Beacon Lights of History Volume Xii Part 6

That subject being disposed of for the present, the attention of Congress and the country was now turned to the President's war on the United States Bank. As this most important matter has already been treated in the lecture on Jackson, I have only to show the course Mr.

Calhoun took in reference to it. He was now fifty-three years old, in the prime of his life and the full vigor of his powers. In the Senate he had but two peers, Clay and Webster, and was not in sympathy with either of them, though not in decided hostility as he was toward Jackson. He was now neither Whig nor Democrat, but a South Carolinian, having in view the welfare of the South alone, of whose interests he was the recognized guardian. It was only when questions arose which did not directly bear on Southern interests that he was the candid and patriotic statesman, sometimes voting with one party and sometimes with another.

He was opposed to the removal of deposits from the United States Bank, and yet was opposed to a renewal of its charter. His leading idea in reference to the matter was, the necessity of divorcing the government altogether from the banking system, as a dangerous money-power which might be perverted to political purposes. In pointing out the dangers, he spoke with great power and astuteness, for he was always on the look-out for breakers. He therefore argued against the removal of deposits as an unwarrantable a.s.sumption of power on the part of the President, which could not be const.i.tutionally exercised; here he agreed with his great rivals, while he was more moderate than they in his language. He made war on measures rather than on men personally, regarding the latter as of temporary importance, of pa.s.sing interest. So far as the removal of deposits seemed an arbitrary act on the part of the Executive, he severely denounced it, as done with a view to grasp unconst.i.tutional power for party purposes, thus corrupting the country, and as a measure to get control of money. Said he: "With money we will get partisans, with partisans votes, and with votes money, is the maxim of our political pilferers." He regarded the measure as a part of the "spoils system" which marked Jackson's departure from the policy of his predecessors.

Calhoun detested the system of making politics a game, since it would throw the government into the hands of political adventurers and mere machine-politicians. He was too lofty a man to encourage anything like this, and here we are compelled to do him honor. Whatever he said or did was in obedience to his convictions. He was above and beyond all deceit and trickery and personal selfishness. His contempt for political wire-pullers amounted almost to loathing. He was incapable of doing a mean thing. He might be wrong in his views, and hence might do evil instead of good, but he was honest. In his severe self-respect and cold dignity of character he resembled William Pitt. His integrity was peerless. He could neither be bought nor seduced from his course.

Private considerations had no weight with him, except his aspiration for the presidency, and even that seems to have pa.s.sed away when his disagreement with Jackson put him out of the Democratic race, and when the new crisis arose in Southern interests, to which he ever after devoted himself with entire self-abnegation.

In moral character Calhoun was as reproachless as Was.h.i.+ngton. He neither drank to excess, nor gambled, nor violated the seventh commandment. He had no fellows.h.i.+p with either fools or knaves. He believed that the office of Senator was the highest to which Americans could ordinarily attain, and he gave dignity to it, and felt its responsibilities. He thought that only the best and most capable men should be elevated to that post. Nor would he seek it by unworthy ends. The office sought him, not he the office. It was this pure and exalted character which gave him such an ascendency at the South, as much as his marvellous logical powers and his devotion to Southern interests. His const.i.tuents believed in him and followed him, perhaps blindly. Therefore, when we consider what are generally acknowledged as his mistakes, we should bear in mind the palliating circ.u.mstances.

Calhoun was the incarnation of Southern public opinion,--bigoted, narrow, prejudiced, but intense in its delusions and loyal to its dogmas. Hence he enslaved others as he was himself enslaved. He was alike the idol and the leader of his State, impossible to be dethroned, as Webster was with the people of Ma.s.sachusetts until he misrepresented their convictions. The consistency of his career was marvellous,--not that he did not change some of his opinions, for there is no intellectual progress to a man who does not. How can a young man, however gifted, be infallible? But whatever the changes through which his mind pa.s.sed, they did not result from self-interest or ambition, but were the result of more enlightened views and enlarged experience.

Political wisdom is not a natural instinct, but a progressive growth, like that of Burke,--the profoundest of all the intellects of his generation.

