"God's vengeance feeds the flameWith piles of wood and brimstone flood,That none can quench the same"—
represented to most people of the decade just preceding the Civil War all they said. Both old men and young children dreamed of the awful retribution which awaited them in the other world.
And there was a fiery zeal in the work of saving men's souls from the wrath to come which showed that it was no figurative faith which moved the preachers and their co-workers. A song sung by all ran in one of its favorite stanzas:—
“Must I be carried to the skiesOn flow'ry beds of ease,While others fought to win the prizeAnd sailed through bloody seas?”
Excitement naturally overcame many, and they rushed forward to the mourner's benches in front of the altar and cried out for mercy, or silently prayed for days and weeks till the light “broke upon them” and they went forth shouting for joy. These then became exhorters, and moved among their friends in the congregation, begging them to yield their “proud and haughty spirits” ere it should be too late. At times scores of penitents would be on their knees in thespaces about the altar, others would be “laboring” with the sinners not yet stricken, and still others thanking God in loud voices for their delivery from sin and Satan, whom all regarded as an active demon always seeking whom he might destroy.
In the South the deism which had influenced the generation led by Washington and Jefferson had given way to the stern faith of the Calvinists, for whether one were Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, or Campbellite, the essentials of his religion were the same. Wealthy planters, small farmers, and negro slaves sought the salvation of their souls in the same churches and under the same preachers. In fact it was common for men to be told by their pastors that unless they were willing to sit down in heaven by the side of the “poor slave” they could not be saved, and the slave often begged his master to accept the terms of salvation. A few great planters who were not touched by the religious fervor of the time held aloof, and the poorer whites and the slaves came to accept the view that these were the rich men who could not be saved, and commonly said hell was their unavoidable portion.
In the East, save in the Unitarian and Episcopalian churches, there was the same religious realism. In the great revivals of 1857 earnest men and great congregations prayed aloud that God might convert the heretical Theodore Parker, or that, if he were not a subject of grace, as many believed he was not, he might be taken from this world, where he was doing infinite mischief. Of course he was to be consigned immediately to the “fiery furnace below.”And the greatest of American preachers, Henry Ward Beecher, in the same revival, gathered about him the hard-headed business men of New York City and together they prayed that wicked playwrights and worldly-minded theater-goers might be brought to a realizing sense of the shame of their conduct, and that the houses of their frivolous vice might be converted into temples of Christian worship. Again, those who would not heed the solemn warnings of the pulpit were “given up,” and the Heavenly Father was asked to remove them “hence.”
The influence of this sense of the awfulness of the after life to those who might not be saved was far-reaching. The farmer, driven by the hard necessity of making a living for himself and family to remain away from church, meditated sorrowfully as he followed his plow, and often at the end of his furrow fell upon his knees and besought the Creator to save his undying soul and spare him the everlasting torture of the damned. A popular little gift book, published by the American Tract Society of New York, was entitledPassing Over Jordan, and on an early page we find the following typical lines:—
“My thoughts on awful subjects roll,Damnation and the dead:What horrors seize my guilty soulUpon a dying bed.”
And a young woman who received this as a New Year's present was a perfectly normal girl of Cincinnati and the daughter of a prominent family there.
What was happening in the United States during the thirty years we are studying was the saving ofthe people from the rough and often coarse and sensual life of the frontier. Under conditions such as have been described the influence and power of the preacher in young America were extraordinary. And the clergy deserved the authority they exercised. Never before the war was a Methodist bishop even charged with immoral conduct. The standards of the Baptists and Presbyterians were equally high. The preachers who called men to repentance were beyond question of the highest character. Earnest, sincere, overwhelmed with the sense of their responsibility, they “preached the Word with power,” and the Word was the Bible which all believed implicitly from cover to cover. It was not clear to preacher or congregation how God spoke to man first in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, then in the Greek of the New Testament, and finally in the Authorized Version of James I. But it mattered not; the Bible was inspired by the Heavenly Father, for it was so stated in Revelation, and a curse was held up for him who denied its truth or so much as removed one syllable or added a line. It was the authority of the Bible as preached by Martin Luther and John Calvin, and the interpreters of the Sacred Book were the clergy, not the Pope or some distant sacerdotal see.
Just how many people were members of the churches it would be very difficult accurately to determine. The Methodists of the South numbered nearly a million in 1860, those of the North were equally strong. The Baptists, North, South, and West, were nearly as numerous. The Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Christians (Campbellites)had each some hundreds of thousands of members. All the churches, including Catholics, offered seating accommodations for about 20,000,000 of the 31,000,000 people of the country; which is a large proportion. And from the census returns, it seems that church accommodations were always best and most plentiful in the older communities, the East having almost as many pews as there were people. The South could seat 6,500,000 worshipers,—that is, a little more than half of the population; the Northwest was able to accommodate only about 4,000,000.
With Protestant churches so powerful and their ministers so influential, it is only natural that the religious teachings of the time should have told in politics and the sectional struggle. The Southerners believed almost implicitly in the claim of their great Presbyterian preacher, B. M. Palmer, when he declared in 1860: “In this great struggle, we defend the cause of God and religion; it is our solemn duty to ourselves, to our slaves, to the world, and to Almighty God to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic servitude, with the right, unchallenged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and Nature may carry it.” Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and all other important bodies of Christians in the South held and taught the same doctrine. In the Northwest there was some hesitation about going so far, but the majority undoubtedly believed with Dr. Nathan L. Rice, of Chicago, that slavery was divinely established and not to be disturbed by man. In the East some of the Unitarians taught abolition and supported Garrison and Phillips;more of the Congregationalists were of the same mind. But in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia the greater clergy had come to regret the former tendency to denounce slavery, and they were inclined to preach the doctrine that Providence had established slavery and that it should be left to Providence to remove it in due time. Only in the rural districts of the East, where the old New England spirit still flourished, was slavery declared to be “the awful curse.” And here it was that the old sectional hatred was strongest. The churches and the clergy with all their influence had thus given up the problem of slavery, and their counsel and advice were to maintain the Union and to put down all sectional conflict. Nationalism with the South dominant was the meaning of this; nor do the election returns of 1852 and 1856 make a different showing.
Where religious influences were so potent, it was natural that the clergy should exert themselves for the education of the young. Yale College was a “school of the prophets” which sent out to the West the young preachers and teachers so much needed if Congregationalism was to hold its own in that region. Princeton was Presbyterian headquarters for both West and South, and few institutions have ever exerted a greater civilizing force in a new nation than that school of sternest theology. Dr. Charles Hodge was there a tower of orthodox and conservative strength which could be seen from afar. In numerous other institutions the Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Friends, and Campbellites trained their ministers and urged upon all the importance ofeducation. At the University of Virginia there were chaplains maintained by the different denominations for the religious instruction of the students. The Methodists of Michigan regularly appointed a professor to the state university for the same purpose. Other state universities, like those of Indiana and North Carolina, were brought under practical denominational control through the zealous activity of Presbyterian presidents.
