Two important controversies with foreign powers became prominent during Tyler's presidency; but he had little to do with the settlement of either, beyond successively placing in his cabinet the two great statesmen who dealt with them. Webster, while secretary of state, brought certain of the negotiations with England to a close; and later on, Calhoun, while holding the same office, took up Webster's work and also grappled with—indeed partly caused—the troubles on the Mexican border, and turned them to the advantage of the South and slavery.
Our boundaries were still very ill-defined, except where they were formed by the Gulf and the Ocean, the Great Lakes, and the river St. John. Even in the Northeast, where huge stretches of unbroken forest-land separated the inhabited portions of Canada from those of New England, it was not yet decided how much of this wilderness belonged to us and how muchto the Canadians; and in the vast, unsettled regions of the far West our claims came into direct conflict with those of Mexico and of Great Britain. The ownership of these little known and badly mapped regions could with great difficulty be decided on grounds of absolute and abstract right; the title of each contestant to the land was more or less plausible, and at the same time more or less defective. The matter was sure to be decided in favor of the strongest; and, say what we will about the justice and right of the various claims, the honest truth is, that the comparative might of the different nations, and not the comparative righteousness of their several causes, was the determining factor in the settlement. Mexico lost her northern provinces by no law of right, but simply by the law of the longest sword—the same law that gave India to England. In both instances the result was greatly to the benefit of the conquered peoples and of every one else; though there is this wide difference between the two cases: that whereas the English rule in India, while it may last for decades or even for centuries, must eventually come to an end and leave little trace of its existence; on the other hand our conquests from Mexico determined for all time the blood, speech, and law of the men who should fill the lands we won.
The questions between Great Britain and ourselves were compromised by each side accepting about half what it claimed, only because neither was willing to push the other to extremities. Englishmen like Palmerston might hector and ruffle, and Americans like Benton might swagger and bully; but when it came to be a question of actual fighting each people recognized the power of the other, and preferred to follow the more cautious and peaceful, not to say timid, lead of such statesmen as Webster and Lord Melbourne. Had we been no stronger than the Sikhs, Oregon and Washington would at present be British possessions; and if Great Britain had been as weak as Mexico, she would not now hold a foot of territory on the Pacific coast. Either nation might perhaps have refused to commit a gross and entirely unprovoked and uncalled-for act of aggression; but each, under altered conditions, would have readily found excuses for showing much less regard for the claims of the other than actually was shown. It would be untrue to say that nations have not at times proved themselves capable of acting with great disinterestedness and generosity towards other peoples; but such conduct is not very common at the best, and although it often may be desirable, it certainly is not always so. If the matter in dispute isof great importance, and if there is a doubt as to which side is right, then the strongest party to the controversy is pretty sure to give itself the benefit of that doubt; and international morality will have to take tremendous strides in advance before this ceases to be the case.
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the treaties and wars by means of which we finally gave definite bounds to our territory beyond the Mississippi. Contemporary political writers and students, of the lesser sort, are always painfully deficient in the sense of historic perspective; and to such the struggles for the possession of the unknown and dimly outlined western wastes seemed of small consequence compared to similar European contests for territorial aggrandizement. Yet, in reality, when we look at the far-reaching nature of the results, the questions as to what kingdom should receive the fealty of Holstein or Lorraine, of Savoy or the Dobrudscha, seem of absolutely trivial importance compared to the infinitely more momentous ones as to the future race settlement and national ownership of the then lonely and unpeopled lands of Texas, California, and Oregon.
Benton, greatly to the credit of his foresight, and largely in consequence of his strong nationalist feeling, thoroughly appreciated the importanceof our geographical extensions. He was the great champion of the West and of western development, and a furious partisan of every movement in the direction of the enlargement of our western boundaries. Many of his expressions, when talking of the greatness of our country and of the magnitude of the interests which were being decided, not only were grandiloquent in manner, but also seem exaggerated and overwrought even as regards matter. But when we think of the interests for which he contended, as they were to become, and not as they at the moment were, the appearance of exaggeration is lost, and the intense feeling of his speeches no longer seems out of place or disproportionate to the importance of the subject with which he dealt. Without clearly formulating his opinions, even to himself, and while sometimes prone to attribute to his country at the moment a greatness she was not to possess for two or three generations to come, he, nevertheless, had engrained in his very marrow and fibre the knowledge that inevitably, and beyond all doubt, the coming years were to be hers. He knew that, while other nations held the past, and shared with his own the present, yet that to her belonged the still formless and unshaped future. More clearly than almost any other statesman he beheld the grandeur of thenation loom up, vast and shadowy, through the advancing years.
He was keenly alive to the need of our having free chance to spread towards the northwest; he very early grasped the idea that in that direction we ought to have room for continental development. In his earliest years, to be sure, when the Mississippi seemed a river of the remote western border, when nobody, not even the hardiest trapper, had penetrated the boundless and treeless plains that stretch to the foot-hills of the Rockies, and when the boldest thinkers had not dared to suppose that we could ever hold together as a people, when once scattered over so wide a territory, he had stated in a public speech that he considered the mountains to be our natural frontier line to the west, and the barrier beyond which we ought not to pass, and had expressed his trust that on the Pacific coast there would grow up a kindred and friendly Republic. But very soon, as the seemingly impossible became the actual, he himself changed, and ever afterwards held that we should have, wherever possible, no boundaries but the two Oceans.
Benton's violent and aggressive patriotism undoubtedly led him to assume positions towards foreign powers that were very repugnant to the quiet, peaceable, and order-loving portionof the community, especially when he gave vent to the spirit of jealous antagonism which he felt towards Great Britain, the power that held sway over the wilderness bordering us on the north. Yet the arrogant attitude he assumed was more than justified by the destiny of the great Republic; and it would have been well for all America if we had insisted even more than we did upon the extension northward of our boundaries. Not only the Columbia but also the Red River of the North—and the Saskatchewan and Frazer as well—should lie wholly within our limits, less for our own sake than for the sake of the men who dwell along their banks. Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba would, as states of the American Union, hold positions incomparably more important, grander, and more dignified than they can ever hope to reach either as independent communities or as provincial dependencies of a foreign power that regards them with a kindly tolerance somewhat akin to contemptuous indifference. Of course no one would wish to see these, or any other settled communities, now added to our domain by force; we want no unwilling citizens to enter our Union; the time to have taken the lands was before settlers came into them. European nations war for the possession of thickly settled districts which, if conquered, willfor centuries remain alien and hostile to the conquerors; we, wiser in our generation, have seized the waste solitudes that lay near us, the limitless forests and never ending plains, and the valleys of the great, lonely rivers; and have thrust our own sons into them to take possession; and a score of years after each conquest we see the conquered land teeming with a people that is one with ourselves.