Calhoun made several great speeches in the Senate of the United States, besides those in reference to a banking system connected with the government, which, whether wise or erroneous, contained some important truths. But the logical deduction of them all may be summed up in one idea,--the supremacy of State rights in opposition to a central government. This, from the time when the diverging interests of the North and the South made him feel the dangers in "the unchecked will of a majority of the whole," was the dogma of his life, from which he never swerved, and which he pursued to all its legitimate conclusions.

Whatever measure tended to the consolidation of central power, whether in reference to the encroachments of the Executive or the usurpations of Congress, he denounced with terrible earnestness and sometimes with great eloquence. This is the key to the significant portion of his political career.

In his speech on the Force Bill, in 1834, he says:

"If we now raise our eyes and direct them towards that once beautiful system, with all its various, separate, and independent parts blended into one harmonious whole, we must be struck with the mighty change! All have disappeared, gone,--absorbed, concentrated, and consolidated in this government, which is left alone in the midst of the desolation of the system, the sole and unrestricted representative of an absolute and despotic majority.... In the place of their admirably contrived system, the act proposed to be repealed has erected our great Consolidated Government. Can it be necessary for me to show what must be the inevitable consequences?... It was clearly foreseen and foretold on the formation of the Const.i.tution what these consequences would be. All the calamities we have experienced, and those which are yet to come, are the result of the consolidating tendency of this government; and unless this tendency be arrested, all that has been foretold will certainly befall us,--even to the pouring out of the last vial of wrath, military despotism."

That was what Mr. Calhoun feared,--that the consolidation of a central power would be fatal to the liberties of the country and the rights of the States, and would introduce a system of spoils and the reign of demagogues, all in subserviency to a mere military chieftain, utterly unfit to guide the nation in its complicated interests. But his gloomy predictions fortunately were not fulfilled, in spite of all the misrule and obstinacy of the man he intensely distrusted and disliked. The tendency has been to usurpations by Congress rather than by the Executive.

It is impossible not to admire the lofty tone, free from personal animus, which is seen in all Calhoun's speeches. They may have been sophistical, but they appealed purely to the intellect of those whom he addressed, without the rhetoric of his great antagonists. His speeches are compact arguments, such as one would address to the Supreme Court on his side of the question.

Thus far his speeches in the Senate had been in reference to economic theories and legislation antagonistic to the interests of the South, and the usurpations of executive power, which threatened directly the rights of independent States, and indirectly the liberties of the people and the political degradation of the nation; but now new issues arose from the agitation of the slavery question, and his fame chiefly rests on his persistent efforts to suppress this agitation, as logically leading to the dissolution of the Union and the destruction of the inst.i.tution with which its prosperity was supposed to be identified.

The early Abolitionists, as I remember them, were, as a body, of very little social or political influence. They were earnest, clear-headed, and uncompromising in denouncing slavery as a great moral evil, indeed as a sin, disgraceful to a free people, and hostile alike to morality and civilization. But in the general apathy as to an inst.i.tution with which the Const.i.tution did not meddle, and the general government could not interfere, except in districts and territories under its exclusive control, the Abolitionists were generally regarded as fanatical and mischievous. They had but few friends and supporters among the upper cla.s.ses and none among politicians. The pulpit, the bar, the press, and the colleges were highly conservative, and did not like the popular agitation much better than the Southerners themselves. But the leaders of the antislavery movement persevered in their denunciations of slaveholders, and of all who sympathized with them; they held public meetings everywhere and gradually became fierce and irritating.

It was the period of lyceum lectures, when all moral subjects were discussed before the people with fearlessness, and often with acrimony.

Most of the popular lecturers were men of radical sympathies, and were inclined to view all evils on abstract principles as well as in their practical effects. Thus, the advocates of peace believed that war under all circ.u.mstances was wicked. The temperance reformers insisted that the use of alcoholic liquors in all cases was a sin. Learned professors in theological schools attempted to prove that the wines of Palestine were unfermented, and could not intoxicate. The radical Abolitionists, in like manner, a.s.serted that it was wicked to hold a man in bondage under any form of government, or under any guarantee of the Const.i.tution.