The education of the little children was, however, too much for the most zealous of religious organizations. Jefferson had set in motion influences which had greatly strengthened the cause of popular education in the South and West. But nowhere did the States prepare fully for the work. In the Northwest the public school lands were wasted by thoughtless or venal politicians, and in the older South the label, “school for the children of the poor,” went far to defeat all efforts made by legislatures on behalf of good public school systems. In the period of 1840-50 Horace Mann revived the New England interest in education and laid the foundations for the school systems of to-day. Even so ardent a Southerner as William L. Yancey, of Alabama, became a disciple of the New England reformer, and tried to do a similar work in his State. In Indiana, Illinois, and the other Western States educational reforms followed. There were in consequence about 5,000,000 children in school in the year 1860. Of these the South had 796,000, the Northwest, exclusive of California, 2,005,196, and the East, 2,011,826; which shows that Southern public opinion had not yet been aroused tothe importance of the subject. But the figures for illiteracy, already given, do not show a worse condition among the whites of the South than is shown in the Northwestern States.
If the returns for college education be taken, the balance among the sections is fairly reëstablished. There were 25,882 college students in the South in 1860, and this does not take into account the large number of Southern students in Eastern institutions like Princeton and Harvard. There were at the same time 16,959 college students in the Northwest, and 10,449 in the East.
Between education and the attainments of science and invention there is some connection, though genius often defies all conventional methods of instruction. In addition to the epoch-making inventions of McCormick and his competitors, Samuel F. B. Morse had perfected his electric telegraph, which was in operation in most of the countries of Europe before 1860. Richard M. Hoe revolutionized newspaper publishing in the late forties by his rotary printing-press, which put out thousands of copies of a paper in an hour. Nor was Elias Howe's sewing-machine any less of a wonder when it came into use about 1850. Draper and Morse's new photography, Thurber's typewriter, Woodruff's sleeping-car, and many other marvelous contrivances of the same period showed the fertility of the American inventive genius.
In scientific research the United States could not present so many evidences of her success, though in 1860 Alexander Dallas Bache, the head of the Coast Survey, was counted one of the leading scientists ofhis time, and Louis Agassiz, the Swiss-American naturalist, was teaching now in Charleston, now in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, and beginning the great work,Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, which his son, Alexander, was to complete. Joseph Henry, the first head of the Smithsonian Institution, was equally well known, and he and Professor Bache were the backbones of the American National Academy of Science, just beginning its beneficent work. Silliman, of Yale, and Mitchell, of the University of North Carolina, were the best-known geologists.
Nor was art degenerating in this period of great prosperity. Hiram Powers, of Cincinnati, the ablest sculptor of his country, was greatly hurt because Congress refused him the contract for the decorative work on the magnificent Capitol in Washington, at last nearing completion. His aspirations were not unreasonable, for his Greek Slave, a beautiful work in marble, had captured the imagination of both American and foreign critics in 1851. Still, Thomas Crawford, his successful competitor, was a sculptor of real gifts, as one may see in his statues of Jefferson and Patrick Henry in Richmond. The work of Allston, Sully, and De Veaux, the painters, was being improved upon by Chester Harding, Eastman Johnson, and William Morris Hunt, all influenced, however, by Turner of England, the Düsseldorf (Germany) and Barbizon (France) schools. There were now many wealthy business men in the country, and thus artists had a fair chance of a livelihood while their ideals and technique were developing. In Boston,New York, and Philadelphia were the beginnings of the museums which were a few years later to become schools of art of no mean importance.
But the flower of American culture was its literature. To be sure Edgar Allan Poe, whoseRavenand short stories were ere long to give him the first rank among all American men of letters, had been suffered to starve in the midst of New York's millions in 1849, and Hawthorne found it very difficult to find the means of a meager livelihood in Massachusetts. If theRavenand theScarlet Letterwere born unwelcome, Ralph Waldo Emerson was making a living as author and sage of his generation, and there were others of the Transcendentalists—Thoreau, the woodland poet, Margaret Fuller, the woman knight-errant, recently drowned at sea, and Amos Bronson Alcott—whose writings appeared in standard editions and who lived by their pens. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a professor at Harvard till 1854, though savagely criticized by Poe and Margaret Fuller, had won the American heart in hisVillage BlacksmithandEvangeline. He scored his greatest triumph inMiles Standishin 1858. And another Harvard professor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was just coming into a national reputation in 1860 by hisAutocrat of the Breakfast Tableand other similar writings.
A more radical poet was John Greenleaf Whittier, contributor to theNational Era, a radical anti-slavery journal which first gave publicity to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's famousUncle Tom's Cabin. Whittier'sIchabod, which appeared in 1850, and is already quoted in these pages, gave its author a devotedfollowing among the radicals and hastened Webster to his grave. Mrs. Stowe's work was perhaps the most influential book ever written by an American, though it hardly ranks as literature. Of a similarly intense nature was James Russell Lowell, whoseBiglow Papersof 1846 to 1857 unmercifully lampooned the party which waged the war on Mexico and ridiculed the leaders of the South and West. Succeeding Longfellow at Harvard, Lowell helped to establish in 1857 theAtlantic Monthly, which still remains the best of American magazines.
There was nowhere else in the country such a school of literary men as this of New England, though in Charleston William Gilmore Simms was still publishing historical novels, espousing the cause of Southern literature inRussell's Magazine, and stimulating the ambitions of young men. One of his pupils, Henry Timrod, whoseAt Magnolia Cemeteryis likely to prove immortal, was worthy to be compared with Poe; and another, Paul Hamilton Hayne, certainly deserved a higher rank and a better fortune than either of these struggling poets has been accorded. But perhaps the most original writings of the time were those of a certain group of obscure men in Georgia and the lower South. A. B. Longstreet, the author ofGeorgia Scenes, William Tappan Thompson, ofMajor Jones's Courtship, and Joseph B. Baldwin, ofFlush Times in Alabama and Mississippi, struck a rich vein of ludicrous humor which Mark Twain worked out after the war.
In Richmond theSouthern Literary Messengerwas still the clearing-house for Southern writers, andDe Bow's Reviewwas eminent in the field of social and economic studies. New York City had, however, become the Mecca of the men who had manuscripts to submit. There the Harper Brothers published theirHarper's Magazine, which went to 150,000 subscribers, we are told, each month, and theKnickerbocker Magazine, distinguished by the contributions of Washington Irving, the Nestor of American writers, tried to keep pace. Both the Harpers and the Putnams did an enormous business in books of all kinds, now that so many Americans had grown rich. Walter Scott's novels were imported for the South in carload lots, while Dickens's numberless volumes found ready sale in the East, thus showing the different tastes of the sections.
