveholder—his military reputation, and his election by a majority of the people as well as of the States, would have given him a power in the settlement of the pending questions of the day which no President without these qualifications could have possessed.

In accordance with the Constitution, the office of President thus devolved upon the Vice-President, Mr. Millard Fillmore, who was duly inaugurated July 10, 1850. The new cabinet, with Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, was duly appointed and confirmed by the Senate.

The bill for the admission of California as a State in the Union, was called up in the Senate and sought to be amended by extending the Missouri Compromise line through it, to the Pacific Ocean, so as to authorize slavery in the State below that line. The amendment was introduced and pressed by Southern friends of the late Mr. Calhoun, and made a test question. It was lost, and the bill passed by a two-third vote; whereupon ten Southern Senators offered a written protest, the concluding clause of which was: “We dissent from this bill, and solemnly protest against its passage, because in sanctioning measures so contrary to former precedents, to obvious policy, to the spirit and intent of the constitution of the United States, for the purpose of excluding the slaveholding States from the territory thus to be erected into a State, this government in effect declares that the exclusion of slavery from the territory of the United States is an object so high and important as to justify a disregard not only of all the principles of sound policy, but also of the constitution itself. Against this conclusion we must now and for ever protest, as it is destructive of the safety and liberties of those whose rights have been committed to our care, fatal to the peace and equality of the States which we represent, and must lead, if persisted in, to the dissolution of that confederacy, in which the slaveholding States have never sought more than equality, and in which they will not be content to remain with less.” On objection being made, followed by debate, the Senate refused to receive the protest, or permit it to be entered on the Journal. The bill went to the House of Representatives, was readily passed, and promptly approved by the President. Thus was virtually accomplished the abrogation of the Missouri compromise line; and the extension or non-extension of slavery was then made to form a foundation for future political parties.

The year 1850 was prolific with disunion movements in the Southern States. The Senators who had joined with Mr. Calhoun in the address to the people, in 1849, united with their adherents in establishing at Washington a newspaper entitled “The Southern Press,” devoted to the agitation of the slavery question; to presenting the advantages of disunion, and the organization of a confederacy of Southern States to be called the “United States South.” Its constant aim was to influence the South against the North, and advocated concert of action by the States of the former section. It was aided in its efforts by newspapers published in the South, more especially in South Carolina and Mississippi. A disunion convention was actually held, in Nashville, Tennessee, and invited the assembly of a Southern Congress. Two States, South Carolina and Mississippi responded to the appeal; passed laws to carry it into effect, and the former went so far as to elect its quota of Representatives to the proposed new Southern Congress. These occurrences are referred to as showing the spirit that prevailed, and the extraordinary and unjustifiable means used by the leaders to mislead and exasperate the people. The assembling of a Southern “Congress” was a turning point in the progress of disunion. Georgia refused to join; and her weight as a great Southern State was sufficient to cause the failure of the scheme. But the seeds of discord were sown, and had taken root, only to spring up at a future time when circumstances should be more favorable to the accomplishment of the object.

Although the Congress of the United States had in 1790 and again in 1836 formally declared the policy of the government to be non-interference with the States in respect to the matter of slavery within the limits of the respective States, the subject continued to be agitated in consequence of petitions to Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which was under the exclusive control of the federal government; and of movements throughout the United States to limit, and finally abolish it. The subject first made its appearance in national politics in 1840, when a presidential ticket was nominated by a party then formed favoring the abolition of slavery; it had a very slight following which was increased tenfold at the election of 1844 when the same party again put a ticket in the field with James G. Birney of Michigan, as its candidate for the Presidency; who received 62,140 votes. The efforts of the leaders of that faction were continued, and persisted in to such an extent, that when in 1848 it nominated a ticket with Gerritt Smith for President, against the Democratic candidate, Martin Van Buren, the former received 296,232 votes. In the presidential contest of 1852 the abolition party again nominated a ticket, with John P. Hale as its candidate for President, and polled 157,926 votes. This large following was increased from time to time, until uniting with a new party then formed, called the Republican party, which latter adopted a platform endorsing the views and sentiments of the abolitionists, the great and decisive battle for the principles involved, was fought in the ensuing presidential contest of 1856; when the candidate of the Republican party, John C. Fremont, supported by the entire abolition party, polled 1,341,812 votes. The first national platform of the Abolition party, upon which it went into the contest of 1840, favored the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and Territories; the inter-state slave trade, and a general opposition to slavery to the full extent of constitutional power.

