CHAPTER VIII.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTHERN CONSPIRACY—THE ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Mr. Chandler became a Senator of the United States at the time when the Southern followers of John C. Calhoun had determined that the preservation of slavery was impossible without disunion, and had commenced preparations for that desperate measure of defense. The heavy vote given to Fremont in the North, the failure of the attempt to plant slavery in Kansas, the widening schism in the Democracy itself on the issue of slavery-extension, and the certainty that the census of 1860 would greatly increase the voting power in Congress of the North and Northwest—all made it plain that the South could not reinforce its waning strength with new slave States. Its leaders saw that the alternative before them was a systematic repression of slavery pointing toward its ultimate extinction, or the creation of a new government pretending to be a republic but "with its foundations laid, its corner-stone resting upon, the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."[8] Every civilized instinct urged them to assent to peaceful and gradual emancipation, but they chose the alternative of disunion from a belief that in no other way could the political ascendancy so long enjoyed by the ruling classes of the South be maintained. The administration of James Buchanan was their period of preparation. Whatever of needed assistance his sympathy failed to supply was furnished by his imbecility of purpose. In his Cabinet and in federal offices throughout the South active disunionists plotted and labored to make all things ready for rebellion and unready for its suppression. Chronic compromisers, Northern believers in slavery, and State Rights theorists were their useful allies. In Congress they threatened and bullied, and month by month made the demands of slavery more arrogant and exacting, scheming to kindle the war spirit of the South and to widen the breach between the sections, until they could offer to the North the ultimatum of abject surrender to the slave power or disunion and civil strife. The representatives of the North at Washington met these early developments of treason in various moods; there was no lack among them of those who were inclined to submit; there were many who disbelieved in the reality of the purpose underlying Southern vaporing and bluster, and this class included earnest and able Republicans; but there were also some who did not doubt that the slave power would try secession before accepting defeat, and who, yielding not one inch of the right to menaces, proposed to treat disunion, whether threatened or attempted, as treason and to denounce and resist it as such.
Early in his Senatorial career Mr. Chandler became convinced that the purpose of rebellion was a well-defined one at the South, that preparations to make it successful were in active progress, and that the longer the crisis was delayed the more difficult would be the task of its suppression. Between 1857 and 1861 his comments to his intimate friends on the outlook were exceedingly gloomy, and he often declared that he saw no possible escape from war. If the government was to be maintained on the basis on which it was founded and was not to be revolutionized in the interest of slavery, he believed that an armed conflict with the men who had determined to change its character was inevitable. He did not underestimate their ambition, their desperateness of purpose, or their readiness for violence. But neither in public nor in private did he quail before them in any degree, and his only plan of action was the simple, straightforward and characteristic one of meeting their threats with defiance and their treason with all the force required for its punishment. In a time of vacillation, feebleness and moral cowardice, and while he was still new in the Senate and hampered by his own inexperience and the usages of that body, what he did say and all his acts and influence were important contributions to that invigorating of Northern sentiment which the times so greatly demanded and which alone made possible the national uprising of 1861.
As a matter of record, the first time Zachariah Chandler's voice was heard in the Senate chamber, he asked that "Cornelius O'Flynn have leave to withdraw his memorial and papers from the files of the Senate." The first caucus he attended was that in which the Republican minority decided to make a vigorous protest against the unfairness of its treatment in the appointment of the Senate committees of the Thirty-fifth Congress. In his first speech he added, on the floor of the Senate, to the protest of his party an equally vigorous remonstrance against the complete ignoring of the commercial importance of the Northwest in the selection of members of the Committee on Commerce. In his second speech (on the proposition to increase the army) he said in significant language: "If they will show to me that they require a force in Utah to put down rebellion I will vote for it, I care not whether it be one regiment or one hundred regiments." His first prepared address in the Senate was delivered on the 12th day of March, 1858, and had as its theme that most reckless of the slave power's efforts at self-extension, the attempt to force upon Kansas what was known as the Lecompton constitution.