And the historians had increased their vogue with a people just beginning to realize that they had ancestors and taking a becoming pride in their early history. Bancroft'sHistory of the United Stateswas sold in all sections in a way that would astound present-day historians. Richard Hildreth, a sturdy partisan, added his six volumes to Bancroft's in 1849-54 by way of antidote; and George Tucker, of the University of Virginia, still further “corrected” the history of his country, the better to suit the tastes of Southerners. John L. Motley published hisRise of the Dutch Republicin 1856 at his own expense, and suddenly found himself one of the foremost historians of his time, his work being quickly translated into all the important languages of Europe. William H. Prescott, an older man and a greater historian, already well known for hisReignof Ferdinand and Isabella, gave to the printer hisReign of Philip IIin 1855-58, and easily maintained his supremacy in the field of history.
It was an aspiring generation that produced Poe, Hawthorne, Lowell, and the rest, and if one considers the character of American culture, its lack of unity, and the still youthful nature of its people, it is easy to understand the pride in its budding art and maturer literature, the sensitiveness to foreign criticism, the provincialism which demands attention and a “place in the sun.” Carlyle's scorn and Macaulay's contempt were indeed as irritating as they were unjust, for America had gone a long way since the rough backwoodsman, Andrew Jackson, came to the Presidency by almost unanimous consent in 1829.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
James Ford Rhodes in hisHistory of the United States, vol.I, chap.IV, gives an account of social conditions in the South just prior to the war and, in vol.III, chap.XII, there is a similar picture of conditions in the North. McMaster's last volume describes the life of the people for this period. But I have found most valuable information in works of travel like F. L. Olmsted'sA Journey in the Seaboard Slave States(1856) andA Journey Through the Back Country(1863), W. H. Russell'sMy Diary North and South(1863), Sir Charles Lyell'sA Second Visit to the United States(1849), Peter Cartwright'sAutobiography(1856), and James Dixon'sPersonal Narrative(1849); and in John Weiss'sLife and Correspondence of Theodore Parker(1864); Beecher and Scoville'sBiography of Henry Ward Beecher(1888); W. E. Hatcher'sLife of J. B. Jeter(1887); T. C. Johnson'sThe Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer(1906); and the valuableAmerican Church Historyseries (1893-97). On American sculpture Lorado Taft'sAmerican Sculpture(1903), and Charles H. Caffin'sAmerican Masters of Sculpture(1903), are useful and discriminating. Caffin has also writtenThe Story of American Painting(1907), which is perhapsthe best short account of the subject. For a good view of the literary and publishing interests of 1860, W. P. Trent'sA History of American Literature(1903) is most valuable, and W. B. Cairns'sA History of American Literature(1912) is likewise important. George H. Putnam'sGeorge Palmer Putnam: A Memoir(1912) and J. H. Harper'sThe House of Harper(1912) give important information about the rise of the publishing houses. Of courseDe Bow's Review,Resources of the South and West, and theReports of the Censusfor 1850 and 1860 are indispensable.
If the two preceding chapters have shown that the larger social and economic interests tended strongly toward the elimination of sectional hostility, political conditions and party vows gave even stronger assurances that there should be no more conflicts like those of 1833 and 1850. Yet there was one section of the country which was a sort of storm center, the Northwest. There a wide expanse of rich lands held by Indians, a rapidly increasing population, and great annual harvests of wheat and corn, selling at high prices, created a condition not unlike that of the lower South when Jackson became President. Removal of the Indians from the fertile areas of the Nebraska country, the creation of new Territories, and the building of railroads connecting the wheat and corn areas with Chicago and the Eastern markets were the demands of the Northwest in 1853, and a really great party leader would have seen the problem and his duty.
But Pierce was not a great leader. In the make-up of his Cabinet he chose William L. Marcy, of New York, for Secretary of State, James Campbell, of Pennsylvania, for Postmaster-General, and Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, for Attorney-General, all of whom were close political allies of the South. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, became Secretary ofWar, and James C. Dobbin, of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy. Both of these were extreme pro-slavery men. From the West, James Guthrie, of Kentucky, and Robert McClelland, of Michigan, were taken into the President's Council, the one to be Secretary of the Treasury and the other the head of the Department of the Interior. Although Douglas had been the strongest candidate for the nomination for the Presidency before the recent Democratic Convention, neither he nor any of his friends was selected. Nor did it seem wise to those who were then shaping the destinies of the country to conciliate the still powerful anti-slavery element of the East.
Looking backwards the new Administration found three lines of procedure open to it, all suggested by President Polk in his later messages to Congress. One of these was the closer attachment of California to the rest of the country, another was the purchase of Cuba as a makeweight to the growing Northwest, and the third was the rapid expansion of American commerce by federal subsidies to shipping and the opening of new channels of trade.
To carry into effect the first of these, James Gadsden, an able railroad president of South Carolina, was sent to Mexico to purchase a large strip of land lying along the southern border of New Mexico and thus make easy the building of a national railway from Memphis to San Francisco, for the lowest passes over the Rocky Mountains were in this region. Gadsden returned in the autumn successful. For $10,000,000 he had secured 50,000 square miles ofterritory, and the way was open for the Government to lay its plans for the greatest undertaking ever proposed by the most latitudinarian politicians. Davis, hitherto an extreme States-rights leader and disciple of Calhoun, worked out the program. The constitutional authority for building a Pacific railroad was deduced from the “war powers” of the Federal Government, and, though it was not definitely stated that the road should pass through the recent annexation, it was commonly understood that such was the purpose of the President and that the lower South was to be the economic and social beneficiary of the great improvement. Arkansas, Texas, and California were willing and anxious to build the parts of the road that passed through their territory. With the exception of a group of Gulf-city representatives and some of the up-country Democrats of the older South, the leaders of the party approved the plan, and Pierce made the Pacific railroad the burden of his first annual message to Congress. Congress voted the money for the preliminary survey of five routes to the Pacific, and confided the work to Jefferson Davis, the recognized leader of the Administration. The people of the country, long familiar with the arguments of Asa Whitney and others in favor of such an undertaking, made no objection, though men of political foresight saw the far-reaching purposes of the scheme.
To effect the second object of the Democratic program, the purchase of Cuba, Pierre Soulé, of Louisiana, was sent to Spain. Soulé was one of the most ardent of Southern expansionists, and his mission was not relished at Madrid any more than itwas approved by conservative Eastern Democrats. In support of the new Spanish Minister, John Y. Mason, of Virginia, and James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, both former members of the Polk Cabinet, were sent as Ministers to France and England respectively. Soulé made little progress till the Black Warrior, an American coasting vessel, was seized in 1854 by the Spanish authorities in Havana and searched in the expectation of finding evidence that the people of the United States were still assisting the Cuban insurrectionists. No proof was discovered, and the people of the country, especially those of the South, were greatly excited; for a time it seemed that war would ensue. Davis and Soulé pressed the case upon the President, at the risk of war and perhaps in the hope that war would follow and that thus Cuba, so long coveted, would fall into the lap of the United States. But Marcy, though ambitious of annexing Cuba, was hard pressed by Eastern public opinion, and he persuaded Pierce to recall his hasty minister. This was not done, however, until the three ministers concerned had met at Ostend in the autumn of 1855 and published to the world the manifesto which declared it to be the purpose of their Government not to allow any other European country to get possession of Cuba, and which further stated that the United States was always ready to pay a fair price for the island. A more moderate man succeeded Soulé, but the subject was pressed at Madrid with increasing persistence during the remainder of that and the next Administration.