Benton felt that all the unoccupied land to the northwest was by right our heritage, and he was willing to do battle for it if necessary. He was a perfect type of western American statesmanship in his way of looking at our foreign relations; he was always unwilling to compromise, being of that happy temperament which is absolutely certain that its claims are just and righteous in their entirety, and that it would be wrong to accept anything less than all that is demanded; he was willing to bully if our rights, as he deemed them, were not granted us; and he was perfectly ready to fight if the bullying was unsuccessful. True, he did not consistently carry through all his theories to their logical consequences; but it may well be questioned whether, after all, his original attitude towards Great Britain was not wiser, looking to its probable remote results, than that which was finally taken by the national government,whose policy was on this point largely shaped by the feeling among the richer and more educated classes of the Northeast. These classes have always been more cautious and timid than any others in the Union, especially in their way of looking at possible foreign wars, and have never felt much of the spirit which made the West stretch out impatiently for new lands. Fortunately they have rarely been able to control our territorial growth.
No foot of soil to which we had any title in the Northwest should have been given up; we were the people who could use it best, and we ought to have taken it all. The prize was well worth winning, and would warrant a good deal of risk being run. We had even then grown to be so strong that we were almost sure eventually to win in any American contest for continental supremacy. We were near by, our foes far away—for the contest over the Columbia would have been settled in Canada. We should have had hard fighting to be sure, but sooner or later the result would have been in our favor. There were no better soldiers in the world than the men of Balaclava and Inkerman, but the victors of Buena Vista and Chapultepec were as good. Scott and Taylor were not great generals, but they were, at least, the equals of Lord Raglan; and we did not have inour service any such examples of abnormal military inaptitude as Lords Lucan and Cardigan and their kind.
It was of course to be expected that men like Benton would bitterly oppose the famous Ashburton treaty, which was Webster's crowning work while secretary of state, and the only conspicuous success of Tyler's administration. The Ashburton treaty was essentially a compromise between the extreme claims of the two contestants, as was natural where the claims were based on very unsubstantial grounds and the contestants were of somewhat the same strength. It was most beneficial in its immediate effects; and that it was a perfectly dignified and proper treaty for America to make is best proved by the virulent hostility with which Palmerston and his followers assailed it as a "surrender" on the part of England, while Englishmen of the same stamp are to this day never tired of lamenting the fact that they have allowed our western boundaries to be pushed so far to the north. But there appears to be much excuse for Benton's attitude, when we look at the treaty as one in a chain of incidents, and with regard to its future results. Our territorial quarrels with Great Britain were not like those between most other powers. It was for the interest of the whole western hemispherethat no European nation should have extensive possessions between the Atlantic and the Pacific; and by right we should have given ourselves the benefit of every doubt in all territorial questions, and have shown ourselves ready to make prompt appeal to the sword whenever it became necessary as a last resort.
Still, as regards the Ashburton treaty itself, it must be admitted that much of Benton's opposition was merely factious and partisan, on account of its being a Whig measure; and his speeches on the subject contain a number of arguments that are not very creditable to him.
Some of his remarks referred to a matter which had been already a cause of great excitement during Van Buren's administration, and on which he had spoken more than once. This was the destruction of the steamer Caroline by the British during the abortive Canadian insurrection of 1837. Much sympathy had been felt for the rebels by the Americans along the border, and some of them had employed the Caroline in conveying stores to the insurgents; and in revenge a party of British troops surprised and destroyed her one night while she was lying in an American port. This was a gross and flagrant violation of our rights, and was promptly resented by Van Buren, who haddone what he could to maintain order along the border, and had been successful in his efforts. Benton had supported the president in preventing a breach of neutrality on our part, and was fiercely indignant when the breach was committed by the other side. Reparation was demanded forthwith. The British government at first made evasive replies. After a while a very foolish personage named McLeod, a British subject, who boasted that he had taken part in the affair, ventured into New York and was promptly imprisoned by the state authorities. His boastings, fortunately for him, proved to be totally unfounded, and he was acquitted by the jury before whom he was taken, after a detention of several months in prison. But meanwhile the British government demanded his release—adopting a very different tone with Tyler and the Whigs from that which they had been using towards Van Buren, who still could conjure with Jackson's terrible name. The United States agreed to release McLeod, but New York refused to deliver him up; and before the question was decided he was acquitted, as said above. It was clearly wrong for a state to interfere in a disagreement between the nation and a foreign power; and on the other hand the federal authorities did not show as much firmness in their dealings with Englandas they should have shown. Benton, true to certain of his states-rights theories and in pursuance of his policy of antagonism to Great Britain, warmly supported the attitude of New York, alleging that the United States had no right to interfere with her disposal of McLeod; and asserting that while if the citizens of one country committed an outrage upon another it was necessary to apply to the sovereign for redress, yet that if the wrong-doers came into the country which had been aggrieved they might be seized and punished; and he exultingly referred to Jackson's conduct at the time of the first Seminole War, when he hung off-hand two British subjects whom he accused of inciting the Indians against us, Great Britain not making any protest. The Caroline matter was finally settled in the Ashburton treaty, the British making a formal but very guarded apology for her destruction,—an apology which did not satisfy Benton in the least.
It is little to Benton's credit, however, that, while thus courting foreign wars, he yet opposed the efforts of the Whigs to give us a better navy. Our navy was then good of its kind, but altogether too small. Benton's opposition to its increase seems to have proceeded partly from mere bitter partisanship, partly from sheer ignorance, and partly from the doctrinaire dreadof any kind of standing military or naval force, which he had inherited, with a good many similar ideas, from the Jeffersonians.
He attacked the whole treaty, article by article, when it came up for ratification in the Senate, making an extremely lengthy and elaborate speech, or rather set of speeches, against it. Much of his objection, especially to the part compromising the territorial claims of the two governments, was well founded; but much was also factious and groundless. The most important point of all that was in controversy, the ownership of Oregon, was left unsettled; but, as will be shown farther on, this was wise. He made this omission a base or pretext for the charge that the treaty was gotten up in the interests of the East,—although with frank lack of logic he also opposed it because it sacrificed the interests of Maine,—and that it was detrimental to the South and West; and he did his best to excite sectional feeling against it. He also protested against the omission of all reference to the impressment of American sailors by British vessels; and this was a valid ground of opposition,—although Webster had really settled the matter by writing a formal note to the British government, in which he practically gave official notice that any attempt to revive the practice would be repelled by force of arms.
