The Life of Stephen A. Douglas Part 3

While this bill was pending in the Senate Douglas was anxiously scanning the field to ascertain what effect it was producing among the people. The South was not likely to be duped. If the Missouri Compromise was in force that alone excluded slavery, and no advantage could accrue from organizing the new Territory without mention of the subject. It did not care to take the risk of proving the law of 1820 invalid. Let it be repealed. But the thought of explicitly repealing the Missouri Compromise, which he had been wont to declare inviolably sacred, appalled him. He dreaded its effect in Illinois and throughout the Puritanical North, where moral ideas were annoyingly obtrusive. The South, though not demanding the repeal of the Compromise, would surely welcome it with joy and grat.i.tude.

The question of expediency was a hard one.

The bill, consisting of twenty sections, was printed on January 2d in the Was.h.i.+ngton Sentinel. Again, on the 10th of January, it appeared in the same paper with another section added. The new section provided that the question of slavery during the territorial period should be left to the inhabitants, that appeals to the Supreme Court should be allowed in all cases involving t.i.tle to slaves or questions of personal freedom, and that the Fugitive Slave Law should be executed in the Territories as in the States. This remarkable change in the form and spirit of the bill was explained as resulting from an error of the copyist, who had omitted this vital section from it as originally printed.

On the 16th of January Senator Dixon of Kentucky offered an amendment repealing the Missouri Compromise. The next day Sumner gave notice of an amendment affirming it. The question could no longer be dodged. When Dixon's amendment was offered, Douglas, who was greatly annoyed by it, went to his seat and implored him to withdraw it. But he refused. He called upon Dixon and took him for a drive. They talked of the Nebraska bill and the amendment.

The result of the conference was that Douglas said to him: "I have become perfectly satisfied that it is my duty as a fair minded national statesman, to cooperate with you as proposed in securing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise restriction. It is due to the South; it is due to the Const.i.tution, heretofore palpably infracted; it is due to that character for consistency which I have heretofore labored to maintain. The repeal will produce much stir and commotion in the free States * * * * for a season. I shall be a.s.sailed by demagogues and fanatics there without stint. * * * *

Every opprobrious epithet will be applied to me. I shall probably be hung in effigy. * * * * I may become permanently odious among those whose friends.h.i.+p and esteem I have heretofore possessed.

This proceeding may end my political career. But, acting under the sense of duty which animates me, I am prepared to make the sacrifice. I will do it."

The bluff Kentuckian was much affected, and with deep emotion exclaimed: "Sir, I once recognized you as a demagogue, a mere party manager, selfish and intriguing. I now find you a warm hearted and sterling patriot. Go forward in the pathway of duty as you propose, and, though the whole world desert you, I never will."

He had now decided on his course. Ca.s.s, who had been forestalled by his alert rival, was understood to be ready to step into the breach if Douglas faltered. He was on perilous heights where a false step would be fatal. Already a storm of opposition was brewing in the North, which would surely break upon him with fury if he proposed the repeal. It might fail in the House and thus leave him with both the North and South angrily condemning him,--the South for his rashness and the North for his treachery. Pierce was known to be opposed to the express repeal of the Compromise. On Sunday, January 22d, Douglas called on the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, explained the proposed change and sought the help of the Administration in pa.s.sing the bill. Davis was overjoyed and at once accompanied him to the White House. Pierce received his distinguished visitors, discussed the plan with them and promised his help.

The next morning Douglas offered in the Senate a subst.i.tute for the original Nebraska bill, in which two radical changes appeared.

The new bill divided the proposed Territory, calling the southern part Kansas and the northern part Nebraska, and declared the Missouri Compromise superseded by the legislation of 1850 and now inoperative.

On the next day appeared the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States." The paper was written by Chase and corrected by Sumner. It denounced the original Kansas-Nebraska bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge, a criminal betrayal of precious rights, part of an atrocious plot to exclude free labor and convert the Territory into a dreary region of despotism inhabited by masters and slaves, a bold scheme against American liberty, worthy of an accomplished architect of ruin.

It declared in a postscript, written after the subst.i.tute bill was offered by Douglas on January 23d, that not a man in Congress or out of it, not even Douglas himself, pretended at the time of their pa.s.sage that the measures of 1850 would repeal the Missouri Compromise. "Will the people," it asked, "permit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game and destroyed by false facts and false inferences?"