At first they were contented to point out the moral evils of slavery, both on the master and the slave; but this did not provoke much opposition, since the evils were open and confessed, even at the South; only, it was regarded as none of their business, since the evils could not be remedied, and had always been lamented. That slavery was simply an evil, and generally acknowledged to be, both North and South, was taking rather tame ground, even as peace doctrines were unexciting when it was allowed that, if we must fight, we must. But there was some excitement in the questions whether it were allowable to fight at all, or drink wine at any time, or hold a slave under any circ.u.mstances. The lecturers must take stronger grounds if they wished to be heard or to excite interest. So they next unhesitatingly a.s.sumed the ground that war was a _malum per se_, and wine-drinking also, and all slave-holding, and a host of other things. Their discussions aroused the intellect, as well as appealed to the moral sense. Even "strong-minded" women fearlessly went into fierce discussions, and became intolerant.

Gradually the whole North and West were aroused, not merely to the moral evils of slavery, which were admitted without discussion, but to the intolerable abomination of holding a slave under any conditions, as against reason, against conscience, and against humanity.

The Southerners themselves felt that the evil was a great one, and made some attempt to remedy it by colonization societies. They would send free blacks to Liberia to Christianize and civilize the natives, sunk in the lowest abyss of misery and shame. Many were the Christian men and women at the South who pitied the hard condition under which their slaves were born, and desired to do all they could to ameliorate it.

But when the Abolitionists announced that all slaveholding was a sin, and when public opinion at the North was evidently drifting to this doctrine, then the planters grew indignant and enraged. It became unpleasant for a Northern merchant or traveller to visit a Southern city, and equally unpleasant for a Southern student to enter a Northern college, or a planter to resort to a Northern watering-place. The common-sense of the planter was outraged when told that he was a sinner above all others. He was exasperated beyond measure when incendiary publications were transmitted through Southern mails. He did not believe that he was necessarily immoral because he retained an inst.i.tution bequeathed to him by his ancestors, and recognized by the Const.i.tution of the United States.

Calhoun was the impersonation of Southern feelings as well as the representative of Southern interests. He intensely felt the indignity which the Abolitionists cast upon his native State, and upon its peculiar inst.i.tution. And he was clear-headed enough to see that if public opinion settled down into the conviction that slavery was a sin as well as an inherited evil, the North and South could not long live together in harmony and peace. He saw that any inst.i.tution would be endangered with the verdict of the civilized world against it. He knew that public opinion was an amazing power, which might be defied, but not successfully resisted. He saw no way to stop the continually increasing attacks of the antislavery agitators except by adopting an entirely new position,--a position which should unite all the slaveholding States in the strongest ties of interest.

Accordingly he declared, as the leader of Southern opinions and interests, that slavery was neither an evil nor a sin, but a positive good and blessing, supported even by the Bible as well as by the Const.i.tution, In a.s.suming these premises he may have argued logically, but he lost the admiration he had gained by twenty years' services in the national legislature. His premises were wrong, and his arguments would necessarily be sophistical and fall to the ground. He stepped down from the lofty pedestal he had hitherto occupied, to become not merely a partisan, but an unscrupulous politician. He had a right to defend his beloved inst.i.tutions as the leader of interests intrusted to him to guard. His fault was not in being a partisan, for most politicians are party men; it was in advancing a falsehood as the basis of his arguments. But, if he had stultified his own magnificent intellect, he could not impose on the convictions of mankind. From the time he a.s.sumed a ground utterly untenable, whatever were his motives or real convictions, his general influence waned. His arguments did not convince, since they were deductions from wrong premises, and premises which shocked and insulted the reason.