The third item of the Democratic policy, the expansion of American commerce, was furthered by a continuation of the subsidies to steamship companies like the Collins line, which put upon the ocean many vessels of the best and largest build. Even more was planned in offering Robert J. Walker the mission to China, and the appointment of Townsend Harris, a wealthy New York merchant, as consul to Ningpo, Japan. Walker declined, but Harris accepted, and within two years, with the assistance of Commodore Perry, he succeeded in opening the hermit kingdom to the civilization and commerce of the United States. It was the beginning of modern Japan, and it marked a new stage in the development of American trade in the Orient. In all these measures Pierce met with some opposition in the East, particularly in the rough handling of the Cuban question; and there was much dislike of the Southern filibustering against Lower California and, especially at the close of the Administration, against Nicaragua, which was seized by William Walker, the Tennessee imperialist already mentioned, and proclaimed in 1856 a slave State. But the opposition was rather to the spirit and tone of things, and the very plain subserviency of the President to Southern wishes, than against expansion as such. The real resistance to Pierce came on another matter and in the most unexpected way, in the struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
The stone rejected of the builders really became the head of the corner, for in spite of all that the Pierce Administration could do, the problem of the Northwest, which Douglas personified, became the bone of contention between the sections, and again, as in1850, the South, the East, and the Northwest struggled for supremacy. When the Davis plans for a southern Pacific railroad were maturing, Senator Douglas, the head of the Senate Committee on Territories, was preparing to renew his six-year fight for the opening of the wide Nebraska hinterland of his section. The squatters of the Kansas and the Platte River Valleys were already confronted with hostile Indians who protested against the unlawful seizure of their lands. And now that wheat and corn were becoming great staple crops, the Northwestern pioneers were loudly demanding that the natives should not be permitted to cumber the ground. They must move on to the arid desert beyond or be carried into the Southern country, which Davis, as we have seen, was trying to open to Southern pioneers. It was a real conflict of interest between the lower South and the Northwest, and in order to win, the Northwestern politicians must find allies in the East as Clay had done in 1825-36, though Douglas as an “old-line” Democrat could not so readily see this.
He resorted to management andfinesse. He found two delegates from Nebraska in Washington in December, 1853, one from what was soon to be Kansas, the other from the pioneers of Nebraska. It was natural, therefore, for him to change his Nebraska bill of the former sessions into a bill for the creation of two Territories, with the two rival delegates as their prospective spokesmen in Congress. Besides, Douglas, who was a consummate politician, would have two more loyal followers and two other embryo States in his wing of the Democratic party.
Conflicting Secional Interests
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Hence Douglas prepared for the removal of the Indians, for the creation of two Territories instead of one, and he enlisted in his cause the Senators and Representatives of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, by showing them that their own schemes for the granting of public lands to assist in the building of railroads would be furthered by their voting for the opening of Nebraska. Every economic and political instinct of the people of the Northwest tended to enlist them in the cause of Douglas and Nebraska. And it was known to most of the Chicago public and big business men that a Pacific railroad was to be laid from Council Bluffs, a point already in railroad connection with Chicago, to San Francisco, in the event of the rapid development of the Platte River country. But St. Louis and Missouri leaders would oppose this because they had been fighting since 1848 to get a railway to the Pacific directly from Kansas City.
There was, however, a vigorous pro-slavery party in Missouri, led by David Atchison. This party had overthrown Benton, and their first purpose was the making of Kansas a slave State. It was the western half of Missouri which now controlled the State, and the commercial element of St. Louis, to which the Pacific railroad was so attractive, was in the minority. Douglas won Atchison and western Missouri to his plans by holding out to them that their contention, as old as Missouri itself, that the Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional, might be granted by Congress. When this was fully appreciated, Kentucky and Tennessee leaders became interested.Southern newspapers took up the discussion and Douglas immediately became a statesman. Even Jefferson Davis was led to commit himself to the new Kansas-Nebraska Bill when the anti-slavery men of the East began to attack it. And on Sunday, January 22, Pierce promised Douglas the official support of the Administration.
The bill now provided for two Territories west of the Missouri River, for the formal repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and for the adoption of the old Cass doctrine of popular sovereignty, whereby the settlers in the new communities were to determine for themselves whether they would have slaves or not. If any dispute arose as to this a test was to be made of the question in the United States courts. This looked like a surrender of a large part of the public domain to the South, and the repeal of the semi-sacred Compromise was perhaps the boldest proposition that had ever been offered in Congress. Still the great purpose was the development of the Northwest, and wise public men might have seen that the populous free States of the Northwest would inevitably win and make the 400,000 square miles of Nebraska free territory; and if the railroad bills which Douglas supported and tied to his main measure by all kinds of promises passed, the supremacy of the Northwest would be certain.
But the weakness of popular government is the fact that public men are seldom strong enough to deny themselves the opportunity of an appeal to the people on a side issue, if such appeal promises political victory. The day that Douglas introduced hisbill, there appeared in the New York papers,The Appeal of the Independent Democrats, signed by Senators Chase and Sumner and the Free-Soil members of the House. It was an able protest against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and a denunciation of the “unscrupulous politician” who made this surrender of national and free States rights in order to secure for himself the coveted Presidency. The essential purpose of the Douglas legislation, the rapid upbuilding of the Northwest and the blocking of the Davis plans for a Pacific railroad, were entirely overlooked. A wave of excitement swept over the East and the New England colonies of the Northwest. Petitions poured into Congress, meetings were held to denounce Douglas as a second Benedict Arnold, and he was burned in effigy by thousands who never took the trouble to read the Kansas-Nebraska Bill or seriously contemplated its effects. In Congress Chase, Sumner, Seward, and even moderates like Edward Everett denounced the ambitious politician from Illinois who had dared to “sell the birthright of the free States for a mess of pottage.” It was a revival of the sectional hatred, as well as of the fears of the aggressive planters who had enticed Douglas to go one step farther than he had intended.
Though the South had begun to fear the consequences of popular sovereignty and to see that Douglas was only making the more certain the power of his group of States, its spokesmen felt compelled to support him in a fight against abolitionists and anti-slavery agitators. Alexander Stephens, an able Whig leader of Georgia, and most other members ofthat party in the South, gave Douglas hearty support. The struggle developed into a fight between the East and the South. A great many of the followers of Douglas were won away from the original program when it seemed a mere question of slavery extension, and the Democrats of the Northwest divided sharply. After four months of angry debate and unprecedented log-rolling the bill became law, and the President promptly organized Kansas and Nebraska as Territories. Members of Congress went home after the adjournment to face their constituents, and a most exciting campaign followed. In Wisconsin and Michigan a new party was organized. Its appeal was to the fundamental American doctrines that all men are equal and that no great interests should rule the country. It received immediate support in the two States mentioned, and in all the counties of the Northwest where the New England influence was predominant, in northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Naturally the remnants of the old party organizations, the Whigs and the Free-Soilers, lent enthusiastic support.
