JOHN BELL (1797-1869)
John Bell, of Tennessee, who was a candidate with Edward Everett on the "Constitutional Union" ticket of 1860, when Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee gave him their thirty-nine electoral votes in favor of a hopeless peace, will always seem one of the most respectable figures in the politics of a time when calmness and conservatism, such as characterized him and his coadjutor., Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts, had ceased to be desired by men who wished immediate success in public life. He was one of the founders of the Whig party, and by demonstrating himself to be one of the very few men who could win against Andrew Jackson's opposition in Tennessee, he acquired, under Jackson and Van Buren, a great influence with the Whigs of the country at large. He was a member of Congress from Tennessee for fourteen years dating from 1827, when he won by a single vote against Felix Grundy, one of the strongest men in Tennessee and a special favorite with General Jackson. Disagreeing with Jackson on the removal of the deposits, Bell was elected Speaker of the House over Jackson's protege, James K. Polk, in 1834, and in 1841 he entered the Whig cabinet as Secretary of War under Harrison who had defeated another of Jackson's proteges, Van Buren. In 1847 and again in 1853, he was elected United States Senator from Tennessee and he did his best to prevent secession. He had opposed Calhoun's theories of the right of a State to nullify a Federal act if unconstitutional, and in March 1858, in the debate over the Lecompton constitution, he opposed Toombs in a speech which probably made him the candidate of the Constitutional Unionists two years later. Another notable speech, of even more far-reaching importance, he had delivered in 1853 in favor of opening up the West by building the Pacific Railroad, a position in which he was supported by Jefferson Davis.
Mr. Bell was for the Union in 1861, denying the right of secession, but he opposed the coercion of the Southern States, and when the fighting actually began he sided with Tennessee, and took little or no part in public affairs thereafter. He died in 1869.
AGAINST EXTREMISTS NORTH AND SOUTH (From a Speech in the Senate,
March 18th, 1858. on the Lecompton Constitution)
The honorable Senator from Georgia, Mr. Toombs, announced some great truths to-day. He said that mankind made a long step, a great stride, when they declared that minorities should not rule; and that a still higher and nobler advance had been made when it was decided that majorities could only rule through regular and legal forms. He asserted this general doctrine with reference to the construction he proposed to give to the Lecompton constitution; and to say that the people of Kansas, unless they spoke through regular forms, cannot speak at all. He will allow me to say, however, that the forms through which a majority speaks must be provided and established by competent authority, and his doctrine can have no application to the Lecompton constitution, unless he can first show that the legislature of Kansas was vested with legal authority to provide for the formation of a State constitution; for, until that can be shown, there could be no regular and legal forms through which the majority could speak. But how does that Senator reconcile his doctrine with that avowed by the President, as to the futility of attempting, by constitutional provisions, to fetter the power of the people in changing their constitution at pleasure? In no States of the Union so much as in some of the slaveholding States would such a doctrine as that be so apt to be abused by incendiary demagogues, disappointed and desperate politicians, in stirring up the people to assemble voluntarily in convention—disregarding all the restrictions in their constitution—and strike at the property of the slaveholder.
The honorable Senator from Kentucky inquired what, under this new doctrine, would prevent the majority of the people of the States of the Union from changing the present Federal Constitution, and abrogating all existing guarantees for the protection of the small States, and any peculiar or particular interest confined to a minority of the States of the Union. The analogy, I admit, is not complete between the Federal Constitution and a constitution of a State; but the promulgation of the general principle, that a majority of the people are fettered by no constitutional restrictions in the exercise of their right to change their form of government, is dangerous. That is quite enough for the purposes of demagogues and incendiary agitators. When I read the special message of the President, I said to some friends that the message, taking it altogether, was replete with more dangerous heresies than any paper I had ever seen emanating, not from a President of the United States, but from any political club in the country, and calculated to do more injury. I consider it in effect, and in its tendencies, as organizing anarchy.