Calhoun now became a man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,--an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled him to change his ground, that mighty wave of thought, no more to be resisted than a storm upon the ocean, and which he saw would gradually sweep away his cherished inst.i.tution unless his const.i.tuents and the whole South should be made to feel that their cause was right and just; that slavery had not only materially enriched the Southern States, but had converted fetich idolaters to the true wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, and widened the domain of civilization. The planters, one and all, responded to this sophistical and seductive plea, and said to one another, "Now we can defy the universe on moral grounds. We stand united,--what care we for the ravings of fanatics outside our borders, so long as our inst.i.tution is a blessing to us, planted on the rock of Christianity, and endorsed by the best men among us!" The theologians took up the cause, both North and South, and made their pulpits ring with appeals to Scripture. "Were not," they said, "the negroes descendants of Ham, and had not these descendants been cursed by the Almighty, and given over to the control of the children of Shem and j.a.phet,--not, indeed, to be trodden down like beasts, but to be elevated and softened by them, and made useful in the toils which white men could not endure?" Ultra-Calvinists united with politicians in building up a public sentiment in favor of slavery as the best possible condition for the ignorant, sensuous, and superst.i.tious races who, when put under the training and guardians.h.i.+p of a civilized and Christian people, had escaped the harder lot which their fathers endured in the deserts and the swamps of Africa.

The agitation at the North had been gradually but constantly increasing.

In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison started "The Liberator;" in 1832 the New England Antislavery Society was founded in Boston; in 1833 New York had a corresponding society, and Joshua Leavitt established "The Emanc.i.p.ator." Books, tracts, and other publications began to be circulated. By lectures, newspapers, meetings, and all manner of means the propagandism was carried on. On the other hand, the most violent opposition had been manifested throughout the North to these so-called "fanatics." No language was too opprobrious to apply to them. The churches and ministry were either dumb on the subject, or defended slavery from the Scriptures. Mobs broke up antislavery meetings, and in some cases proceeded even to the extreme of attack and murder,--as in the case of Lovejoy of Illinois. The approach of the political campaign of 1836, when Van Buren was running as the successor of Jackson, involved the Democratic party as the ally of the South for political purposes, and "Harmony and Union" were the offsets to the cry for "Emanc.i.p.ation."

By 1835 the excitement was at its height, and especially along the line of the moral and religious argumentation, where the proslavery men met talk with talk. What could the Abolitionists do now with their Northern societies to show that slavery was a wrong and a sin? Their weapons fell harmless on the bucklers of warriors who supposed themselves fighting under the protection of Almighty power in order to elevate and Christianize a doomed race. Victory seemed to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from victors, and in the moral contest the Southern planters and their Northern supporters swelled the air with triumphant shouts. They were impregnable in their new defences, since they claimed to be in the right. Both parties had now alike appealed to reason and Scripture, and where were the judges who could settle conflicting opinions? The Abolitionists, somewhat discouraged, but undaunted, then changed their mode of attack.

They said, "We will waive the moral question, for we talk to men without conscience, and we will instead make it a political one. We will appeal to majorities. We will attack the hostile forces in a citadel which they cannot hold. The District of Columbia belongs to Congress. Congress can abolish slavery if it chooses in its own territory. Having possession of this great fortress, we can extend our political warfare to the vast and indefinite West, and, at least, prevent the further extension of slave-power. We will trust to time and circ.u.mstance and truth to do the rest. We will pet.i.tion Congress itself."

And from 1835 onward pet.i.tions rolled into both Houses from all parts of the North and West to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which Congress could const.i.tutionally do. The venerable and enlightened John Quincy Adams headed the group of pet.i.tioners in the House of representatives. There were now two thousand antislavery societies in the United States. In 1837 three hundred thousand persons pet.i.tioned for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The legislatures of Ma.s.sachusetts and Vermont had gone so far as to censure Congress for its inaction and indifference to the rights of humanity.

But it was in January, 1836, that John C. Calhoun arose in his wrath and denied the right of pet.i.tion. The indignant North responded to such an a.s.sumption in flaming words. "What," said the leaders of public opinion, "cannot the lowest subjects of the Czar or the Shah appeal to ultimate authority? Has there ever been an empire so despotic as to deny so obvious a right? Did not Caesar and Cyrus, Louis and Napoleon receive pet.i.tions? Shall an enlightened Congress reject the prayers of the most powerful of their const.i.tuents, and to remove an evil which people generally regard as an outrage, and all people as a misfortune?"