Chase and Sumner had called into being a new idealist movement resembling that which had overwhelmed the Federalists in 1800, and a group of new leaders, soon to become famous, emerged. In addition to the well-known names already mentioned, there now appeared the kindly, shrewd Abraham Lincoln, of Kentucky and Illinois; J. W. Grimes arose in Iowa to threaten a Democratic machine which had never known defeat; Zachary Chandler, of Michigan, was making ready the stroke which was to unhorse the great and popular Cass; and Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, joined Chase and Giddings, thus making up the trio which was to rule that State for years to come. The young and vigorous Republican party of the Northwest, guided by this company of ambitious “new” politicians, readily effected the union of East and Northwest which Adams and Clay had long striven in vain to perfect. The work of Chase, Seward, Lincoln, and Sumner of these years paralleled that of Calhoun, Jackson, and Benton in 1828; and as a result the Democrats lost their hold on the legislatures of nearly all the States above the Ohio and the Missouri Rivers, and their overwhelming majority in the Federal House of Representatives disappeared as if overnight.
While the new Republican party, almost wholly sectional in its origin and perhaps in its purposes, was winning leadership in the country, the more conservative Whigs of the East sought to affiliate with a small organization of nativists who called themselves Americans and whose slogan was “America for Americans.” Foreigners should be barred from citizenship and Catholics should be ostracized. In the South most followers of Clay and in the East many admirers of Webster avoided a complete surrender to the Democrats by stopping in this halfway house. The “Know-Nothings,” as the party was called in derision of their failure to answer questions about their platform, gained so many followers from the dissatisfied elements of the older parties that in 1855 it seemed likely they would sweep the country. In Virginia they made their most spectacular campaign.Henry A. Wise, a Whig who had gone into the Democratic party with Stephens, was their greatest opponent, and in the gubernatorial campaign of 1855 he completely discomfited them; in Georgia they likewise lost their contest. The South was accepting the Democratic leadership and becoming solid, as Calhoun had prayed that it might become. In the East, Seward and Weed persuaded most of the Whigs to unite with the Republicans, and when the first national convention of the Americans met in 1856, it was clear that its leaders could not hold the Southern and Eastern wings together on the slavery question. The anti-slavery Americans bolted, and the remnant which remained nominated ex-President Fillmore, who in the succeeding election received a majority in only one State, Maryland, though his popular vote was nearly a million. The parties of the future were plainly the Democratic, Southern, pro-slavery, and well organized, and the Republican, Northern, we may now say, anti-slavery, and also well organized.
Meanwhile the frontiersmen from Iowa and Missouri were trying to work out the principle of popular sovereignty in Kansas, and their Governor, Andrew Reeder, was doing what he could to assist them. Anti-slavery aid societies in the East sent resolute men to Kansas to vote and save the Territory from slavery, and pro-slavery lodges in Missouri went across the border to vote against and perhaps to shoot Free-State men who disputed the right of the South to plant and to maintain slavery there. Under these circumstances the first election for members of the territorial legislature was a farce. YetReeder felt obliged to let the new assembly go on with its work of making easy the immigration of masters with their “property”; when he went East a little later he took occasion to protest in a public address against the intrusion of Missouri voters. He was regretfully removed from office, though he returned to Kansas to coöperate with Charles Robinson, a Californian of political experience, in the organization of the Free-State party, which refused to recognize the territorial legislature and which met in voluntary convention at Topeka in the autumn of 1855 and drew a state constitution. In this document slavery was outlawed. Following the example of California, representatives of the new government asked for prompt admission to the Union.
The Southerners had never recognized California as properly within the Union, and the pro-Southern party in Kansas made open war upon the Topeka party in December. Lawrence, the anti-slavery headquarters, was besieged, but the new governor managed to compromise so as to prevent bloodshed, and the two governments of Kansas continued to exist. The Federal Congress was compelled to decide which of the questionable governments should be recognized as lawful. Since the Senate was Democratic and pro-Southern, and the House Republican and pro-Northern, a decision was impossible. The Topeka constitution was supported by the House, and even the fair and reasonable bill of the Senate offered by Toombs in 1856 was rejected. This called for a submission of both parties in Kansas to an election safeguarded against unlawful interference from any source. Itseemed that Seward, Chase, and their friends did not desire a settlement before the election. And Sumner's speech on the “Crime of Kansas” was a challenge to war. He compared Douglas to “the noisome squat and nameless animal whose tongue switched a perpetual stench,” and Senator Butler, of South Carolina, a leader of the highest character, was a man who could not open his mouth but to lie.
The war of the sections was now renewed in the most bitter form, as was shown when Preston Brooks, a kinsman of Butler, assaulted Sumner a day or two after the speech, resigned his seat in the House as Representative from South Carolina, and was immediately reëlected. Sumner retired from the Senate, a hero in all New England, and Massachusetts ostentatiously refused to fill the vacant seat during the next three years, thus constantly reminding her people of Sumner's vituperation and the South Carolina assault.
When the Democrats met in their national convention in Cincinnati in June, the struggle in Kansas still went on, and the excitement of the Sumner-Brooks affair had not subsided. All elements of the South were represented, and the American party showed no signs of being able to carry a single Southern State. The convention accepted Douglas's popular sovereignty as its platform, but nominated Buchanan as its candidate. He was “available” because he had been out of the country for four years and had said nothing on the Kansas quarrel. John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, was nominated for the Vice-Presidency in the hope of winning Tennessee and Kentucky, which had not voted for a Democratic candidate since Jackson.
The Republicans used the “Crime of Kansas” as politicians always use such opportunities, and they made an appeal to the Revolutionary tradition by calling their convention on the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17. They had not abona fidedelegation from any Southern State. But the Declaration of Independence, overlooked by both parties for many years, was made a part of the platform. The Pacific railway was indorsed and internal improvements at federal expense were again recommended to the country. John C. Frémont, son-in-law of Benton and an explorer of national fame, was nominated for the Presidency. The campaign had already been waging since the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. It now became intense. Douglas gave Buchanan his loyal support, and the great Southern planters united with New York merchants and New England conservatives to make the Democratic ticket successful. Even Edward Everett and Rufus Choate made public announcement of their conversion to Democracy. Large sums of money were sent to Pennsylvania to influence the vote. Southern governors in a conference at Raleigh proposed secession if the Democrats failed, and Eastern radicals urged the break-up of the Union if the slave power continued in control.
