The Negro and the Nation Part 3

CHAPTER VII

THE UNDERLYING FORCES

Two master pa.s.sions strove for leaders.h.i.+p in the mind and heart of America. One was love of the united nation and ardor to maintain its union. The other was the aspiration to purify the nation, by removing the wrong of slavery. Unionist and Abolitionist stood face to face.

After many years they were to stand shoulder to shoulder, in a common cause. In a larger sense than he gave the words, Webster's utterance became the final watchword: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

In the retrospect of history, our attention naturally fastens on the conspicuous and heroic figures. But we must not forget the underlying and often determining forces,--the interests, beliefs, and pa.s.sions, of the ma.s.s of the community. And, while listening intently to the articulate voices, the impressive utterances, we are to remember that the life of the community as of the individual is shaped oftenest by the inarticulate, unavowed, half-unconscious sentiments:

Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say we feel,--below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.

The underlying human force in the slavery question was the primitive instinct in man to keep all he has got; the instinct of the man who lives at another's expense to keep on doing so. That underlay all the fine theories about differences of race, all the theological deductions from Noah's curse upon Canaan. Another great and constant factor was the absorption of men and communities, not personally concerned in a social wrong, in pursuits and interests of their own which shut out all outlook beyond. In our day we hear much about the crowding rush of material interests, but that crowd and rush was felt almost as much in the earlier generations, when hardly less than the most strident tones of the agitator could pierce the absorption of the street and market-place.

There was the inertia of custom; there were the commercial interests closely interwoven of the Southern planter and the Northern manufacturer; there was the prejudice of color and race; and all these influences, open or latent, told powerfully for keeping slavery as it was.

The great default, the fatal failure, was the omission of the Southern whites, especially their leaders by education and by popular recognition, to take deliberate and systematic measures for the removal of slavery. Difficult? Yes, very. Impossible? Why, almost every other country of North and South America,--including the Spanish-Americans on whom the English-Americans look down with such superiority,--these all got rid of slavery without violence or revolution. Whatever the case required,--of preparation, compensation, new industrial arrangement,--the Southern whites had the whole business in their hands, to deal with as they pleased. Whatever cries might be raised by a few for instant and unconditional emanc.i.p.ation, there never was a day when the vast ma.s.s of the American people, of all sections, were not avowedly and unmistakably committed to letting the Southern States treat slavery as their own matter, and deal with it as they pleased, provided only they kept it at home. Excuses for non-action there were, of course,--the perplexities of the situation, the irritation of criticism from without,--but Nature has no use for excuses. If there is a cancer in the system it is useless to plead the expense of the surgery or the pain of the knife. The alternative is simple--removal or death.

It is always impossible to distinguish closely in the causes of events between the action of human will and the wider forces which we call Nature or Providence. But in some eras we distinguish more clearly than in others the effect of human personalities. For example, in the making of the Const.i.tution we see a difficult situation taken wisely and resolutely in hand by a group of strong men; they made themselves a part of Fate. But in the fluctuating history of slavery, with its final catastrophe, we seem to be looking at elemental movements; ma.s.ses of men drifting under impulses, with no leaders.h.i.+p adequate to the occasion.

The men who seemingly might have mastered the situation, and brought it to a peaceful and right solution, either could not or would not do it.

What happened was, that two opposite social systems, existing within the same political body, came into rivalry, into hostility, and at last into direct conflict. In the early stages, slavery had on its side the advantage of an established place under the law, the support of its local communities becoming more and more determined, the long-time indifference and inertia of the free States, custom, conservatism, timidity, race prejudice. But against all this were operating steadily two tremendous forces. In the race for industrial advantage which is at last the decisive test, free society was superior to slave society by as much as the freeman is superior to the slave. The advantage of the Northern farmer or mechanic over the negro slave was the measure of the advantage of the North over the South. In increase of wealth; in variety, intensity, and productiveness of social life; in immigration; in intellectual progress, the free States outstripped the slave States by leaps and bounds. And, again, in the conscience of humanity,--in mankind's sense of right and wrong, which grows ever a more potent factor in the world's affairs,--the tide was setting steadily and swiftly against slavery. To impatient reformers who, as Horace Mann said, were always in a hurry, while G.o.d never is,--the tide might seem motionless or refluent, as to him who looks hastily from the ocean sh.o.r.e; but as the sea follows the moon, the hearts of men were following the new risen luminary of humanity's G.o.d-given rights.

And so, under each special phase of the conflict, slavery had against it that dominant force which acts on one side in the material progress of society, and on the other side in the human conscience; that force--"some call it Evolution, and others call it G.o.d."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MEXICAN WAR

We have seen that about 1832-3 a new distinctness and prominence was given to the slavery question by various events,--the substantial victory of the South Carolina nullifiers, and the leaders.h.i.+p thenceforth of the South by Calhoun; Nat Turner's rising, and the rejection by Virginia of the emanc.i.p.ation policy; the compensated liberation of the West India slaves by the British Government; and the birth of aggressive Abolitionism under the lead of Garrison. We have now to glance at the main course of history for the next twenty years. Party politics had for a time no direct relation to slavery. The new organizations of Whigs and Democrats disputed on questions of a national bank, internal improvements, and the tariff. The Presidency was easily won in 1836 by Jackson's lieutenant, Van Buren; but the commercial crash of 1837 produced a revulsion of feeling which enabled the Whigs to elect Benjamin Harrison in 1840. His early death gave the Presidency to John Tyler of Virginia, who soon alienated his party, and who was thoroughly Southern in his sympathies and policy.