"We will not allow the reception of pet.i.tions at all," said the Southern leaders, "for they will lead to discussion on a forbidden subject. They are only an entrance wedge to disrupt the Union. The Const.i.tution has guaranteed to us exclusively the preservation of an inst.i.tution on which our welfare rests. You usurp a privilege which you call a right. Your demands are dangerous to the peace of the Union, and are preposterous. You violate unwritten law. You seek to do what the founders of our republic never dreamed of. When two of the States ceded their own slave territory to the central government, it was with the understanding that slavery should remain as it was in the district we owned and controlled. You cannot lawfully even discuss the matter. It is none of your concern. It is an inst.i.tution which was the basis of that great compromise without which there never could have been a united nation,--only a league of sovereign States. We have the same right to exclude the discussion of this question from these halls as from the capitals of our respective States. The right of pet.i.tion on such a subject is tantamount to consideration and discussion, which would be unlawful interference with our greatest inst.i.tution, leading legitimately and logically to disunion and war. Is it right, is it generous, is it patriotic to drive us to such an alternative? We only ask to be let alone. You a.s.sail a sacred ark where dwell the seraphim and cherubim of our liberties, of our honor, of our interests, of our loyalty itself. To this we never will consent."

Mr. Clay then came forward in Congress as an advocate for considering the question of pet.i.tions. He was for free argument on the subject. He admitted that the Abolitionists were dangerous, but he could not shut his eyes to an indisputable right. So he went half-way, as was his custom, pleasing neither party, and alienating friends; but at the same time with great tact laying out a middle ground where the opposing parties could still stand together without open conflict. "I am no friend," said he, "to slavery. The Searcher of hearts knows that every pulsation of mine beats high and strong in the cause of civil liberty.

Wherever it is practicable and safe I desire to see every portion of the human family in the enjoyment of it; but I prefer the liberty of my own country to that of other people. The liberty of the descendants of Africa in the United States is incompatible with the liberty and safety of the European descendants." Such were the sentiments of the leading cla.s.ses of the North, not yet educated up to the doctrines which afterwards prevailed. But the sentiments declared by Clay lost him the presidency. His political sins, like those of Webster, were sins of omission rather than of commission. Neither of them saw that the little cloud in the horizon would soon cover the heavens, and pour down a deluge to sweep away abominations worse than Ahab ever dreamed of. Clay did not go far enough to please the rising party. He did not see the power or sustain the rightful exercise of this new moral force, but he did argue on grounds of political expediency for the citizens' right of pet.i.tion,--a right conceded even to the subjects of unlimited despotism.

An Ahasuerus could throw pet.i.tions into the mire, without reading, but it was customary to accept them.

The result was a decision on the part of Congress to admit the pet.i.tions, but to pay no further attention to them.

The Abolitionists, however, had resorted to less scrupulous measures.

They sent incendiary matter through the mails, not with the object of inciting the slaves to rebellion,--this was hopeless,--but with the design of aiding their escape from bondage, and perchance of influencing traitors in the Southern camp. To this new attack Calhoun responded with dignity and with logic. And we cannot reasonably blame him for repelling it. The Southern cities had as good a right to exclude inflammatory pamphlets as New York or Boston has to prevent the introduction of the cholera. It was the instinct of self-preservation; whatever may be said of their favorite inst.i.tution on ethical grounds, they had the legal right to protect it from incendiary matter.

But what was incendiary matter? Who should determine that point?

President Jackson in 1835 had recommended Congress to pa.s.s a law prohibiting under severe penalties the circulation in the Southern States, through the mails, of incendiary publications. But this did not satisfy the Southern dictator. He denied the right of Congress to determine what publications should be or should not be excluded. He maintained that this was a matter for the States alone to decide. He would not trust postmasters, for they were officers of the United States government. It was not for them to be inquisitors, nor for the Federal government to interfere, even for the protection of a State inst.i.tution, with its own judgment. He proposed instead a law forbidding Federal postmasters to deliver publications prohibited by the laws of a State, Territory, or District. In this, as in all other controverted questions, Calhoun found means to argue for the supremacy of the State and the subordination of the Union. His bill did not pa.s.s, but the force of his argument went forth into the land.

How far antislavery doc.u.ments had influence on the slaves themselves, it is difficult to say. They could neither read nor write; but it is remarkable that from this period a large number of slaves made their escape from the South and fled to the North, protected by philanthropists, Abolitionists, and kind-hearted-people generally.

