Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians, with Illustrations and Speeches

by Unknown

In this conflict a third party arose, which affirmed that Congress had no power over the question in the Territories; that the people who settled in those distant regions were entitled (not only when applying for admission into the Union as a State, but whenever organized into a Territory, or at any time thereafter) to determine on the establishment or rejection of slavery as well as all other questions of domestic policy; and by consequence, that the whole history of the Government in the regulation of its Territories had been an error.

Either of the contending parties was accustomed to tolerate very considerable aberrations, and even heresies against its creed, to acquire or preserve party ascendancy, or to achieve success in a Presidential election; to which latter object no concessions and no sacrifices were deemed excessive. And the flame on the main topic was probably fanned by many, on both sides, with a view to the marshalling of forces for this quadrennial contest for power and patronage. Be this as it may, never were themes presented for sectional parties so well adapted to deepen and widen the opened breach between them, or pressed with more intensity or zeal. In the ardor of the contest, old landmarks were discarded and old friends repudiated, if not found in accordance with new positions assumed in its progress. William Pinkney, the great champion of Southern interests, at the period of the Missouri question, was pronounced an abolitionist on the floor of the Senate by the highest Southern authority, and the doors of Faneuil Hall were closed against Daniel Webster by the authorities of Boston, for words of truth, soberness, and conciliation, spoken in the Senate; and this while Clay (once so much deferred to by them as a party leader) sat by, admiring and encouraging every sentence Webster uttered.

Between these excited parties, Mr. Badger stood approved by neither. As far back as the Mexican war, perceiving, as he thought, the dangers to flow from the adjustment of the interests of slavery, provided conquests should be made and new territories acquired, he had repeatedly endeavored to bring the war to a close and to bar out those dangers to the Union, by abstaining from the acquisition of new domains, while the fierce contestants were both eager for extensive conquests—the one with the flattering, but delusive, hope of expanding the area of slavery, the other with the settled purpose to apply to all such conquests the Wilmot Proviso and to exclude slavery.

When peace came with those splendid acquisitions of territory, so gratifying to the national pride, he was not disappointed in discovering in them an apple of discord which was to prove fatal to tranquillity at home. In the contention which was thus inaugurated, he steadily supported the rights of his own section, maintaining the justice and expediency of opening the Territories to all emigrants, without restriction as to any species of property. In an argument, replete with scriptural learning, he defended the servitude existing in the South, under the name of slavery, as not inconsistent with the divine law, more than justified by Jewish precedents, and not forbidden by the benignant teachings of the Saviour of the world, who found in the Roman Empire, at His coming, and left without condemnation, a system of far greater severity. He reminded Northern Senators of the responsibility of their ancestors for the introduction and establishment of slavery in this country—ours being but purchasers from them, at second hand, for a consideration vastly greater than they had paid; the profits being the foundation of much of their wealth, which their consciences did not forbid them to retain. He brought home to their sense of duty and of honor the obligation to maintain the Constitution, so long as it remained the Constitution, in all its parts, as well those which, as individuals, they disapproved as those to which they assented. If any representative of the South urged any or all of these considerations in favor of the rights of his section, with more earnestness and ability than Mr. Badger, it is some one whose argument has not fallen under my observation. But he refused to go further. He refused to argue that Congress had no constitutional power to legislate on the subject of slavery in the Territories. He discussed the question with boldness, and adduced a decision of the Supreme Court, announced in an opinion of Judge Marshall, to the effect that the power did exist; and therefore, he addressed his appeals to the legislative discretion of Congress. For this he incurred the disapprobation of the extreme advocates of Southern interests. But his opinion on the question had been deliberately formed, and though he maintained that the exclusion of the Southern emigrant with his peculiar property from these Territories would be an unjust exercise and abuse of power, he declined to make what he believed to be a false issue, in pronouncing it unconstitutional. He dealt with the whole subject in the interest of peace, in subordination to the Constitution, in the hope of allaying excitement, and with an earnest desire for continued Union. He therefore gladly co-operated with his old political associates, Clay, Webster, Pearce of Maryland, Bell, Mangum, Berrien, Dawson, as well as his Democratic opponents, Cass, Douglas, Dickinson, Foote and other compatriots of both parties, in the well-remembered measures of the Compromise of 1850, which calmed the waves of agitation, and promised a lasting repose from this disturbing element—an effect which was fully realized, with an occasional exception of resistance to the law providing for the surrender of fugitive slaves—until the unfortunate revival of the quarrel by the repeal, in 1854 (in the law for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska) of the provision of the Missouri Compromise, by which slavery was restricted from extending north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, the southern boundary of Missouri. His participation in this measure of repeal, Mr. Badger regarded as the most serious error of his public life. He lived to see consequences flow from it which he had not contemplated, and publicly expressed his regret that he had given it his support. Not on the ground of any breach of faith, for, as he amply demonstrated in his speech on the passage of the measure, the Representatives of the North in Congress had, in the Oregon Territorial bill, as well as in other instances, demonstrated that they attached to it no sanctity. Yet many good men among their constituents did—and politicians who had, since the settlement of 1850, found "their occupation gone," eagerly welcomed this new theme for agitation. The experience of climate, labor, and production, had shown that African slavery could not be attended with profit north of this parallel, and the repeal was regarded as a flout, defiance, and aggression which provoked the resentment of thousands who had never before co-operated with that extreme faction which conspired the destruction of slavery in despite of the Constitution. Followed up as this measure was by the impotent attempt to enforce protection to the institution in Kansas, where it neither did, nor could exist without unreasonable aid (which attempt was made after Mr. Badger left the Senate, and in which there is no reason to believe he would have concurred), it aroused an opposition, which, when embodied in the organization of party, was irresistible. He was no propagandist of slavery, though all the affections of his home and heart seconded the efforts of his great mind in defending it as an institution of the country recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. He was too sagacious to believe it could be benefited in any way by provoking the shock of civil war, and too truthful and patriotic to trifle with it as a means of rallying parties or subserving any of the interests of faction. In voting for the repeal of the Missouri restriction, he looked upon it as having been overvalued in its practical importance at first, abandoned by the North as effete, if not disregarded from the beginning, and its removal out of the way as but conforming the system of territorial law to that part of the Compromise of 1850 pertaining to the Territories, which left the adoption or rejection of slavery to be decided by the inhabitants when framing a constitution, preparatory to their admission as a State of the Union; not anticipating the recoil in public sentiment, which was the first step in the overthrow of slavery itself.