Benton occupied a much less tenable position when he came to the question of slavery, and inveighed against the treaty because it did not provide for the return of fugitive slaves, or of slaves taken from American coasting vessels when the latter happened to be obliged to put into West Indian ports, and because it did contain a provision that we ourselves should keep in commission a squadron on the coast of Africa to coöperate with the British in the suppression of the slave-trade. Benton's object in attacking the treaty on this point was to excite the South to a degree that would make the senators from that section refuse to join in ratifying it; but the attempt was a flat failure. It is hardly to be supposed that he himself was as indignant over this question as he pretended to be. He must have realized that, so long as we had among ourselves an institution so wholly barbarous and out of date as slavery, just so long we should have to expect foreign powers to treat us rather cavalierly on that one point. Whatever we might say among ourselves as to the rights of property or the necessity of preserving the Union by refraining from the disturbance of slavery, it was certain that foreign nations would place the manhood and liberty of the slave above the vested interest of the master—all the more readily because they were jealousof the Union and anxious to see it break up, and were naturally delighted to take the side of abstract justice and humanity, when to do so was at the expense of outsiders and redounded to their own credit, without causing them the least pecuniary loss or personal inconvenience. The attitude of slave-holders towards freedom in the abstract was grotesque in its lack of logic; but the attitude of many other classes of men, both abroad and at home, towards it was equally full of a grimly unconscious humor. The southern planters, who loudly sympathized with Kossuth and the Hungarians, were entirely unconscious that their tyranny over their own black bondsmen made their attacks upon Austria's despotism absurd; and Germans, who were shocked at our holding the blacks in slavery, could not think of freedom in their own country without a shudder. On one night the Democrats of the Northern States would hold a mass meeting to further the cause of Irish freedom, on the next night the same men would break up another meeting held to help along the freeing of the negroes; while the English aristocracy held up its hands in horror at American slavery and set its face like a flint against all efforts to do Ireland tardy and incomplete justice.
Again, in his opposition to the extraditionclause of the treaty, Benton was certainly wrong. Nothing is clearer than that nations ought to combine to prevent criminals from escaping punishment merely by fleeing over an imaginary line; the crime is against all society, and society should unite to punish it. Especially is there need of the most stringent extradition laws between countries whose people have the same speech and legal system, as with the United States and Great Britain. Indeed, it is a pity that our extradition laws are not more stringent. But Benton saw, or affected to see, in the extradition clause, a menace to political refugees, and based his opposition to it mainly on this ground. He also quoted on his side the inevitable Jefferson; for Jefferson, or rather the highly idealized conception of what Jefferson had been, shared with the "demos krateo principle" the honor of being one of the twin fetiches to which Benton, in common with most of his fellow-Democrats, especially delighted to bow down.
But when he came to the parts of the treaty that defined our northeastern boundary and so much of our northwestern boundary as lay near the Great Lakes, Benton occupied far more defensible ground; and the parts of his speech referring to these questions were very strong indeed. He attempted to show that in the matterof the Maine frontier we had surrendered very much more than there was any need of our doing, and that the British claim was unfounded; and there seems now to be good reason for thinking him right, although it must be admitted that in agreeing to the original line in earlier treaties the British had acted entirely under a misapprehension as to where it would go. Benton was also able to make a good point against Webster for finally agreeing to surrender so much of Maine's claim by showing the opposition the latter had made, while in the Senate, to a similar but less objectionable clause in a treaty which Jackson's administration had then been trying to get through. Again Webster had, in defending the surrender of certain of our claims along the boundary west of Lake Superior, stated that the country was not very valuable, as it was useless for agricultural purposes; and Benton had taken him up sharply on this point, saying that we wanted the land anyhow, whether it produced corn and potatoes or only furs and lumber. The amounts of territory as to which our claims were compromised were not very large compared to the extent of the Pacific coast lands which were still left in dispute; and it was perhaps well that the treaty was ratified; but certainly there is much to be said on Benton's side so far as his opposition to the proposed frontier was concerned.
However, he was only able to rally eight other senators to his support, and the treaty went through the Senate triumphantly. It encountered an even more bitter opposition in Parliament, where Palmerston headed a series of furious attacks upon it, for reasons the precise opposite of those which Benton alleged, arguing that England received much less, instead of much more, than her due, and thereby showing Webster's position in a very much better light than that in which it would otherwise have appeared. Eventually the British government ratified the treaty.
The Ashburton treaty did not touch on the Oregon matter at all; nor was this dealt with by Webster while he was secretary of state. But it came before the Senate at that time, and later on Calhoun took it up, when filling Webster's place in the cabinet, although a final decision was not reached until during Polk's presidency. Webster did not appreciate the importance of Oregon in the least, and moreover came from a section of the country that was not inclined to insist on territorial expansion at the hazard of a war, in which the merchants of the sea-board would be the chief sufferers. Calhoun, it is true, came from a peculiarly militant and bellicose state, but on the other hand from a section that was not veryanxious to see the free North acquire new territory. So it happened that neither of Tyler's two great secretaries felt called upon to insist too vehemently upon going to extremes in defense of our rights, or supposed rights, along the Pacific coast; and though in the end the balance was struck pretty evenly between our claims and those of our neighbor, yet it is to be regretted that we did not stand out stiffly for the whole of our demand. Our title was certainly not perfect, but it was to the full as good as, or better than, Great Britain's; and it would have been better in the end had we insisted upon the whole territory being given to us, no matter what price we had to pay.
The politico-social line of division between the East and the West had been gradually growing fainter as that between the North and South grew deeper; but on the Oregon question it again became prominent. Southeastern Democrats, like the Carolinian McDuffie, spoke as slightingly of the value of Oregon, and were as little inclined to risk a war for its possession, as the most peace-loving Whigs of New England; while the intense western feeling against giving up any of our rights on the Pacific coast was best expressed by the two senators from the slave state of Missouri. Benton was not restrained in his desire to add tothe might of the Union by any fear of the possible future effect upon the political power of the Slave States. Although a slave-holder and the representative of slave-holders, he was fully alive to the evils of slavery, though as yet not seeing clearly how all-important a question it had become. The preservation and extension of the Union and obedience to the spirit of Democracy were the chief articles of his political creed, and to these he always subordinated all others. When, in speaking of slavery, he made use, as he sometimes did, of expressions that were not far removed from those of men really devoted to the slave interests, it was almost always because he had some ulterior object in view, or for factional ends; for unfortunately his standard of political propriety was not sufficiently high to prevent his trying to make use of any weapon, good or bad, with which to overturn his political foes. In protesting against the Ashburton treaty, he outdid even such slavery champions as Calhoun in the extravagance of his ideas as to what we should demand of foreign powers in reference to their treatment of our "peculiar institution"; but he seems to have done this merely because thereby he got an additional handle of attack against the Whig measures. The same thing was true earlier of his fulmination against Clay's proposedPanama Congress; and even before that, in attacking Adams for his supposed part in the treaty whereby we established the line of our Spanish frontier, he dragged slavery into the question, not, apparently, because he really particularly wished to see our slave territory extended, but because he thought that he might use the slavery cry to excite in one other section of the country a feeling as strong as that which the West already felt in regard to territorial expansion generally. Indeed, his whole conduct throughout the Oregon controversy, especially when taken in connection with the fact that he stood out for Maine's frontier rights more stoutly than the Maine representatives themselves, shows how free from sectional bias was his way of looking at our geographical growth.