The result was a victory for the conservatives, or “reactionaries,” as we should perhaps say. The solid South voted for Buchanan; and Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California were found in the samecolumn. Frémont received the support of a solid East and all the Northwest except the States just mentioned. The fear of radicalism and the distrust of men of great wealth everywhere had defeated the young Republicans; the returns showed that the Democrats had polled 200,000 more votes than in 1852, and there was no reason to believe that the 874,000 which had been cast for Fillmore would not in the end be given to the conservative Democrats in preference to the sectional Republicans. There was no chance for the enthusiastic followers of Seward and Chase unless the majority party could be broken into factions, and this a wise and able Democratic leadership would avoid.
Strangely Buchanan formed his Cabinet without consulting Douglas, so far as can now be ascertained. No friend of his was appointed to high office, yet the support of the Northwest was the one condition of continued success. In the foreign policy the new Administration made no change. A part of northern Mexico and all of Cuba were still coveted and, till the outbreak of the Civil War, efforts were made to obtain both. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, was the master spirit of the Cabinet, and Jefferson Davis was the Administration leader in the Senate.
The Supreme Court, composed of seven pro-Southern members as against two anti-slavery men, undertook to give acoup de graceto the quarrel about slavery in the Territories. The Missouri Compromise had never been passed upon by the court. Now a case came before the august tribunal which gave opportunity for the judges to say whether slaverycould be prohibited by federal authority in the public domain. Dred Scott, a slave belonging to a Missouri master, had been carried into Minnesota and there held in bondage. He sued for his freedom on the ground that slavery was unlawful in free territory, under the Compromise. The case was before the court nearly a year before the judges gave out their opinion that Scott was not a citizen of the United States, and that, therefore, he could not sue in the federal courts. The case was dismissed. But the judges granted a rehearing of the case, and in March, 1857, hoping to assist the country to a peaceful solution of the slavery problem, gave out a so-calleddictum, which it had been the custom of the court occasionally to submit to the public.[9]In this document the judges said that the negro was property, and that as such the Federal Government must protect it in the Territories. This was the Calhoun doctrine, and the South rejoiced immoderately; the Republicans now began to realize that the courts were in alliance with the slave-power, and they were forced to attack the most sacred political institution in the country.
Both parties turned to Kansas to see what could be won there. During the spring of 1856, when Sumner and Brooks were manifesting the spirit of the members of Congress, the Southern and Northern groups in Kansas carried their warfare to similar extremes. Lawrence was destroyed by the pro-slavery men; the anti-slavery men returned the stroke in the massacres on Pottawatomie Creek. John Brown, a fanatical New England emigrant, imagined himself to be commissioned of Heaven to kill all the pro-slavery people who fell into his hands, and he did a bloody work which under other conditions would have been counted as murder and denounced everywhere. But in the autumn of 1856 wealthy and benevolent men in the North applauded him, gave him money, and held meetings in his honor.
Into a Kansas frenzied with the work of Brown on the one side and that of the “border ruffians,” as the Missourians were called, on the other, the President sent Robert J. Walker as governor, commissioned to solve the insoluble problem. So great was the faith of the country in Walker that he was hailed as the next President of the United States by fair-minded men and important newspapers. Walker called an election for a constitutional convention. Again the Missourians participated, and the Lecompton constitution was the result. The Free-State men refused to recognize the convention unless the new constitution should be submitted to a fair vote. This the convention refused to do, and the governor appealed to the President to compel submission. This was denied, and Walker resigned. The Lecompton, pro-slavery constitution of Kansas was submitted to the first Congress of Buchanan in December, 1857, and the Administration urged its adoption. Walker openly condemned Buchanan for deserting him, and he declared the Lecompton constitution to be a fraud. Yet the leaders of the South, resentful and angry, supported it, and the majority of the Senate was onthe same side. The judges of the Supreme Court were known to favor it. The Republicans urged the adoption of the Topeka constitution of 1855, and the majority of the people seemed to be of the same view. What was the way out of the dangerousimpasse?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Most interesting and trustworthy accounts of subjects discussed in the chapter are: T. C. Smith'sParties and Slavery, inAmerican Nationseries; F. Bancroft'sThe Life of William H. Seward(1900); Allen Johnson'sThe Life of Stephen A. Douglas(1908); O. G. Villard'sJohn Brown; a Biography(1910); L. D. Scisco'sPolitical Nativism in New York(1901); William Salter'sLife of James W. Grimes(1876); George W. Julian'sLife of Joshua R. Giddings(1892). Rhodes, McMaster, and Schouler treat the period critically. Some special studies of importance are P. O. Ray'sRepeal of the Missouri Compromise(1909); Allen Johnson'sGenesis of Popular Sovereignty(Iowa Journal of History and Politics,III); F. H. Hodder'sDouglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act(Wisconsin Historical Society Proceedings, 1912); and E. S. Corwin'sThe Dred Scott Decision(American Historical Review,XVII).
Some of the most instructive contemporary narratives will be found in M. W. Cluskey'sPolitical Text Book(1857), andSpeeches, Messages, and other Writings of A. G. Brown(1859); H. Wilson'sRise and Fall of the Slave Power(1872-77); Horace Greeley'sThe American Conflict(1864); Mrs. Jefferson Davis'sJefferson Davis; a Memoir(1890); J. M. Cutts'sConstitutional and Party Questions(1866); S. J. May'sRecollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict(1869);Works of Charles Sumner(1874-83), and many other works of a similar character.
William McDonald'sSelect Documentsgives the most important sources for this whole period. But theCongressional Globe,U.S. Documents, House Reports, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., vol.II, must be studied in order to get the spirit of the times.
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill had greatly angered a majority of the people of the North. The sudden rise of the Republican party in protest against it, and the promise of Northern control of the Federal Government, heartened them to the great struggle of 1856. But the failure to win the populous States of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, and the solid front of the South, the compact pro-Southern Senate, and the moral effect of the Dred Scott decision discouraged them. Moreover, the Republican victories of 1854-55 proved misleading, for in 1856 and 1858 the party failed to win a majority in the House of Representatives. All that the ardent protestants and idealists could do was to block extreme measures in Congress and enact laws in the Republican States to harass the “enemy.” Seward yielded the struggle to the extent of indorsing popular sovereignty, which did indeed promise more than any other line of procedure. Greeley, the enemy of Seward but the arch-enemy of the South, actually proposed Douglas, the “squire of slavery,” for the Presidency in 1860. Chase seemed to be losing ground in Ohio, where he had never had a majority on his own account. Business, as we have already seen, had made peace with the South, and conservative leaders of the East regarded slave-owners as in the same classmorally with bankers and railway directors.[10]The federal law against the African slave trade could not be enforced. More than a hundred ships sailed unmolested each year from New York Harbor to the African Coast to bring back naked negroes for the cotton planters.