The Appeal, which (except the postscript) was written before the subst.i.tute was offered, was published in many papers in the North and produced a deep sensation. On the 30th Douglas entered the Senate Chamber angry and excited. He had already begun to hear the distant mutterings of the storm. He opened the debate on his subst.i.tuted bill, but he was smarting under the cruel lash and, before beginning his argument, poured out his rage on the authors of the Appeal. He accused Chase of treacherously procuring a postponement of the consideration of the bill for a week in order to circulate their libel upon him. Chase interrupted him with angry emphasis. Douglas waxed furious and poured out his "senatorial billingsgate" upon the offenders. Yet, amidst his wrath, he kept his head and made a keen and ingenious defense of his course.

The basis of his argument was the proposition, a.s.sumed though no where stated, that while the laws of Congress were specific and enacted to meet particular demands, the PRINCIPLE embodied in each law was general, and if the philosophic principle of any law was repugnant to that of any prior law, however foreign to each other the subjects might be, the latter must be held to repeal the former by implication; that the principle of the legislation of 1850 was repugnant to that of the Missouri Compromise and hence repealed it.

Chase at once replied briefly to the fiery attack, and on February 3d delivered an elaborate speech against the bill, which Douglas recognized as the strongest of the session. As a legal argument it was a complete and crus.h.i.+ng answer to the quibbling sophistry of the advocates of implied repeal. But it was not merely the argument of a great lawyer. It was the earnest remonstrance of a moralist who believed in the eternal and immeasurable difference between right and wrong.

He reminded them that the Missouri Compromise was a Southern measure, approved by a Southern President, on the advice of a Southern Cabinet. While in form a law, it had all the moral obligation of a solemn contract. The considerations for the perpetual exclusion of slavery in the Territories north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes were the admission of Missouri with slavery, the permission of slavery in the Territories south of 36 degrees and 30 minutes, and the admission of new States south of that line with slavery if their const.i.tution should so provide. The North had honorably performed its contract by the admission of Missouri and prompt consent to the admission of all other slave States that had sought it. The South had yielded nothing to the North under the contract, except the admission of Iowa and the organization of Minnesota. The slave States, having received all the contemplated benefits under the contract and yielded none, proposed to declare it ended without the consent of the free States. He closed with an appeal to the honor of the South, earnestly imploring the Senators to reject the bill as a violation of the plighted faith and solemn compact which their fathers had made and which they were bound by every sacred obligation faithfully to maintain.

Seward, speaking on the 17th cautioned them that the repeal of the Compromise would be the destruction of the equilibrium between the North and the South so long maintained, the loss of which would be the wreck of the Union. He warned the North that if this territory was surrendered to slavery the South would be vested with permanent control of the Government; for every branch of it would be securely within its power. Already it had absolute sway. One slave-holder in a new Territory, with access to the Executive ear at Was.h.i.+ngton, exercised more political influence than five hundred free men.

The recital of an old repeal was made for the demagogic purpose of confusing the people, but was false in fact and false in law.

The Missouri Compromise was a purely local act. That of 1850 was likewise local. They affected entirely different localities. Hence the later law could not by implication repeal the former. It was an ingenious device to attain the desired end by declaring that done by a former Congress which no one then thought of doing, and which the present Congress dared not boldly do. The doctrine of popular sovereignty meant that the Federal Government should abandon its const.i.tutional duty and abdicate its power over he Territory in favor of the first band of squatters who settled within it. It meant that the interested cupidity of the first chance settlers was more fit to guide the destinies of the infant Territory than the collective wisdom of the American people.

Sumner, speaking a week later, declared that they were about to determine forever the character of a new empire. An effort was made on false a.s.sumptions of fact, in violation of solemn covenants and the principles of the fathers, to open this immense region to slavery. The measures of 1850 could not by any effort of interpretation, by any wand of power, by an perverse alchemy, be trans.m.u.ted into a repeal of that prohibition of slavery. The pending proposition was to abolish freedom. When the conscience of mankind was at last aroused, they were about to open a new market to the traffickers in flesh who haunted the shambles of the South. They had as much right to repudiate the purchase of Louisiana as this compact.