The territory along the Pacific coast lying between California on the south and Alaska on the north—"Oregon," as it was comprehensively called—had been a source of dispute for some time between the United States and Great Britain. After some negotiations both had agreed with Russia to recognize the line of 54° 40' as the southern boundary of the latter's possessions; and Mexico's undisputed possession of California gave an equally well marked southern limit, at the forty-second parallel. All between was in dispute. The British hadtrading posts at the mouth of the Columbia, which they emphatically asserted to be theirs; we, on the other hand, claimed an absolutely clear title up to the forty-ninth parallel, a couple of hundred miles north of the mouth of the Columbia, and asserted that for all the balance of the territory up to the Russian possessions our title was at any rate better than that of the British. In 1818 a treaty had been made providing for the joint occupation of the territory by the two powers, as neither was willing to give up its claim to the whole, or at the time at all understood the value of the possession, then entirely unpeopled. This treaty of joint occupancy had remained in force ever since. Under it the British had built great trading stations, and used the whole country in the interests of certain fur companies. The Americans, in spite of some vain efforts, were unable to compete with them in this line; but, what was infinitely more important, had begun, even prior to 1840, to establish actual settlers along the banks of the rivers, some missionaries being the first to come in. As long, however, as the territory remained sparsely settled, and the communication with it chiefly by sea, the hold of Great Britain gave promise of being the stronger. But the aspect of affairs was totally changed when in 1842 a huge caravan of overa thousand Americans made the journey overland from the frontiers of Missouri, taking with them their wives and their children, their flocks and herds, carrying their long rifles on their shoulders, and their axes and spades in the great canvas-topped wagons. The next year, two thousand more settlers of the same sort in their turn crossed the vast plains, wound their way among the Rocky Mountains through the pass explored by Fremont, Benton's son-in-law, and after suffering every kind of hardship and danger, and warding off the attacks of hostile Indians, descended the western slope of the great water-shed to join their fellows by the banks of the Columbia. When American settlers were once in actual possession of the disputed territory, it became evident that the period of Great Britain's undisputed sway was over.
The government of the United States, meanwhile, was so far from helping these settlers that it on the contrary rather threw obstacles in their way. As usual with us, the individual activity of the citizens themselves, who all acted independently and with that peculiar self-reliance that is the chief American characteristic, outstripped the activity of their representatives, who were obliged all to act together, and who were therefore held back by each other,—ourConstitution, while giving free scope for individual freedom, wisely providing such checks as to make our governmental system eminently conservative in its workings. Tyler's administration did not wish to embroil itself with England; so it refused any aid to the settlers, and declined to give them grants of land, as under the joint occupancy treaty that would have given England offense and cause for complaint. But Benton and the other Westerners were perfectly willing to offend England, if by so doing they could help America to obtain Oregon, and were too rash and headstrong to count the cost of their actions. Accordingly, a bill was introduced providing for the settlement of Oregon, and giving each settler six hundred and forty acres, and additional land if he had a family; so that every inducement was held out to the emigrants, the West wanting to protect and encourage them by all the means in its power. The laws and jurisdiction of the Territory of Iowa were to be extended to all the settlers on the Pacific coast, who hitherto had governed themselves merely by a system of mutual agreements.
The bill was, of course, strongly opposed, especially on account of the clause giving land to the settlers. It passed the Senate by a close vote, but failed in the House. Naturally Bentonwas one of its chief supporters, and spoke at length in its favor. He seized the kernel of the matter when, in advocating the granting of land, he spoke of immigration as "the only thing which can save the country from the British, acting through their powerful agent, the Hudson's Bay Company." He then blew a lusty note of defiance to Great Britain herself:—
I think she will take offense, do what we may in relation to this territory. She wants it herself, and means to quarrel for it, if she does not fight for it.... I grant that she will take offense, but that is not the question with me. Has she arightto take offense? That is my question! And this being decided in the negative, I neither fear nor calculate consequences.... Courage will keep her off, fear will bring her upon us. The assertion of our rights will command her respect; the fear to assert them will bring us her contempt.... Neither nations nor individuals ever escaped danger by fearing it. They must face it and defy it. An abandonment of a right for fear of bringing on an attack, instead of keeping it off, will inevitably bring on the outrage that is dreaded.
I think she will take offense, do what we may in relation to this territory. She wants it herself, and means to quarrel for it, if she does not fight for it.... I grant that she will take offense, but that is not the question with me. Has she arightto take offense? That is my question! And this being decided in the negative, I neither fear nor calculate consequences.... Courage will keep her off, fear will bring her upon us. The assertion of our rights will command her respect; the fear to assert them will bring us her contempt.... Neither nations nor individuals ever escaped danger by fearing it. They must face it and defy it. An abandonment of a right for fear of bringing on an attack, instead of keeping it off, will inevitably bring on the outrage that is dreaded.
He was right enough in his disposition to resent the hectoring spirit which, at that time, characterized Great Britain's foreign policy; but he was all wrong in condemning delay, and stating that if things were left as they were time would work against us, and not for us.
In this respect Calhoun, who opposed the bill, was much wiser. He advocated a policy of "masterly inactivity," foreseeing that time was everything to us, inasmuch as the land was sure in the end to belong to that nation whose people had settled in it, and we alone were able to furnish a constantly increasing stream of immigrants. Later on, however, Calhoun abandoned this policy, probably mainly influenced by fear of the extension of free territory, and consented to a compromise with Great Britain. The true course to have pursued would have been to have combined the ideas of both Benton and Calhoun, and to have gone farther than either; that is, we should have allowed the question to remain unsettled as long as was possible, because every year saw an increasing American population in the coveted lands, and rendered the ultimate decision surer to be for us. When it was impossible to postpone the question longer, we should have insisted upon its being settled entirely in our favor, no matter at what cost. The unsuccessful attempts, made by Benton and his supporters, to persuade the Senate to pass a resolution, requiring that notice of the termination of the joint occupancy treaty should forthwith be given, were certainly ill-advised.
However, even Benton was not willing to go to the length to which certain Western menwent, who insisted upon all or nothing. He had become alarmed and angry over the intrigue for the admission of Texas and the proposed forcible taking away of Mexican territory. The Northwestern Democrats wanted all Texas and all Oregon; the Southeastern ones wished all the former and part of the latter. Benton then concluded that it would be best to take part of each; for, although no friend to compromises, yet he was unwilling to jeopardize the safety of the Union as it was by seeking to make it still larger. Accordingly, he sympathized with the effort made by Calhoun while secretary of state to get the British to accept the line of 49° as the frontier; but the British government then rejected this proposition. In 1844 the Democrats made their campaign upon the issue of "fifty-four forty or fight;" and Polk, when elected, felt obliged to insist upon this campaign boundary. To this, however, Great Britain naturally would not consent; it was, indeed, idle to expect her to do so, unless things should be kept as they were until a fairly large American population had grown up along the Pacific coast, and had thus put her in a position where she could hardly do anything else. Polk's administration was neither capable nor warlike, however well disposed to bluster; and the secretary of state, the timid, shifty, and selfish politician,Buchanan, naturally fond of facing both ways, was the last man to wish to force a quarrel on a high-spirited and determined antagonist like England. Accordingly, he made up his mind to back down and try for the line of 49°, as proposed by Calhoun, when in Tyler's cabinet; and the English, for all their affected indifference, had been so much impressed by the warlike demonstrations in the United States, that they in turn were delighted, singing in a much lower key than before the "fifty-four forty" cry had been raised; accordingly they withdrew their former pretensions to the Columbia River and accepted the offered compromise. Now, however, came the question of getting the treaty through the Senate; and Buchanan sounded Benton, to see if he would undertake this task.