The outlook was so dark that New England leaders returned regretfully to the proposition of John Quincy Adams of 1843, and recommended Northern nullification and secession. Massachusetts had passed an act in 1855 which inflicted a penalty of five years of imprisonment upon any man who aided in the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of the United States. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin had declared the same law unconstitutional in 1854; in 1857 the legislature indorsed this view, and in 1859 it claimed the right of immediate secession in case the State was overruled by the Federal Supreme Court, or in case any attempt should be made to enforce the obnoxious act by the General Government. Nearly every other Northern State passed personal liberty laws which were designed to prevent the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and their constitutional justification was found in the supremacy of the States and bolstered by the opinion of Judge Story, delivered in 1842,[11]which said that no private citizen need obey an unconstitutional law, state or national, but he takes the risk of having the courts decide it constitutional and of being punishedif he acts on his own judgment before the proper court has adjudged the act unconstitutional.
It was not unnatural, then, that Charles Sumner should indorse the abolitionist campaign against the Union, or that Benjamin F. Wade should eulogize the Wisconsin threats to secede. Richard H. Dana, of Boston, said that men who had called him a traitor a few years before now stopped him on the street to talk treason. N. P. Banks, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, said in Maine: “I am not one of the class who cry for the perpetuation of the Union.” The Worcester convention of January 15, 1857, did actually and by big majorities pass resolutions calling for a dissolution of the Federal Government, and its call for a convention of all the free States, looking to the same end, was signed by seven hundred men of all walks of life; many of them were men of eminence. The political abolitionists and the anti-slavery men of pronounced views were on the point of going over to the Garrison party, which had always proclaimed that the Union was a “league with hell,” and so strong was the campaign against the Union that Governor Wise, of Virginia, and others recommended a war upon New England in order to bring the abolitionists to subjection.
But the darkest hour comes just before dawn. When Buchanan recommended in the message of December, 1857, the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, Senator Douglas, to the bewilderment of thousands, openly denounced the President, and in the most effective speech of his life led a secession of the Northwestern Democrats fromthe dominant Southern party. He showed that the application of his popular sovereignty doctrine in Kansas would solve the problem of slavery in the Territories, and that the Administration was violating the platform on which it held office in espousing the cause of the pro-slavery men. It was a remarkable situation. In 1854 Douglas had defeated Davis and Pierce in their far-reaching plans for the development of the Southwest; Chase and his allies had defeated Douglas in his counter-scheme for the growth of the Northwest in 1854-55; and now Douglas broke the solidarity of the Democratic party and gave hope and courage to the North, where the idea of secession was fast winning the minds of leading men. If Douglas joined the Republicans, the overthrow of the South was assured; if he became an independent candidate for the Presidency, the Republicans were made certain of an easy victory. It was this that prompted Greeley to indorse Douglas in 1857, and caused Seward to say a good word for his rival and opponent.
Buchanan read Douglas out of the party. Jefferson Davis denounced him as worse than a demagogue. Judges of the Supreme Court expressed their contempt for “the ambitious perpetual candidate.” No settlement of the Kansas question was possible under these circumstances. Douglas returned to Illinois in the summer of 1858 to open his campaign for reëlection to the Senate. He had never been so popular before. Chicagoans who had denounced and spurned him as a traitor to his country in 1854 now gave him the greatest ovation that city had ever given toany one. Big business men, railroad builders, and laboring men hastened to give him assurance of their favor. Even partisan opponents went over to the “new” Douglas. In fact, the people saw that his popular sovereignty idea had been misunderstood. It was already working out Northwestern or Free-State control of the Territories, and the fear of losing the Territories had been the motive for following Chase and Sumner in 1854.
But the Republicans of the Northwest had been planning to make an end of the “Little Giant,” the man who was the most feared of all the public leaders of the time. Abraham Lincoln was to be his successor in the Senate. Norman B. Judd, Joseph Medill, and John Wentworth were the astute advisers of the new party in their section. Seward, Weed, and even John J. Crittenden, the popular successor of Henry Clay in the United States Senate, advised the Illinois Republicans not to oppose Douglas, since Douglas was already doing the Democrats more mischief than any new Republican Senator could hope to do. The Eastern leaders were concerned about the campaign of 1860, and naturally they cultivated the differences of their opponents.
Lincoln was also making plans for 1860, and a defeat of Douglas in his own State would be a political event of the first magnitude. And there was much promise of success. Had they not elected Lyman Trumbull in 1855 in spite of all the “great man” could do? Moreover, the Administration had withdrawn all patronage from Douglas, and postmasters' heads were falling fast in Illinois. Indeed,Buchanan was just then putting up anti-Douglas tickets in many of the counties, in the expectation of electing a legislature hostile to Douglas if not friendly to the Washington authorities. Was there ever a better chance for the new group of leaders? Contrary to Eastern advice they nominated Lincoln as the opponent of Douglas, and that shrewd man and able logician challenged the Senator to a joint debate, and the most important political discussion in our history followed.
Lincoln had declared in a recent speech that “a house divided against itself could not stand,” and the United States he likened to the divided house. Douglas seized upon this to show the country what a radical abolitionist Lincoln was, for was it not a disruption of the Union of which he spoke so cogently, and which the abolitionists were just now urging? Nothing was more unpopular in the Northwest than disunion. All the papers of the country now printed what Lincoln had said, and with Douglas's disparaging comment. The business interests of the East shuddered at the Lincoln parable.
But Lincoln took occasion at Freeport to make Douglas even more unpopular in the South than he already was, by asking him if he did not support the Dred Scott decision; also if he still adhered to the popular sovereignty doctrine as a means of settling the slavery problem in the Territories. Douglas answered in the affirmative to both queries. Whereupon Lincoln showed that if the Dred Scott decision held, Congress must protect slavery in all the Territories and if the popular sovereignty idea prevailed,the squatters of any Territory might by popular vote prohibit slavery in any Territory. Hence, according to Douglas, slavery could be lawfully maintained and lawfully abolished at the same time and place. Douglas recognized his predicament; but he replied that, in spite of the court's decision, the settlers of a new Territory might by “unfriendly” local legislation make slavery impossible. When the papers of the country published this lame reply, Southern men everywhere denounced in unmeasured terms “the demagogue who promised one thing in Congress and another in Illinois.” The Lincoln-Douglas campaign continued all the autumn, and the country became acquainted with the obscure lawyer who had persisted in his purpose to run against Douglas contrary to the counsels of the leaders of his party. However, Douglas was reëlected to the Senate, to the great chagrin of both Lincoln and the President.