Despite the temporary success of their political maneuvers, let them not forget that the permanent and irresistible forces were all arrayed against them. The plough, the steam engine, the railroad, the telegraph, the book, were all waging war on slavery. Its opponents could bide the storm of vituperation and calmly await the judgment of the future.

There was at no time the slightest doubt that the bill would pa.s.s, and the arguments against it were in the nature of protests against a wrong that could not be averted and appeals to the future to redress it.

From the beginning it had a well organized majority. But, a.s.sailed by the invectives of Chase, Seward and Sumner, it could not stand before the world undefended. There was but one man enlisted in its support at all fit to measure swords with any of these great leaders; but he was undoubtedly more than a match for them all.

At midnight on March 3rd Douglas rose to close the debate. The great arguments were delivered; a safe majority was a.s.sured. While numerous Senators still wanted to be heard in support of the bill, all conceded his right to close and yielded him the floor. The scenes of that wild night, while he charged upon his foes and stood for hours at bay like a gladiator, repelling their savage a.s.saults, are among the most memorable in our congressional history.

He laughed at the charge that his bill had reopened the slavery question against the will of both political parties, as expressed in their platforms, and had disturbed the country at a time of profound tranquility. These men, he declared, who where singing paeans of praise over the legislation of 1850, were the same men who had most bitterly opposed it and predicted dire results from it, just as they were prophesying evil from the pending measure which simply carried to its legitimate conclusion the beneficent principle of the former law. The substance of all the opposition speeches was contained in their manifesto published in January.

Chase in his speech had exhausted the entire argument. The others merely followed in his tracks.

"You have seen them," he said, "on their winding way, meandering the narrow and crooked path in Indian file, each treading close upon the heels of the other, and neither venturing to take a step to the right or left or to occupy one inch of ground which did not bear the footprint of the Abolition champion."

The repeal of the Compromise was a mere incident of the bill. He quoted his speeches in 1850 to show that he then defended the popular sovereignty principle, also resolutions of the Illinois legislature approving it. The Committee a.s.sumed in reporting the original bill that the law of 1850 had repealed the Missouri Compromise and hence did not mention it. Finding a diversity of opinion and desiring to clear the ground for the un.o.bstructed operation of the principles of 1850 in all the Territories, they had expressly recited the repeal. Did not the bill as originally reported repeal the Missouri Compromise as effectually as the amended bill did? If so, why this clamor about the amendment? They denounced the original bill in their manifesto as a repeal of the Missouri Compromise. If they told the truth in their manifesto their speeches denouncing the amendment were false. If their speeches were true their manifesto was false. The Missouri Compromise was not a compact at all. It was simply a piece of ordinary legislation, pa.s.sed like other bills, by means of compromise and concession.

The statement that the North had faithfully performed all the terms of he alleged contract and, hence, the South was estopped from repudiating it, was not supported by the evidence. The North had broken it immediately by resisting the admission of Missouri with slavery. A resolution of the New York legislature had been pa.s.sed a few months after the Compromise instructing their Senators and Representatives to oppose the admission of Missouri or any other State unless its Const.i.tution prohibited slavery. Objection being made to the slavery clause of the Const.i.tution, Missouri had not been admitted until 1821. The North having broken its alleged contract, had relieved the South from all obligation under it, if such obligation ever existed. All this moral indignation had been stirred up over the repeal of an ordinary law. By their manifesto and speeches the anti-slavery Senators had roused the people to rage in their States. The citizens of Ohio had burned him in effigy.

He could be found hanging by the neck in all the towns in which they had influence.

Chase protested his sorrow that the people of Ohio had offered this insult. Douglas angrily reminded him of the vituperative epithets contained in the manifesto, which evidently wounded him more deeply than the coa.r.s.er indignities. He drew Seward and Chase into debate on the literal correctness of details of their arguments, as to which he had the better of them, having fortified himself with voluminous doc.u.ments, and elaborately proved the inaccuracy of their statements, and elaborately proved the inaccuracy of their statements, which gave him a brilliant opportunity to indulge in a burst of indignation and in his wrath at the errors of his adversaries' neglect, the awkward moral question which, was the core of the controversy. He intimated that Chase and Sumner had obtained their seats in the Senate by questionable compromises.

Chase hotly branded the statement as false. Sumner contemptuously denied that he had even sought the position, much less bargained for it. The speech was closed with an earnest appeal to the Senators to banish the subject of slavery forever and refer it to the people to decide for themselves as they did other questions, with a.s.surance that this would result in a satisfactory settlement of the vexed problem and bring abiding peace to all. As the day was dawning he closed.