How they contrived to travel a thousand miles without money, without suitable clothing, pursued by blood-hounds and h.e.l.l-hounds, hiding in the daytime in swamps, mora.s.ses, and forests, walking by night in darkness and gloom, until pa.s.sed by friendly hands through "underground railroads" until they reached Canada, is a mystery. But these efforts to escape from their hard and cruel masters further intensified the exasperation of the South.

It was in 1836 that Michigan and Arkansas applied for admission as States into the Union,--one free and the other with slavery. Discussions on some technicalities concerning the conditions of Michigan's admission gave Mr. Calhoun a chance for more argumentation about the sovereignty of a State, which, considering the fact that Michigan had not then been admitted but was awaiting the permission of Congress _to be_ a State, showed the weakness of his logic in the falsity of his premise. Besides Arkansas, the slave-power also gained access to a strip of free territory north of the compromise line of 3630' and the Missouri River.

In 1837 John Quincy Adams, "the old man eloquent" of the House of Representatives, narrowly escaped censure for introducing a pet.i.tion from slaves in the District of Columbia. In 1838 Calhoun introduced resolutions declaring that pet.i.tions relative to slavery in the District were "a direct and dangerous attack on the inst.i.tutions of all the slave-holding States." In 1839 Henry Clay offered a pet.i.tion for the repression of all agitation respecting slavery in the District. Calhoun saw and constantly denounced the danger. He knew the power of public opinion, and saw the rising tide. Conservatism heeded the warning, and the opposition to agitation intensified all over the South and the North; but to no avail. New societies were formed; new papers were established; religious bodies began to take position for and against the agitation; the Maine legislature pa.s.sed in the lower House, and almost in the upper, resolutions denouncing slavery in the District; while the Abolitionists labored incessantly and vigorously to "Blow the trumpet; cry aloud and spare not; show my people their sins," as to slavery.

In 1840 Van Buren and Harrison, the Democratic and Whig candidates for the presidency were both in the hands of the slave-power; and Tyler, who as Vice-President succeeded to the Executive chair on Harrison's death, was a Virginian slaveholder. The ruling cla.s.ses and politicians all over the land were violently opposed to the antislavery cause, and every test of strength gave new securities and pledges to the Southern elements and their Northern sympathizers.

Notwithstanding the frequent triumphs of the South, aided by Whigs and Democrats from the North, who played into the hands of Southern politicians, Mr. Calhoun was not entirely at rest in his mind. He saw with alarm the increasing immigration into the Western States, which threatened to disturb the balance of power which the South had ever held; and with the aid of Southern leaders he now devised a new and bold scheme, which was to annex Texas to the United States and thus enlarge enormously the area of slavery. It was probably his design, not so much to strengthen the slaveholding interests of South Carolina, as to increase the political power of the South. By the addition of new slave States he could hope for more favorable legislation in Congress. The arch-conspirator--the haughty and defiant dictator--would not only exclude Congress from all legislation over its own territory in the national District, but he now would make Congress bolster up his cause.

He could calculate on a "solid South," and also upon the aid of the leaders of the political parties at the North,--"Northern men with Southern principles,"--who were strangely indifferent to the extension of slavery.

The Abolitionists were indeed now a power, but the antislavery sentiment had not reached its culmination, although it had become politically organized. For the campaign of 1840, seeing the futility of pet.i.tion and the folly of expecting action on issues foreign to those on which Congressmen had been elected, the Abolitionists boldly called a National Convention, in which six States were represented, and nominated candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. It was a small and despised beginning, but it was the germ of a mighty growth. From that time the Liberty Party began to hold State and National Conventions, and to vote directly on the question of representatives. They did not for years elect anybody, but they defeated many an ultra pro-slavery man, and their influence began to be felt. In 1841 Joshua R. Giddings, from Ohio, and in 1843 John P. Hale from New Hamps.h.i.+re and Hannibal Hamlin from Maine brought in fresh Northern air and confronted the slave-power in Congress, in alliance with grand old John Quincy Adams,--whose last years were his best years, and have illumined his name.