After the excitement following the break of Douglas with his party, the Republican newspapers, which had urged Douglas as their candidate for 1860, returned to their partisan attitude. To most people it seemed clear that Seward should be the Republican candidate in the next campaign, and Seward was also convinced that his own nomination was necessary and inevitable. The conservative wing of the party in the East, and especially New England, was devoted to him. As time went on the prize seemed more and more certain, though there were other competitors in the field. Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Chase, of Ohio, Lincoln, of Illinois, and Edward Bates, of Missouri, were “favorite sons.” Forthe Democrats the outlook was anything but cheering. The “regulars” could not speak of Douglas but with imprecations. Although Douglas controlled absolutely all the Democratic organizations in eight Northwestern States, if we include Missouri, a most strenuous campaign was waged from Washington against him in the hope of getting control of the general committee of the next convention. John Slidell, of Louisiana, and August Belmont, agent of the Rothschilds, in New York, guided the maneuvers. In December, 1859, when Douglas entered upon his new term with an air of triumph, the Senate majority, led by Jefferson Davis, promptly removed him from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories, which was the signal for the opening of the fierce political war that preceded the assembling of the Democratic Convention in Charleston.
Meanwhile John Brown, influenced by the political currents then running in favor of the North, led a small band of men into western Virginia. The object was to start a slave insurrection and in the end set free all the negroes of the South. Brown received or was promised $25,000 and was supported by men of the first respectability. On October 16, 1859, Brown seized the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry and called upon the slaves to rise against their masters. In the fighting which ensued Colonel Washington, a grand-nephew of General Washington, was wounded; but few took notice of names in that first onset of the Civil War or thought of the common history of the sections. Governor Wise, of Virginia, hastened the militia to the scene, and Captain RobertE. Lee led a small force of United States troops to the relief of the endangered community. Brown failed in his efforts to arouse the negroes, who were not the restless and resentful race they were thought to be. He was soon surrounded and captured. A few people were killed, but the institution of slavery was not touched.
But the noise of the attack was heard around the world. In the North men of the highest standing proclaimed Brown a hero. At the time of his execution in December so thoughtful a man as Emerson compared Brown's gallows to the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. For a time the social conscience of the East, at least, sensed this attack as a blow against the commonErbfeind, as the Germans say of the French. It was the “arrogant South” that had been struck. But when the Congressional investigation was held, Republican leaders and religious organizations everywhere insisted that they had never known the man, though there was a widespread feeling that it would be wise for the Governor of Virginia not to visit the death penalty upon the “deluded” prisoner.
Governor Wise was not the man to forgive an assault on the Old Dominion, and he never thought of granting a pardon. He urged Virginia to reorganize her militia, and he filled the state armory with some of the weapons which were used with fatal effect at First Bull Run. Other Southern States followed the example of Virginia and laid in supplies for a conflict which many thought inevitable. Nor was it without significance that new militarycompanies and regiments were organized and drilled in many parts of the North during the year 1860.
After months of angry and useless debates in Washington, the leaders of the Democratic party gathered in Charleston in April, 1860, to nominate their candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. No other town in the United States was more unfriendly to the cause of the leading candidate, Douglas. As the delegates gathered, it was seen that every delegation from every Northwestern State was instructed to vote as a unit for Douglas, and it became evident that a safe majority would insist on his nomination. The enthusiasm of the followers of the “Little Giant” surpassed all similar demonstrations at previous conventions. On the other hand, the committee on resolutions was opposed to Douglas, and by a vote of 17 to 16 it reported a platform which was simply a restatement of the Dred Scott decision, adding only that the Federal Government was bound by the Constitution to protect slavery in the Territories. When this report was read in the convention the Douglas majority rejected it, and accepted the minority report, which was the “popular sovereignty” of Douglas and the platform of 1856, for which all the South had stood in the campaign of that year. The convention was deadlocked, for the South could defeat Douglas for the nomination under the two-thirds rule, and Douglas could prevent the adoption of any Southern program or the nomination of any candidate other than himself. On Sunday, April 30, the clergy and the congregations of the city prayed asnever before for a peaceable solution of the problem before the country, and every one seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation. On Monday evening, William L. Yancey, “the fire-eater” of Alabama, after a most remarkable speech, broke the deadlock by leading a bolt of practically all the lower Southern States. The Tammany Hall delegation of New York followed. The bolters held a meeting in another hall and called a convention of their element of the party in Richmond in June. The Douglas majority likewise adjourned a day or two later to meet in Baltimore at the same time.
The historic Jacksonian party had broken into factions. Each faction nominated a candidate. The Southerners, supported by the Buchanan Administration, named John C. Breckinridge, a moderate, in the vain hope of winning some Northern States; the Douglas men offered, of course, their favorite, and insisted that theirs was the only true Union ticket. A third convention was called to meet in Baltimore, and its nominees were John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. This was the remnant of the Know-Nothings of 1856. They asked for the maintenance of the Union as it was; but in the ensuing election they polled three hundred thousand fewer votes than Fillmore had received in 1856.
The Republicans met in Chicago about the middle of May, the advantage of local sentiment being in Lincoln's favor. The Seward men and their “rooters” came in trainloads from New York and Boston, and both in Chicago and Charleston a plentiful supply of whiskey had its share in the manufacture ofenthusiasm. Cameron was the stumbling-block of the conservative Eastern Republicans, and he was expected to command his price. Horace Greeley, cast out of the Republican camp by the Seward men in New York, came as a delegate from Oregon, and he was busy from morn till night trying to defeat Seward. Chase, Lincoln, and Bates, though they were not in the convention, were doing what they could to defeat the great New York leader on the ground that he could not possibly carry Indiana and Illinois. It was more than a friendly rivalry.
In drafting the platform no reference was to be made to the idealistic Declaration of Independence, so popular in 1856; but the resolute threat of a bolt, by Joshua R. Giddings, caused a reconsideration and the adoption of the brief reference which one reads in the historic document. All raids into States or Territories were duly denounced, and slavery itself was guaranteed in all its rights. The Pacific railroad scheme of Douglas was again indorsed, and the old land policy of the West found expression in the free homestead plank. The tariff ideas of Clay appeared in a clause which promised protection to American industry, better wages to American labor, and higher prices for farm products. One sees here the genius of political management, not the fire of reformers, and if the Southerners had kept cool they could have read between the lines of this declaration all the guarantees that they required, save alone on the subject of slavery in the new Territories, which the Republicans could not possibly yield and hold their followers together. It was an alliance of the East and theNorthwest, arranged by Seward in much the same way that Calhoun arranged the combination of 1828 which raised Jackson to the Presidency.
To the surprise of the country and especially of the East, Cameron, Greeley, and Bates proved able to defeat Seward, and Lincoln was nominated. Many people of the East had never heard of the successful candidate till they read in the papers that he had won. Lincoln was moderate in temper and conciliatory in tone, like the platform, but he was a sincere democrat, one who was in mind and thought one of the people. The great men of the party who had borne the burden and heat of the day felt outraged. Sumner never forgave Lincoln for his lack of culture, and for a time it seemed that Seward would not give his humble rival the support necessary to success. “The rail-splitter” of Illinois was ridiculed in the older Republican States as no other presidential candidate had been since “Old Hickory” offered himself as against the seasoned statesmanship of John Quincy Adams. The gentry of the East were in a worse plight than were the Southern statesmen of 1828, for Lincoln was more of a democrat than Jackson had been.