With difficulty the presiding officer had repressed the bursts of applause in the crowded galleries. Even Seward, moved to admiration by the overwhelming power and marvelous skill of his adversary, impulsively cried out, "I never had so much respect for him as I have to-night."

Amid the solemn hush of anxious expectancy the crowd awaited the calling of the roll. While no one doubted the result, all listened in breathless silence to the voting of the Senators as though it were the voice of doom. Fourteen voted no, and were thirty-seven voted yes. The Senate adjourned amid the loud booming of cannon at the Navy Yard, which celebrated the great victory. In the chill gray dawn, as they stood on the steps of the Capitol and listened to the exultant booming of cannon, Chase said to Sumner:

"They celebrate a present victory, but the echoes they awake will never rest until slavery itself shall die."

The bill now went to the House, where its management was entrusted to Douglas' lieutenant, Richardson, chairman of the Territorial Committee. But the country was aroused. The loud storm appalled the Northern Members, whose votes were needed. Pierce hesitated until goaded on by his Southern counselors. The attempt to refer the bill to the Territorial Committee failed. It was referred to the Committee of the Whole and went to the foot of a long calendar.

This alarmed Douglas, who now spent most of his time in the House a.s.sisting Richardson. The Administration brought all of its power to bear on the refractory Members, and on the 8th of May the forces were ready for the attack. The House resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole, laid aside all previous business and proceeded to the consideration of the bill. The struggle at once began between the domineering majority and the rebellious minority and continued with increasing bitterness all day, all night and until midnight of the 9th, when the session broke up in angry riot, the enraged members leaping on their desks and shrieking in frenzy or striving to a.s.sault each other with deadly weapons.

All were exhausted by the long, sleepless strain, and many were drunk. Douglas was on the floor during most of the session, pa.s.sing about swiftly among his followers and directing their movements, the master-spirit who guided the storm of his own raising. At midnight the House, now a mere bedlam, adjourned.

The struggle dragged along from day to day, the minority stubbornly contesting every inch, and the majority, under the personal direction of Douglas, hesitating to use their power. At last, on May 22nd, at nearly midnight, the final vote was forced and the bill pa.s.sed by a majority of thirteen. Among those voting against it was Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, now a Member of the House, after his thirty years' service in the Senate. His terse characterization is more generally remembered than anything else said against it. Speaking with a statesman's contempt of the explanatory clause, he said it was "a little stump speech injected in the belly of the bill."

Chapter VII. The Brewing Storm.

The powerful will and effective energy of the young Senator had achieved a legislative revolution. Perhaps, like Geethe's apprentice, he had called into action powers of mischief which he would not be able to control. With the instincts of the politician he had sought to devise a fundamental principle to meet a pa.s.sing exigency. He had cooked his breakfast over the volcano.

The whole doctrine of popular sovereignty which became thenceforth the central article in his creed did such violence both to law and philosophy as to discredit the ac.u.men of any statesman who seriously believed it. It was a short lived doctrine, speedily repudiated with disgust by the South, in whose interest it had been invented, and rejected as a legal heresy by a Supreme Court of learned advocates of slavery. It is hardly possible that Douglas believed that Congress could delegate its highest duties and responsibilities to a handful of chance squatters on the frontier. This doctrine, to the establishment of which he devoted a great part of the remaining energies of his life, "meant that Congress, which represented the political wisdom of an educated people, should abdicate its const.i.tutional right of deciding a question which demanded the most sagacious statesmans.h.i.+p in favor of a thousand, or perhaps ten thousand, pioneers, adventurers and fortune seekers, who should happen to locate in the Territory."

The proposition to give the squatters actual sovereignty in all things was an evident reducto ad absurdium. And yet it was the inevitable result of Douglas' reasoning. The only excuse for the existence of territorial governments was that the inhabitants were not yet ready for the duties of self-government. Squatter sovereignty rested on the a.s.sumption that there was no such period of immaturity, and hence no period in which territorial governments were justified.