We are told that if we shall admit Kansas with the Lecompton constitution, this whole difficulty will soon be settled by the people of Kansas. How? By disregarding the mode and forms prescribed by the constitution for amending it? No. I am not sure that the President, after all the lofty generalities announced in his message, in regard to the inalienable rights of the people, intended to sanction the idea that all the provisions of the Lecompton constitution in respect to the mode and form of amending it should be set aside. He says the legislature now elected may, at its first meeting, call a convention to amend the constitution; and in another passage of his message he says that this inalienable power of the majority must be exercised in a lawful manner. This is perplexing. Can there be any lawful enactment of the legislature in relation to the call of a convention, unless it be in conformity with the provisions of the constitution? They require that two-thirds of the members of the legislature shall concur in passing an act to take the sense of the people upon the call of a convention, and that the vote shall be taken at the next regular election, which cannot be held until two years afterwards. How can this difficulty be got over? The truth is, that unless all constitutional impediments in respect to forms be set aside, and the people take it in hand to amend the constitution on revolutionary principles, there can be no end of agitation on this subject in less than three years. I long since ventured the prediction that there would be no settlement of the difficulties in Kansas until the next presidential election. To continue the agitation is too important to the interests of both the great parties of the country to dispense with it, as long as any pretext can be found for prolonging it. In the closing debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, I told its supporters that they could do nothing more certain to disturb the composure of the two Senators who sat on the opposite side of the chamber, the one from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] and the other from Ohio [Mr. Chase], than to reject that bill. Its passage was the only thing in the range of possible events by which their political fortunes could be resuscitated, so completely had the Free-Soil movement at the North been paralyzed by the compromise measures of 1850. I say now to the advocates of this measure, if they want to strengthen the Republican party, and give the reins of government into their hands, pass this bill. If they desire to weaken the power of that party, and arrest the progress of slavery agitation, reject it. And if it is their policy to put an end to the agitation connected with Kansas affairs at the earliest day practicable, as they say it is, then let them remit this constitution back to the people of Kansas, for their ratification or rejection. In that way the whole difficulty will be settled before the adjournment of the present session of Congress, without the violation of any sound principle, or the sacrifice of the rights of either section of the Union.
But the President informs us that threatening and ominous clouds impend over the country; and he fears that if Kansas is not admitted under the Lecompton constitution, slavery agitation will be revived in a more dangerous form than it has ever yet assumed. There may be grounds for that opinion, for aught I know; but it seems to me that if any of the States of the South have taken any position on this question which endangers the peace of the country, they could not have been informed of the true condition of affairs in Kansas, and of the strong objections which may be urged on principle against the acceptance by Congress of the Lecompton constitution. And I have such confidence in the intelligence of the people of the whole South, that when the history and character of this instrument shall be known, even those who would be glad to find some plausible pretext for dissolving the Union will see that its rejection by Congress would not furnish them with such a one as they could make available for their purposes.
When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was under discussion, in 1854, in looking to all the consequences which might follow the adoption of that measure, I could not overlook the fact that a sentiment of hostility to the Union was widely diffused in certain States of the South; and that that sentiment was only prevented from assuming an organized form of resistance to the authority of the Federal government, at least in one of the States, in 1851, by the earnest remonstrance of a sister State, that was supposed to sympathize with her in the project of establishing a southern republic. Nor could I fail to remember that the project—I speak of the convention held in South Carolina, in pursuance of an act of the legislature—was then postponed, not dropped. The argument was successfully urged that an enterprise of such magnitude ought not to be entered upon without the co-operation of a greater number of States than they could then certainly count upon. It was urged that all the cotton-planting States would, before a great while, be prepared to unite in the movement, and that they, by the force of circumstances, would bring in all the slaveholding States. The ground was openly taken, that separation was an inevitable necessity. It was only a question of time. It was said that no new aggression was necessary on the part of the North to justify such a step. It was said that the operation of this government from its foundation had been adverse to southern interests; and that the admission of California as a free State, and the attempt to exclude the citizens of the South, with their property, from all the territory acquired from Mexico, was a sufficient justification for disunion. It was not a mere menace to deter the North from further aggressions. These circumstances made a deep impression on my mind at the time, and from a period long anterior to that I had known that it was a maxim with the most skillful tacticians among those who desire separation, that the slaveholding States must be united—consolidated into one party. That object once effected, disunion, it was supposed, would follow without difficulty.
I had my fears that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was expected to consolidate the South, and to pave the way for the accomplishment of ulterior plans by some of the most active supporters of that measure from the South; and these fears I indicated in the closing debate on that subject. Some of the supporters of that measure, I fear, are reluctant now to abandon the chances of finding some pretext for agitating the subject of separation in the South in the existing complications of the Kansas embroilment.