Following the discussion of the subject of slavery, in the Senate and House of Representatives, brought about by the presentation of petitions and memorials, and the passage of the resolutions in 1836 rejecting such petitions, the question was again raised by the presentation in the House, by Mr. Slade of Vermont, on the 20th December 1837, of two memorials praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and moving that they be referred to a select committee. Great excitement prevailed in the chamber, and of the many attempts by the Southern members an adjournment was had. The next day a resolution was offered that thereafter all such petitions and memorials touching the abolition of slavery should, when presented, be laid on the table; which resolution was adopted by a large vote. During the 24th Congress, the Senate pursued the course of laying on the table the motion to receive all abolition petitions; and both Houses during the 25th Congress continued the same course of conduct; when finally on the 25th of January 1840, the House adopted by a vote of 114 to 108, an amendment to the rules, called the 21st Rule, which provided:—“that no petition, memorial or resolution, or other paper, praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or any state or territory, or the slave-trade between the States or territories of the United States, in which it now exists, shall be received by this House, or entertained in any way whatever.” This rule was afterwards, on the 3d of December, 1844, rescinded by the House, on motion of Mr. J. Quincy Adams, by a vote of 108 to 80; and a motion to re-instate it, on the 1st of December 1845, was rejected by a vote of 84 to 121. Within five years afterwards—on the 17th September 1850,—the Congress of the United States enacted a law, which was approved by the President, abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia.

On the 25th of February, 1850, there was presented in the House of Representatives, two petitions from citizens of Pennsylvania and Delaware, setting forth that slavery, and the constitution which permits it, violates the Divine law; is inconsistent with republican principles; that its existence has brought evil upon the country; and that no union can exist with States which tolerate that institution; and asking that some plan be devised for the immediate, peaceful dissolution of the Union. The House refused to receive and consider the petitions; as did also the Senate when the same petitions were presented the same month.

The presidential election of 1852 was the last campaign in which the Whig party appeared in National politics. It nominated a ticket with General Winfield Scott as its candidate for President. His opponent on the Democratic ticket was General Franklin Pierce. A third ticket was placed in the field by the Abolition party, with John P. Hale as its candidate for President. The platform and declaration of principles of the Whig party was in substance a ratification and endorsement of the several measures embraced in Mr. Clay’s compromise resolutions of the previous session of Congress, before referred to; and the policy of a revenue for the economical administration of the government, to be derived mainly from duties on imports, and by these means to afford protection to American industry. The main plank of the platform of the Abolition party (or Independent Democrats, as they were called) was for the non-extension and gradual extinction of slavery. The Democratic party equally adhered to the compromise measure. The election resulted in the choice of Franklin Pierce, by a popular vote of 1,601,474, and 254 electoral votes, against a popular aggregate vote of 1,542,403 (of which the abolitionists polled 157,926) and 42 electoral votes, for the Whig and Abolition candidates. Mr. Pierce was duly inaugurated as President, March 4, 1853.

The first political parties in the United States, from the establishment of the federal government and for many years afterwards, were denominated Federalists and Democrats, or Democratic-Republicans. The former was an anti-alien party. The latter was made up to a large extent of naturalized foreigners; refugees from England, Ireland and Scotland, driven from home for hostility to the government or for attachment to France. Naturally, aliens sought alliance with the Democratic party, which favored the war against Great Britain. The early party contests were based on the naturalization laws; the first of which, approved March 26, 1790, required only two years’ residence in this country; a few years afterwards the time was extended to five years; and in 1798 the Federalists taking advantage of the war fever against France, and then being in power, extended the time to fourteen years. (See Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798). Jefferson’s election and Democratic victory of 1800, brought the period back to five years in 1802, and reinforced the Democratic party. The city of New York, especially, from time to time became filled with foreigners; thus naturalized; brought into the Democratic ranks; and crowded out native Federalists from control of the city government, and to meet this condition of affairs, the first attempt at a Native American organization was made. Beginning in 1835; ending in failure in election of Mayor in 1837, it was revived in April, 1844, when the Native American organization carried New York city for its Mayoralty candidate by a good majority. The success of the movement there, caused it to spread to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, it was desperately opposed by the Democratic, Irish and Roman Catholic element, and so furiously, that it resulted in riots, in which two Romish Churches were burned and destroyed. The adherents of the American organization were not confined to Federalists or Whigs, but largely of native Democrats; and the Whigs openly voted with Democratic Natives in order to secure their vote for Henry Clay for the Presidency; but when in November, 1844, New York and Philadelphia both gave Native majorities, and so sapped the Whig vote, that both places gave majorities for the Democratic Presidential electors, the Whigs drew off. In 1845, at the April election in New York, the natives were defeated, and the new party disappeared there. As a result of the autumn election of 1844, the 29th Congress, which organized in December, 1845, had six Native Representatives; four from New York and two from Pennsylvania. In the 30th Congress, Pennsylvania had one. Thereafter for some years, with the exception of a small vote in Pennsylvania and New York, Nativism disappeared. An able writer of that day—Hon. A. H. H. Stuart, of Virginia—published under the nom-de-plume of “Madison” several letters in vindication of the American party (revived in 1852,) in which he said: “The vital principle of the American party is Americanism—developing itself in a deep-rooted attachment to our own country—its constitution, its union, and its laws—to American men, and American measures, and American interests—or, in other words, a fervent patriotism—which, rejecting the transcendental philanthropy of abolitionists, and that kindred batch of wild enthusiasts, who would seek to embroil us with foreign countries, in righting the wrongs of Ireland, or Hungary, or Cuba—would guard with vestal vigilance American institutions and American interests against the baneful effects of foreign influence.”