The clear logic of the doctrine would ent.i.tle the first band of squatters on the public domain to organize a State. But it was a superficially plausible proposition that appealed with peculiar power to the uncritical popular prejudice. The equality of men and the right of self government were the central truths of the American polity. The sentimental devotion to these two principles was pa.s.sionate and universal. A dogma that seemed to embody them was a rare invention, the supreme feat of the highest order of practical political genius.

But the omens were not good. People seemed absurdly in earnest about this harmless political maneuver. Throughout the North rose a storm of vehement protest, not merely from Abolitionists and Whigs but from insurgent Democrats, which resulted in the consolidation of the incoherent anti-slavery factions into the Republican party and its early conquest of the Democratic States of the Northwest.

It developed later that the Northern Democracy was hopelessly ruined by this political masterpiece of the greatest Northern Democrat.

Lincoln, who had been quietly maturing in modest retirement, was roused by this shock and began that memorable battle with Douglas, which finally lifted the obscure lawyer to heights above the great Senator. A resolution endorsing the Nebraska bill was pushed through the Illinois legislature with difficulty, several of the ablest Democrats denouncing it bitterly. Other Northern legislatures either protested against it or remained ominously silent. Throughout the North pulpit and press thundered against the repeal with startling disregard of party affiliations. Three thousand New England clergymen sent a pet.i.tion protesting against it "in the name of Almighty G.o.d." The clergy of New York denounced it. The ministers of Chicago and the Northwest sent to Douglas a remonstrance with a request that he present it, which he did. He was deeply hurt by the angry protests from the moral guides of the people. He denounced the preachers for their ignorant meddling in political affairs, and declared with great warmth that they had desecrated the pulpit and prost.i.tuted the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting influence of party politics. He afterwards said in bitter jest, "on my return home I traveled from Boston to Chicago in the light of fires in which my own effigies were burning."

Congress adjourned early in August, but he lingered in the East and not until late in the month did he return to meet his const.i.tuents.

The intensity of popular indignation at the North was a disagreeable surprise to him. In Chicago the sentiment was openly and overwhelmingly against him. It was dangerous, now that he had fought his way up to the head of his party and seemed a.s.sured of the coveted nomination, to permit himself to be discredited at home.

Four years before he had conquered the hostile city by a speech, and he resolved again to subdue its insurgent spirit. Meetings of disgusted Democrats and indignant Whigs had been held to denounce him. He had been burned in effigy on the streets. He had been charged with loitering in the East afraid to meet the people whom he had betrayed. The changes were rung on the fact that his middle name was that of the traitor, Benedict Arnold. When he entered the city the flags on building and vessels were hanging mournfully at half-mast. At sunset the bells were tolled solemnly. It was truly a funereal reception. Arrangements were made for him to address the people on the night of September 1st in vindication of himself.

The meeting was held in the large open s.p.a.ce in front of North Market Hall. The crowd was enormous and ominously sullen. The roofs, windows and balconies of all adjacent buildings were occupied.

There was not a cheer, except from a little band of friends in front of him, as at nearly eight o'clock he rose to speak.

The memorable scene which followed ill.u.s.trates how small is the interval that separates the most advanced civilization from the grossest barbarism. He began his speech, but was soon interrupted by a storm of hisses and groans, growing louder and louder until it seemed that the whole enormous throng was pouring out its execration in a mingled hiss and groan. He waited with defiant calmness for the storm to subside and again attempted to speak. He told them with manifest vexation that he had returned home to address his const.i.tuents and defend his course and that he intended to be heard. Again he was interrupted by the overwhelming hiss, mingled with groans and coa.r.s.e insults. His friends fiercely threatened to resent the outrage, but he prudently restrained them. He then began to shout defiance and rebukes at the mob. His combative temper was stirred.

He shook his head and brandished his fists at the jeering crowd.

His friends importuned him to desist, but he pushed them aside and again and again returned to the attack with stentorian tones and vehement gestures, striving to outvoice the wild tumult and compel an audience.

But they were as resolute as he and persistently drowned his shouting. This continued nearly three hours. At half-past ten, baffled, mortified and angry, he withdrew. One admiring biographer declares that he yelled to the mob as a parting valediction, "Abolitionists of Chicago, it is now Sunday morning. I will go to church while you go to the devil in your own way." The irrepressible conflict was approaching the muscular stage of its development, when the aroused pa.s.sions of the people must find some other vent than words, when the game of politics could no longer be safely played with the strongest emotions of a deeply moral race.