Benton, worried over the Texas matter, was willing to recede somewhat from the very high ground he had taken,—although, of course, he insisted that he had been perfectly consistent throughout, and that the 49th parallel was the line he had all along been striving for. Under his lead the proposal for a treaty on the basis indicated was carried through the Senate, and the line in consequence ultimately became our frontier, in spite of the frantic opposition of the Northwestern Democrats, the latter hurling every sort of charge of bad faith and treacheryat their Southern associates, who had joined with the Whigs in defeating them. Benton's speech in support of the proposal was pitched much lower than had been his previous ones; and, a little forgetful of some of his own remarks, he was especially severe upon those members who denounced England and held up a picture of her real or supposed designs to excite and frighten the people into needless opposition to her.
In its immediate effects the adoption of the 49th parallel as the dividing line between the two countries was excellent, and entailed no loss of dignity on either. Yet, as there was no particular reason why we should show any generosity in our diplomatic dealings with England, it may well be questioned whether it would not have been better to have left things as they were until we could have taken all. Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace. Every war in which we have been engaged, except the one with Mexico, has been justifiable in its origin; and each one, without any exception whatever, has left us better off, taking both moral and material considerations into account, than we should have been if we had not waged it.
In 1844 the Whig candidate for the Presidency, Henry Clay, was defeated by a Mr. Polk, the nominee of the Democracy. The majorities in several of the states were very small; this was the case, for example in New York, the change in whose electoral vote would have also changed the entire result.
Up to 1860 there were very few political contests in which the dividing lines between right and wrong so nearly coincided with those drawn between the two opposing parties as in that of 1844. The Democrats favored the annexation of Texas, and the addition of new slave territory to the Union; the Whigs did not. Almost every good element in the country stood behind Clay; the vast majority of intelligent, high-minded, upright men supported him. Polk was backed by rabid Southern fire-eaters and slavery extensionists, who had deified negro bondage and exalted it beyond the Union, the Constitution, andeverything else; by the almost solid foreign vote, still unfit for the duties of American citizenship; by the vicious and criminal classes in all the great cities of the North and in New Orleans; by the corrupt politicians, who found ignorance and viciousness tools ready forged to their hands, wherewith to perpetrate the gigantic frauds without which the election would have been lost; and, lastly, he was also backed indirectly but most powerfully by the political Abolitionists.
These Abolitionists had formed themselves into the Liberty party, and ran Birney for president; and though they polled but little over sixty thousand votes, yet as these were drawn almost entirely from the ranks of Clay's supporters, they were primarily responsible for his defeat; for the defections were sufficiently large to turn the scale in certain pivotal and closely contested states, notably New York. Their action in this case was wholly evil, alike in its immediate and its remote results; they simply played into the hands of the extreme slavery men like Calhoun, and became, for the time being, the willing accomplices of the latter. Yet they would have accomplished nothing had it not been for the frauds and outrages perpetrated by the gangs of native and foreign-born ruffians in the great cities, under the leadership of such brutal rowdies as Isaiah Rynders.
These three men, Calhoun, Birney, and Isaiah Rynders, may be taken as types of the classes that were chiefly instrumental in the election of Polk, and that must, therefore, bear the responsibility for all the evils attendant thereon, including among them the bloody and unrighteous war with Mexico. With the purpose of advancing the cause of abstract right, but with the result of sacrificing all that was best, most honest, and most high-principled in national politics, the Abolitionists joined hands with Northern roughs and Southern slavocrats to elect the man who was, excepting Tyler, the very smallest of the line of small presidents who came in between Jackson and Lincoln.
Owing to a variety of causes, the Abolitionists have received an immense amount of hysterical praise, which they do not deserve, and have been credited with deeds done by other men, whom they in reality hampered and opposed rather than aided. After 1840 the professed Abolitionists formed but a small and comparatively unimportant portion of the forces that were working towards the restriction and ultimate destruction of slavery; and much of what they did was positively harmful to the cause for which they were fighting. Those of their number who considered the Constitution as a league with death and hell, and who therefore advocateda dissolution of the Union, acted as rationally as would anti-polygamists nowadays if, to show their disapproval of Mormonism, they should advocate that Utah should be allowed to form a separate nation. The only hope of ultimately suppressing slavery lay in the preservation of the Union, and every Abolitionist who argued or signed a petition for its dissolution was doing as much to perpetuate the evil he complained of as if he had been a slave-holder. The Liberty party, in running Birney, simply committed a political crime, evil in almost all its consequences; they in no sense paved the way for the Republican party, or helped forward the anti-slavery cause, or hurt the existing organizations. Their effect on the Democracy wasnil; and all they were able to accomplish with the Whigs was to make them put forward for the ensuing campaign a slave-holder from Louisiana, with whom they were successful. Such were the remote results of their conduct; the immediate evils they produced have already been alluded to. They bore considerable resemblance—except that, after all, they really did have a principle to contend for—to the political prohibitionists of the present day, who go into the third party organizations, and are, not even excepting the saloon-keepers themselves, the most efficient allies on whom intemperance and the liquor traffic can count.
Anti-slavery men like Giddings, who supported Clay, were doing a thousand-fold more effective work for the cause they had at heart than all the voters who supported Birney; or, to speak more accurately, they were doing all they could to advance the cause, and the others were doing all they could to hold it back. Lincoln in 1860 occupied more nearly the ground held by Clay than that held by Birney; and the men who supported the latter in 1844 were the prototypes of those who wished to oppose Lincoln in 1860, and only worked less hard because they had less chance. The ultra Abolitionists discarded expediency, and claimed to act for abstract right, on principle, no matter what the results might be; in consequence they accomplished very little, and that as much for harm as for good, until they ate their words, went counter to their previous course, thereby acknowledging it to be bad, and supported in the Republican party the men and principles they had so fiercely condemned. The Liberty party was not in any sense the precursor of the Republican party, which was based as much on expediency as on abstract right, and was therefore able to accomplish good instead of harm. To say that the extreme Abolitionists triumphed in Republican success and were causes of it, is as absurd as it would be to call prohibitionistssuccessful if, after countless futile efforts totally to prohibit the liquor traffic, and after savage denunciation of those who try to regulate it, they should then turn round and form a comparatively insignificant portion of a victorious high-license party.
Many people in speaking of the Abolitionists apparently forget that the national government, even under Republican rule, would never have meddled with slavery in the various states unless as a war measure, made necessary by the rebellion into which the South was led by a variety of causes, of which slavery was chief, but among which there were others that were also prominent; such as the separatist spirit of certain of the communities and the unscrupulous, treacherous ambition of such men as Davis, Floyd, and the rest. The Abolitionists' political organizations, such as the Liberty party, generally produced very little effect either way, and were scarcely thought of during the contests waged for freedom in Congress. The men who took a great and effective part in the fight against slavery were the men who remained within their respective parties; like the Democrats Benton and Wilmot, or the Whigs Seward and Stevens. When a new party with more clearly defined principles was formed, they, for the most part, went into it; but, like all othermen who have ever had a really great influence, whether for good or bad, on American politics, they did not act independently of parties, but on the contrary kept within party lines,—although, of course, none of them were mere blind and unreasoning partisans.