This was a pro-slavery instrument, framed by a constitutional convention elected and controlled by Border-Ruffians, apparently ratified at an election whose managers allowed no one to vote against it but only to vote for it with slavery or for it without slavery (even the "without" was fraudulent, because property in slaves already in Kansas was in any event guaranteed until 1864), and overwhelmingly rejected at the only election which in any degree fairly represented the opinions of the genuine settlers of the territory. Mr. Chandler's speech on this topic, the absorbing one of that day, was prepared with much care and delivered from manuscript. Portions of it were read to Senators Cameron, Wade and Hamlin before it was uttered. While it was spoken with the impulsive manner that generally characterized his speeches, it was the result of long deliberation and of such careful study of phraseology as was necessary to make it explicit and forcible. It was listened to by a large audience. Mr. Chandler had in private conversation spoken with much vigor of the duty of the Republican party in case the Lecompton constitution of Kansas was accepted and the new State admitted under that instrument, and his remarks had been freely quoted. His reputation for radicalism of opinion and plainness of speech had also reached Washington, and there was a general interest felt in his first prepared address. He began speaking about fifteen minutes after the Senate was called to order (in the chamber now occupied by the Supreme Court) and held the floor for nearly three hours. The spectators included many members of the House, among them John Sherman, since Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander H. Stephens, afterward Vice-President of the Confederacy, and John A. Logan, now well-known as both soldier and Senator. The address was one of power and was attended by marked effect.[9] It contained this description of the fate of three Michigan emigrants to Kansas:
Men have been hunted down by sheriffs and by posses from other States, by border-ruffians—everywhere under the color of law. Sir, the State of Michigan has over a thousand of her people in Kansas to-day. Three of her citizens, and many other good men, have been murdered in cold blood. Two of them, Barbour and Brown, I know were as good men as can be found on the face of the earth. The other—Gay—was Mr. Pierce's Land Agent for the territory. He was a Nebraska pro-slavery Democrat. He was met one day, with his son, on the road, and asked whether he was for Free-State or pro-slavery. He had become a little Free-Statish in his views, and, not dreaming of danger, he said: "I am a Free-State man," and he was shot down, and his son, in attempting to defend his father, received a bullet in his hip, and is now a cripple in Michigan. I speak with some feeling. My own constituents, my own people, have been brutally murdered, and I should be recreant to my trust if I did not speak with feeling on this subject. I know the men from Michigan who are in Kansas to be as good men as can be found within these United States, and when any one says the emigrants from Michigan to the territory of Kansas are picked from the purlieus of cities I tell him he knows nothing about the subject and that it is not true. They are as good men as the State of Michigan produces; they are honest and brave; they know their rights and, knowing, dare defend them.
But those parts of the speech which most thoroughly stirred his hearers and fell with unaccustomed force on ears which rarely heard such defiant tones, were these:
I cannot permit this bill to pass without protest. It was conceived and executed in fraud.... It is one of the series of aggressions on the part of the slave power which, if permitted to be consummated, must end in the subversion of the constitution and the Union.... It strikes a death-blow at State sovereignty and popular rights.... When Missouri applied for admission as a slave State ... the North objected. They declared it was agreed to that no more slave States should be admitted into the Union.... Agitation ran high. The South then as now threatened a dissolution of the Union. The North then as now denied her power to dissolve it.... During this excitement the hearts of brave men quailed.... A new compromise was made.... As a part of this compromise slavery was forever prohibited north of 36° 30'.... The compromise was acquiesced in.... Peace again reigned through the land, ... and this peace continued until the discovery of the new doctrine of popular sovereignty.... This is called a new compromise.... We are told we must accept it because the Union is in danger.... But that set of people who have been in labor and suffering and trial for so long a time on account of the Union have passed off the stage. In their places are men who love this glorious Union and love it as it was made by the fathers; men who will not whine "danger to the Union," but brave men who will fight for this Union to the death.... The old women of the North who have been in the habit of crying out "the Union is in danger" have passed off the stage. They are dead. Their places will never be supplied, but in their stead we have a race of men who are devoted to this Union and devoted to it as Jefferson and the fathers made it and bequeathed it to us.
Any aggression upon the constitution has been submitted to by the race who have gone off the stage. They were ready to compromise any principle, any thing. The men of the present day are a different race. They will compromise nothing; they are Union-loving men; they love all portions of the Union; and they will sacrifice anything but principle to save it. They will, however, make no sacrifice of principle. Never! Never! No more compromises will ever be submitted to to save the Union! If it is worth saving, it will be saved; but if you sap and undermine its foundations it must topple. It will be the legitimate result of your own action. The only way that we ever shall save this Union and make it as permanent as the everlasting hills will be by restoring it to the original foundations upon which the fathers placed it....
The people of Kansas are almost unanimously opposed to this constitution; yet you propose to force it upon them without their consent. It cannot be done. The government has not bayonets enough to force a constitution upon the necks of any unwilling people.... It is our purpose to avoid the shedding of blood upon the soil of the United States by civil war. While I will not charge on the supporters of the Lecompton constitution the purpose, in civil war, of shedding blood upon the soil of the United States, I do charge that they, and they alone, will be responsible for every drop of blood that may be shed in consequence of the adoption of that constitution. I trust in God civil war will never come; but if it should come, upon their heads, and theirs alone, will rest the responsibility of every drop that may flow. I trust in God that this question will never be pushed to that extremity, for I would have less respect for the people of Kansas than I now have if I supposed they would tamely submit to have a constitution thrust down their throats without authority of law, and against law, without making resistance. I would disown them as the descendants of the men who fought our revolutionary battles if I did not think they would resist any illegal attempts to force a constitution upon them.