I have been thus tedious in the review of the history of this period because it was upon topics arising out of this great subject of controversy, ever uppermost in the public mind, that Mr. Badger made his most frequent and probably most elaborate efforts in the Senate, and for the further reason that in the heated atmosphere of the time his opinions as expressed and the moderation of his course were, by some, supposed to imply indifference to the interests of his section. Time and disaster are not unfrequently necessary to vindicate true wisdom.

He was as averse to the details of revenue and finance as Charles James Fox, and could probably have united with that statesman in the declaration that he had never read a treatise on political economy. But on all subjects pertaining to general policy, or to the history, jurisprudence, or Constitution of the country, he commanded a deference yielded to scarcely any other individual, after the withdrawal of Mr. Webster; and as a speaker and writer of English, according to the testimony of Judge Butler, of South Carolina, he had no peer in the Senate, save Webster.

He delighted in repeating the rule for the construction of the Constitution, which he had heard enunciated by Judge Marshall in the Circuit Court for North Carolina. "The Constitution of the United States," said he, "is to be construed not strictly, not loosely, but honestly. The powers granted should be freely exercised to effect the objects of the grant, while there should be a careful abstinence from the assumption of any not granted, but reserved." With this simple rule for his guide, with an innate love of truth and wonderful perspicacity in its discernment, with an ethics which permitted no paltering in deference to the authority or suggestion of faction, his arguments on constitutional questions were models of moral demonstration. Such was the confidence reposed in his accuracy and candor on questions of this nature, that his opinions were sought, for practical guidance, alike by friends and opponents. And such was the personal favor and kindness entertained towards him by all his associates that at the expiration of his term the rare compliment was paid him of expressing regret at his departure by an unanimous vote of the Senate.

After ceasing to be a Senator he held, until the commencement of the late calamitous war, the place of one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. In his professional visits to Washington, until the interruption of intercourse by that dire event, and in all his correspondence with public men, he never departed from that course of moderation and peace on the exciting subject of the times which had characterized him as a Senator, joined heartily in the movement of his old Whig friends for the organization of a Constitutional Union party to abate the violence of faction which was too surely tending to disunion, and to make an appeal to the people to rescue the country from the impending peril. The result of this movement was the nomination of Bell and Everett for the first offices of the government; and Mr. Badger accepted the nomination for Elector on this ticket, and visited various parts of North Carolina, addressing the people in its support. In these addresses, with the frankness which belonged to his nature, he freely admitted that there was a strong probability of the election of Mr. Lincoln, not merely from a division of votes among three other candidates, but from the strength of his party in the Northern States, founded on the principle of opposition to slavery; and he charged, that in that event, it was the design of a large portion of the supporters of Mr. Breckinridge to attempt to destroy the Union by the secession of the Southern States, and that there was reason to believe his defeat and the election of Mr. Lincoln were desired by this latter class, because of the opportunity it would afford for a dissolution of the Union, a purpose which they had long cherished. While, therefore, he advocated the election of Mr. Bell, he conjured the people, no matter who might be elected, to acquiesce in the decision and give no countenance to secession. Although, with the exception of a small faction, the people were averse to disunion, the majority were persuaded that this was an overstatement of the case, and cast their votes for Mr. Breckinridge, as they usually did for the party nominee.

When the election was past, and the proceedings which immediately followed in other States verified Mr. Badger's anticipations, the people began to turn to him, and those of like opinions, for guidance in the future. And, to persons in distant parts of the Union, it is, no doubt, a matter of mystery how he, with all his antecedents in favor of Union, became involved in war against the Government of the United States. The case of Mr. Badger, in this particular, is the case of at least three-fourths of the people of the State (for they relied upon his counsels for their action quite as much as upon those of any other individual) and requires a word of explanation. Notwithstanding the long and acrimonious disputations which had been carried on in Congress and at the hustings, and the sentiments declared in opposition to slavery by Mr. Lincoln and his supporters, Mr. Badger maintained that his election afforded no sufficient cause for a resort to revolution—as to the right, claimed, of a State to secede, he had never for a moment believed in it or given it the least countenance—that the accession of such a party to power would require increased vigilance over the rights and interests of the South; but that the majority in Congress was not lost to us, if the members from all the Southern States would remain and be faithful, and that the judiciary was open to any just complaint, even if the Executive should attempt aggression. After every State south of North Carolina to the confines of Mexico had adopted ordinances of secession, the people of this State rejected a proposition to call a convention to consider the question.