The plea that slavery was a question of principle, on which no compromise could be accepted, might have been made and could still be made on twenty other points,—woman suffrage, for instance. Of course, to give women their just rights does not by any means imply that they should necessarily be allowed to vote, any more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship upon blacks and aliens must of necessity carry with it the same privilege. But there were until lately, and in some states there are now, laws on the statute-book in reference to women that are in principle as unjust, and that are quite as much the remnants of archaic barbarism as was the old slave code; and though it is true that they do not work anything like the evil of the latter, they yet certainly work evil enough. The same laws that in one Southern state gave a master a right to whip a slave also allowed him to whip his wife, provided he used a stick no thicker than his little finger; the legal permission to do the latter was even more outrageous than that to do the former, yet no one consideredit a ground for wishing a dissolution of the Union or for declaring against the existing parties. The folly of voting the Liberty ticket in 1844 differed in degree, but not at all in kind, from the folly of voting the Woman Suffrage ticket in 1884.
The intrigue for the annexation of Texas, and for thereby extending the slave territory of the Union, had taken shape towards the close of Tyler's term of office, while Calhoun was secretary of state. Benton, as an aggressive Western man, desirous of seeing our territorial possessions extended in any direction, north or south, always hoped that in the end Texas might be admitted into the Union; but he disliked seeing any premature steps taken, and was no party to the scheme of forcing an immediate annexation in the interests of slavery. Such immediate annexation was certain, among other things, to bring us into grave difficulties not only with Mexico, but also with England, which was strongly inclined to take much interest of a practical sort in the fate of Texas, and would, of course, have done all it could to bring about the abolition of slavery in that state. The Southerners, desirous of increasing the slave domain, and always in a state of fierce alarm over the proximity of any free state that might excite a servile insurrection,were impatient to add the Lone Star Republic of the Rio Grande to the number of their states; the Southwesterners fell in with them, influenced, though less strongly, by the same motives, and also by the lust for new lands and by race hatred towards the Mexicans and traditional jealousy of Great Britain; and these latter motives induced many Northwesterners to follow suit. By a judicious harping on all these strings Jackson himself, whose name was still a mighty power among the masses, was induced to write a letter favoring instant and prompt annexation.
This letter was really procured for political purposes. Tyler had completely identified himself with the Democracy, and especially with its extreme separatist wing, to which Calhoun also belonged, and which had grown so as to be already almost able to take the reins. The separatist chiefs were intriguing for the presidency, and were using annexation as a cry that would help them; and, failing in this attempt, many of the leaders were willing to break up the Union, and turn the Southern States, together with Texas, into a slave-holding confederacy. After Benton, the great champion of the old-style Union Democrats was Van Buren, who was opposed to immediate annexation, sharing the feeling that prevailed throughoutthe Northeast generally; although in certain circles all through the country there were men at work in its favor, largely as a mere matter of jobbery and from base motives, on account of speculations in Texan land and scrip, into which various capitalists and adventurers had gone rather extensively. Jackson, though a Southerner, warmly favored Van Buren, and was bitterly opposed to separatists; but the latter, by cunningly working on his feelings, without showing their own hands, persuaded him to write the letter mentioned, and promptly used it to destroy the chances of Van Buren, who was the man they chiefly feared; and though Jackson, at last roused to what was going on, immediately announced himself as in favor of Van Buren's candidacy, it was too late to undo the mischief.
Benton showed on this, as on many other occasions, much keener political ideas than his great political chief. He was approached by a politician, who himself was either one of those concerned in the presidential intrigues, or else one of their dupes, and who tried to win him over to take the lead on their side, complimenting him upon his former services to the cause of territorial expansion towards the southwest. Ordinarily the great Missourian was susceptible enough to such flattery; but on this occasion,preoccupied with the idea of an intrigue for the presidency, and indignant that there should be an effort made to implicate him in it, especially as it was mixed up with schemes of stock-jobbing and of disloyalty to the Union, he took fire at once, and answered with hot indignation, in words afterwards highly resented by his questioner, "that it was on the part of some an intrigue for the presidency, and a plot to dissolve the Union; on the part of others, a Texas scrip and land speculation; and that he was against it." The answer was published in the papers, and brought about a total break between Benton and the annexation party.
He was now thoroughly on the alert, and actively opposed at all points the schemes of those whom he regarded as concerned in or instigating the intrigue. He commented harshly on Tyler's annual message, which made a strong plea for annexation, even at the cost of a war both with Great Britain and Mexico; also on Calhoun's letter to Lord Aberdeen, which was certainly a remarkable diplomatic document,—being a thesis on slavery and the benefits resulting from it. Tyler's object was to prepare the way for a secret treaty, which should secure the desired object. Benton, in the course of some severe strictures on his acts, said, verytruly, that it was evidently the intention to keep the whole matter as secret as possible until the treaty was concluded, "and then to force its adoption for the purpose of increasing the area of slave territory, or to make its rejection a cause for the secession of the Southern States; and in either event and in all cases to make the question of annexation a controlling one in the nomination of presidential candidates, and also in the election itself."