Most of the antislavery men were still denounced as fanatics, meddling with what was none of their business. In 1843 they had not enrolled in their ranks the most influential men in the community. Ministers, professors, lawyers, and merchants generally still held aloof from the controversy, and were either hostile or indifferent to it. So, with the aid of the "Dough-Faces," as they were stigmatized by the progressive party, Calhoun was confident of success in the Texan scheme.

At that time many adventurers had settled in Texas, which was then a province of Mexico, and had carried with them their slaves. In 1820 Moses Austin, a Connecticut man, long resident in Missouri, obtained large grants of land in Texas from the Mexican government, and his son Stephen carried out after the father's death a scheme of colonization of some three hundred families from Missouri and Louisiana. They were a rough and lawless population, but self-reliant and enterprising. They increased rapidly, until, in 1833, being twenty thousand in number, they tried to form a State government under Mexico; and, this being denied them, declared their independence and made revolution. They were headed by Sam Houston, who had fought under General Jackson, and had been Governor of Tennessee. In 1836 the independence of Texas was proclaimed.

Soon after followed the battle of San Jacinto, in which Santa Anna, the President of the Mexican republic and the commander of the Mexican forces, was taken prisoner.

Immediately after this battle Mr. Calhoun tried to have it announced as the policy of the government to recognize the independence of Texas.

When Tyler became President, by the death of Harrison, although elected by Whig votes he entered heart and soul into the schemes of Calhoun, who, to forward them, left the Senate, and became Secretary of State, as successor to Mr. Upshur. In 1843 it became apparent that Texas would be annexed to the United States. In that same year Iowa and Florida--one free, the other slave--were admitted to the Union.

The Liberty party beheld the proposed annexation of Texas with alarm, and st.u.r.dily opposed it as far as they could through their friends in Congress, predicting that it would be tantamount to a war with Mexico.

The Mexican minister declared the same result. But "Texas or Disunion!"

became the rallying cry of the South. The election of Polk, the annexationist Democrat, in 1844, was seized upon as a "popular mandate"

for annexation, although had not the Liberty Party, who like the Whigs were anti-annexationists, divided the vote in New York State, Clay would have been elected. The matter was hurried through Congress; the Northern Democrats made no serious opposition, since they saw in this annexation a vast accession of territory around the Gulf of Mexico, of indefinite extent. Thus, Texas, on March 1, 1845, was offered annexation by a Joint Resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives, in the face of protests from the wisest men of the country, and in spite of certain hostilities with Mexico. On the following fourth of July Texas, accepting annexation, was admitted to the Union as a slave State, to the dismay of Channing, of Garrison, of Phillips, of Sumner, of Adams, and of the whole antislavery party, now aroused to the necessity of more united effort, in view of this great victory to the South; for it was provided that at any time, by the consent of its own citizens, Texas might be divided into four States, whenever its population should be large enough; its territory was four times as large as France.

The Democratic President Polk took office in March, 1845; the Mexican War, beginning in May, 1846, was fought to a successful close in a year and five months, ending September, 1847; the fertile territory of Oregon, purchased from Spain, had been peaceably occupied by rapid immigration and by settlement of disputed boundaries with Great Britain; California--a Mexican province--had been secured to the American settlers of its lovely hills and valleys by the prompt daring of Capt.

John C. Fremont; and the result of the war was the formal cession to the United States by Mexico of the territories of California and New Mexico, and recognition of the annexation and statehood of Texas.

Both the North and the South had thus gained large possibilities, and at the North the spirit of enterprise and the clear perception of the economic value of free labor as against slave labor were working mightily to help men see the moral arguments of the antislavery people.

The division of interest was becoming plain; the forces of good sense and the principles of liberty were consolidating the North against farther extension of the slave-power. The perils foreseen by Calhoun, which he had striven to avoid by repression of all political discussion of slavery, were nigh at hand. The politicians of the North, too, scented the change, and began to range themselves with their section; and, while there was a long struggle yet ahead before the issues would be made up, to the eye of faith the end was already in sight, and the "Free-Soilers" now redoubled their efforts both in discussion and in political action.