When the treaty proposed by the administration was rejected, and when it became evident that neither Tyler nor Calhoun, the two most prominent champions of the extreme separatists, had any chance for the Democratic nomination, the disunion side of the intrigue was brought to the front in many of the Southern States, beginning of course with South Carolina. A movement was made for a convention of the Southern States, to be held in the interest of the scheme; the key-note being struck in the cry of "Texas or disunion!" But this convention was given up, on account of the strong opposition it excited in the so-called "Border States,"—an opposition largely stirred up and led by Benton. Once more the haughty slave leaders of the Southeast had found that in the Missouri Senator they had an opponent whose fearlessness quite equaled their own, and whosestubborn temper and strength of purpose made him at least a match for themselves, in spite of all their dash and fiery impetuosity. It must have sounded strange, indeed, to Northern ears, accustomed to the harsh railings and insolent threats of the South Carolina senators, to hear one of the latter complaining that Benton's tone in the debate was arrogant, overbearing, and dictatorial towards those who were opposed to him. This same Senator, McDuffie, had been speaking of the proposed Southern meeting at Nashville; and Benton warned him that such a meeting would never take place, and that he had mistaken the temper of the Tennesseans; and also reminded him that General Jackson was still alive, and that the South Carolinians in particular must needs be careful if they hoped to agree with his followers, whose name was still legion, because he would certainly take the same position towards a disunion movement in the interests of slavery that he had already taken towards a nullification movement in the interests of free trade. "Preservation of the federal Union is as strong in the old Roman's heart now as ever; and while, as a Christian, he forgives all that is past (if it were past), yet no old tricks under new names! Texas disunion will be to him the same as tariff disunion; and if he detects a Texas disunionistnestling into his bed, I say again: Woe unto the luckless wight!" Boldly and forcibly he went on to paint the real motives of the promoters of the scheme, and the real character of the scheme itself; stating that, though mixed up with various speculative enterprises and with other intrigues, yet disunion was at the bottom of it all, and that already the cry had become, "Texas without the Union, rather than the Union without Texas!" "Under the pretext of getting Texas into the Union the scheme is to get the South out of it. A Southern Confederacy stretching from the Atlantic to the Californias ... is the cherished vision of disappointed ambition." He bitterly condemned secession, as simply disunion begat by nullification, and went on to speak of his own attitude in apparently opposing the admission of Texas, which he had always desired to see become a part of the Union, and which he had always insisted rightfully belonged to us, and to have been given away by Monroe's treaty with Spain. "All that is intended and foreseen. The intrigue for the presidency was the first act in the drama; the dissolution of the Union the second. And I, who hate intrigue and love the Union, can only speak of the intriguers and disunionists with warmth and indignation. The oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, Imust be allowed to speak in just terms of the criminal politicians who prostituted the question of its recovery to their own base purposes, and delayed its success by degrading and disgracing it. A Western man, and coming from a state more than any other interested in the recovery of this country, so unaccountably thrown away by the treaty of 1819, I must be allowed to feel indignant at seeing Atlantic politicians seizing upon it, and making it a sectional question for the purposes of ambition and disunion. I have spoken warmly of these plotters and intriguers; but I have not permitted their conduct to alter my own, or to relax my zeal for the recovery of the sacrificed country. I have helped to reject the disunion treaty; and that obstacle being removed, I have brought in the bill which will insure the recovery of Texas, with peace and honor, and with the Union."
It is important to remember, in speaking of his afterwards voting to admit Texas, that this was what he had all along favored, and that he now opposed it only on account of special circumstances. In both cases he was right; for, slavery or no slavery, it would have been a most unfortunate thing for us, and still worse for the Texans, if the latter had been allowed to develop into an independent nation. Bentondeserves the greatest credit for the way in which he withstood the ignorant popular feeling of his own section in regard to Tyler's proposed treaty; and not only did he show himself able to withstand pressure from behind him, but also prompt in resenting threats made by outsiders. When McDuffie told him that the remembrance of his attitude on the bill would, to his harm, meet him on some future day, like the ghost that appeared to Brutus at Philippi, he answered:—
I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the fight goes against me at this new Philippi, with which I am threatened, and the enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies of Roman liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, and run it through my own body; but I shall save it and save myself for another day and another use,—for the day when the battle of the disunion of these states is to be fought, not with words but with iron, and for the hearts of the traitors who appear in arms against their country.
I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the fight goes against me at this new Philippi, with which I am threatened, and the enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies of Roman liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, and run it through my own body; but I shall save it and save myself for another day and another use,—for the day when the battle of the disunion of these states is to be fought, not with words but with iron, and for the hearts of the traitors who appear in arms against their country.
Such a stern, defiant, almost prophetic warning did more to help the Union cause than volumes of elaborate constitutional argument, and it would have been well for the Northern States had they possessed men as capable of uttering it as was the iron Westerner. Benton alwaysshowed at his best when the honor or integrity of the nation was menaced, whether by foes from without or by foes from within. On such occasions his metal always rang true. When there was any question of breaking faith with the Union, or of treachery towards it, his figure always loomed up as one of the chief in the ranks of its defenders; and his follies and weaknesses sink out of sight when we think of the tremendous debt which the country owes him for his sorely tried and unswerving loyalty.
The treaty alluded to by Benton in his speech against the abortive secession movement was the one made with Texas while Calhoun was secretary of state, and submitted to the Senate by Tyler, with a message as extraordinary as some of his secretary's utterances. The treaty was preposterously unjust and iniquitous. It provided for the annexation of Texas, and also of a very large portion of Mexico, to which Texas had no possible title, and this without consulting Mexico in any way whatever; Calhoun advancing the plea that it was necessary to act immediately on account of the danger that Texas was in of falling under the control of England, and therefore having slavery abolished within its borders; while Tyler blandly announced that we had acquired title to the ceded territory—which belonged to one power andwas ceded to us by another—through his signature to the treaty, and that, pending its ratification by the Senate, he had dispatched troops to the scene of action to protect the ceded land "from invasion,"—the territory to be thus protected from Mexican invasion being then and always having been part and parcel of Mexico.
Benton opposed the ratification of the treaty in a very strong speech, during which he mercilessly assailed both Tyler and Calhoun. The conduct of the former he dismissed with the contemptuous remark that he had committed "a caper about equal to the mad freaks with which the unfortunate Emperor Paul, of Russia, was accustomed to astonish Europe;" and roughly warned him to be careful how he tried to imitate Jackson's methods, because in heroic imitations there was no middle ground, and if he failed to fill the rôle of hero he would then perforce find himself playing that of harlequin. Calhoun received more attention, for he was far more worthy of a foeman's steel than was his nominal superior, and Benton exposed at length the willful exaggeration and the perversion of the truth of which the Carolinian had been guilty in trying to raise the alarm of English interference in Texas, for the purpose of excusing the haste with which the treaty was carried through.
He showed at length the outrage we should inflict upon Mexico by seizing "two thousand miles of her territory, without a word of explanation with her, and by virtue of a treaty with Texas to which she was no party;" and he conclusively proved, making use of his own extensive acquaintance with history, especially American history, that the old Texas, the only territory that the Texans themselves or we could claim with any shadow of right, made but a fraction of the territory now "ceded" to us. He laughed at the idea of calling the territory Texas, and speaking of its forcible cutting off as re-annexation, "Humboldt calls it New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Santander; and the civilized world may qualify thisre-annexation by some odious and terrible epithet ... robbery;" then he went on to draw a biting contrast between our treatment of Mexico and our treatment of England. "Would we take two thousand miles of Canada in the same way? I presume not. And why not? Why not treat Great Britain and Mexico alike? Why not march up to 'fifty-four forty' as courageously as we march upon the Rio Grande? Because Great Britain is powerful and Mexico weak,—a reason which may fail in policy as much as in morals." Also he ridiculed the flurry of fear into which the Southern slave-holdersaffected to be cast by the dread of England's hostility to slavery, when they had just acquiesced in making a treaty with her by which we bound ourselves to help to put down the slave-trade. He then stated his own position, showing why he wished us to have the original Texan lands, if we could get them honorably, and without robbing Mexico of new territory; and at the same time sneered at Calhoun and Tyler because they had formerly favored the Monroe treaty, by which we abandoned our claims to them:—
We want Texas, that is to say, the Texas of La Salle; and we want it for great natural reasons, obvious as day, and permanent as nature. We want it because it is geographically appurtenant to our division of North America, essential to our political, commercial, and social system, and because it would be detrimental and injurious to us to have it fall into the hands or sink under the domination of any foreign power. For these reasons I was against sacrificing the country when it was thrown away,—and thrown away by those who are now so suddenly possessed of a fury to get it back. For these reasons I am for getting it back whenever it can be done with peace and honor, or even at the price of just war against any intrusive European power; but I am against all disguise and artifice,—against all pretexts,—and especially against weak and groundless pretexts, discreditable to ourselves and offensive toothers, too thin and shallow not to be seen through by every beholder, and merely invented to cover unworthy purposes.
We want Texas, that is to say, the Texas of La Salle; and we want it for great natural reasons, obvious as day, and permanent as nature. We want it because it is geographically appurtenant to our division of North America, essential to our political, commercial, and social system, and because it would be detrimental and injurious to us to have it fall into the hands or sink under the domination of any foreign power. For these reasons I was against sacrificing the country when it was thrown away,—and thrown away by those who are now so suddenly possessed of a fury to get it back. For these reasons I am for getting it back whenever it can be done with peace and honor, or even at the price of just war against any intrusive European power; but I am against all disguise and artifice,—against all pretexts,—and especially against weak and groundless pretexts, discreditable to ourselves and offensive toothers, too thin and shallow not to be seen through by every beholder, and merely invented to cover unworthy purposes.
The treaty was rejected by an overwhelming vote, although Buchanan led a few of his timeserving comrades from the North to the support of the extreme Southern element. Benton then tried, but failed, to get through a bill providing for a joint agreement between Mexico, Texas, and the United States to settle definitely all boundary questions. Meanwhile the presidential election occurred, with the result already mentioned. The separatist and annexationist Democrats, the extreme slavery wing of the party, defeated Van Buren and nominated Polk, who was their man; the Whigs nominated Clay, who was heartily opposed to all the schemes of the disunion and extreme slavery men, and who, if elected, while he might very properly have consented to the admission of Texas with its old boundaries, would never have brought on a war nor have attempted to add a vast extent of new slave territory to the Union. Clay would have been elected, and the slavery disunionists defeated, if in the very nick of time the Abolitionists had not stepped in to support the latter, and by their blindness in supporting Birney given the triumph to their own most bitter opponents. Then the Abolitionists, having playedtheir only card, and played it badly, had to sit still and see what evil their acts had produced; they had accomplished just as much as men generally do accomplish when they dance to the tune that their worst foes play.
Polk's election gave an enormous impulse to the annexation movement, and made it doubly and trebly difficult for any one to withstand it. The extreme disunion and slavery men, of course, hated Benton, himself a Southwesterner from a slave-holding state, with peculiar venom, on account of his attitude, very justly regarding him as the main obstacle in their path; and the din and outcry raised against all who opposed the schemes of the intriguers was directed with especial fury against the Missourian. He was accused of being allied to the Whigs, of wishing to break up the Democracy, and of many other things. Indeed, Benton's own people were very largely against him, and it must always be remembered that whereas Northeastern statesmen were certain to be on the popular side in taking a stand against the extreme pro-slavery men, Benton's position was often just the reverse. With them it was politic to do right; with him it was not; and for this reason the praise awarded the latter should be beyond measure greater than that awarded to the former.
Still, there can be little question that he wassomewhat, even although only slightly, influenced by the storm of which he had to bear the brunt; indeed, he would have been more than human if he had not been; and probably this outside pressure was one among the causes that induced him to accept a compromise in the matter, which took effect just before Polk was inaugurated. The House of Representatives had passed a resolution giving the consent of Congress to the admission of Texas as a state, and allowing it the privilege of forming four additional states out of its territory, whenever it should see fit. The line of the Missouri Compromise, 36° 30', was run through this new territory, slavery being prohibited in the lands lying north of it, and permissible or not, according to the will of the state seeking admission, in those lying south of it. Benton meanwhile had introduced a bill merely providing that negotiations should be entered into with Texas for its admission, the proposed treaty or articles of agreement to be submitted to the Senate or to Congress. He thereby kept the control in the hands of the legislature, which the joint resolution did not; and moreover, as he said in his speech, he wished to provide for due consideration being shown Mexico in the arrangement of the boundary, and for the matter being settled by commissioners.
Neither resolution nor bill could get throughby itself; and accordingly it was proposed to combine both into one measure, leaving the president free to choose either plan. To this proposition Benton finally consented, it being understood that, as only three days of Tyler's term remained, the execution of the act would be left to the incoming president, and that the latter would adopt Benton's plans. The friends of the admission of Texas assured the doubtful voters that such would be the case. Polk himself gave full assurance that he would appoint a commission, as provided by Benton's bill, if passed, with the House resolution as an alternative; and McDuffie, Calhoun's friend, and the senator from South Carolina, announced without reserve that Calhoun—for Tyler need not be considered in the matter, after it had been committed to the great nullifier—would not have the "audacity" to try to take the settlement of the question away from the president, who was to be inaugurated on the fourth of March. On the strength of these assurances, which, if made good, would, of course, have rendered the "alternative" a merely nominal one, Benton supported the measure, which was then passed. Contrary to all expectation, Calhoun promptly acted upon the legislative clause, and Polk made no effort to undo what the former had done. This caused intense chagrin andanger to the Bentonians; but they should certainly have taken such a contingency into account, and though they might with much show of reason say that they had been tricked into acting as they had done, yet it is probable that the immense pressure from behind had made Benton too eager to follow any way he could find that would take him out of the position into which his conscience had led him. No amount of pressure would have made him deliberately sanction a wrong; but it did render him a little less wary in watching to see that the right was not infringed upon. It was most natural that he should be anxious to find a common ground for himself and his constituents to stand on; but it is to be regretted that this anxiety to find a common ground should have made him willing to trust blindly to vague pledges and promises, which he ought to have known would not be held in the least binding by those on whose behalf they were supposed to be made.
Acting under this compromise measure Texas was admitted, and the foundation for our war with Mexico was laid. Calhoun, under whom this was done, nevertheless sincerely regretted the war itself, and freely condemned Polk's administration for bringing it on; his own position being that he desired to obtain without awar what it was impossible we should get except at the cost of one. Benton, who had all along consistently opposed doing a wrong to Mexico, attacked the whole war party, and in a strong and bitter speech accused Calhoun of being the cause of the contest; showing plainly that, whatever the ex-secretary of state might say in regard to the acts immediately precipitating the conflict, he himself was responsible as being in truth their original cause. While stating his conviction, however, that Calhoun was the real author of the war, Benton added that he did not believe that war was his object, although an inevitable incident of the course he had pursued.
Although heartily opposed to the war in its origin, Benton very properly believed in prosecuting it with the utmost vigor when once we were fairly in; and it was mainly owing to him that the proposed policy of a "masterly inactivity" was abandoned, and the scheme of pushing straight for the city of Mexico adopted in its stead. Indeed, it was actually proposed to make him lieutenant-general, and therefore the commander-in-chief of our forces in Mexico; but this was defeated in the Senate, very fortunately, as it would have been a great outrage upon Scott, Taylor, and every other soldier with real military training. It seems extraordinary that Benton himself should not have seen the absurdity and wrong of such a proposition.