The newly aroused anti-slavery enthusiasm in the North found expression in pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

It was not intrinsically a great matter, but it was the one point where the national authority seemed clearly to have a chance to act--questions of new territory being for the time in abeyance. Pet.i.tions poured in on Congress with thousands of signatures--then with tens, then hundreds of thousands. There was a hot struggle as to whether the pet.i.tions should be received at all by the Senate and House. John Quincy Adams, willing after his Presidency to serve in the humbler capacity of congressman, was the champion of the right of pet.i.tion. Calhoun had entered the Senate in 1832 and remained there with a brief intermission until his death in 1850. He stood independent of the two great parties, with his own State always solidly behind him, and with growing influence over the whole South. He was the leader in opposing the admission of the pet.i.tions. He maintained that any discussion in Congress of such a topic was injurious and incendiary; he voiced the new sentiment of the South that all agitation of slavery was an invasion of its rights. "Hands off!" was the cry. The question was settled in 1836, after long debates, by another compromise, proposed by James Buchanan of Pennsylvania; the pet.i.tions were given a formal reception, but instantly rejected without debate.

Another burning question was the circulation of anti-slavery doc.u.ments through the Southern mails. In 1835 a mob in Charleston broke open the post-office, and made a bonfire of all such matter they could find. The social leaders and the clergy of the city applauded. The postmaster-general under Jackson, Amos Kendall, wrote to the local postmaster who had connived at the act: "I cannot sanction and will not condemn the step you have taken." Jackson asked Congress to pa.s.s a law excluding anti-slavery literature from the mails. Even this was not enough for Calhoun; he claimed that every State had a right to pa.s.s such legislation for itself, with paramount authority over any act of Congress. But the South would not support him in this claim; and indeed he was habitually in advance of his section, which followed him generally at an interval of a few years. Congress refused to pa.s.s any law on the subject. But the end was reached without law; Southern postmasters systematically refused to transmit anti-slavery doc.u.ments--even of so moderate character as the New York _Tribune_--and this was their practice until the Civil War. "A gross infraction of law and right!" said the North. "But," said the South, "would you allow papers to circulate in your postoffices tending directly to breed revolt and civil war? If the mails cannot be used in the service of gambling and lotteries, with far more reason may we shut out incitements to insurrection like Nat Turner's."

On a similar plea all freedom of speech in Southern communities on the question of slavery was practically denied. Anti-slavery men were driven from their homes. In Kentucky, one man stood out defiantly and successfully. Ca.s.sius M. Clay opposed slavery, advocated its compensated abolition, and was as ready to defend himself with pistols as with arguments. He stood his ground to the end, and in 1853 he settled Rev.

John G. Fee at Berea, who established a group of anti-slavery churches and schools, which was broken up after John Brown's raid, but after the war was revived as Berea College. But as a rule free speech in the South was at an end before 1840. No man dared use language like that of Patrick Henry and Madison; and Jefferson's _Notes on Virginia_, if newly published, would have been excluded from the mails and its author exiled.

South Carolina pa.s.sed a law under which negro seamen on s.h.i.+ps entering her ports were put in jail while their vessel remained, and if the jail fees were not paid, they were sold into slavery. When Ma.s.sachusetts seamen suffered under this law, the State government in 1844 dispatched an eminent citizen, Samuel h.o.a.r, to try to secure a modification of the enactment. Arriving in Charleston, accompanied by his daughter, Mr. h.o.a.r was promptly visited in his hotel by a committee of prominent men and obliged to leave the city and State at once.

The North had its share of violence. In Connecticut a school for negro children, kept by two white women, was forcibly broken up. In Illinois in 1837 an anti-slavery newspaper office was destroyed by a mob, and its proprietor, Elijah P. Lovejoy, was murdered.

In the Presidential election of 1840 slavery was almost forgotten. The Whigs were bent on overthrowing the Democratic administration, to which they attributed the hard times following 1837; and they raised a popular hurrah for the candidate of the "plain people," William Henry Harrison of Indiana, who had won a victory over the Indians at Tippecanoe. In a canva.s.s where "log-cabins" and "hard cider" gave the watchwords and emblems, national politics played little part. But now first those resolute anti-slavery men who were determined to bring their cause before the people as a political issue, and fight it out in that arena, with solid ranks be their forces ever so small,--came together and nominated for the Presidency James G. Birney. They could give him but a handful of votes, but it was the raising of a flag which twenty years was to carry to victory. Birney, never an extremist, had grown to a full recognition of all that was at stake. He wrote in 1835: "The contest is becoming--has become--not one alone of freedom for the blacks, but of freedom for the whites.... There will be no cessation of the strife until slavery shall be exterminated or liberty destroyed."

For a dozen years there had been only skirmis.h.i.+ng. Now came on a battle royal, or rather a campaign, from 1844 to 1850,--the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the last great compromise. Texas, a province of Mexico after Mexico became free from Spain, received a steady immigration from the American Southwestern States. These immigrants became restive under Mexican control, declared their independence in 1835, and practically secured it after sharp fighting.

Slavery, abolished under Mexico, was re-established by the republic of Texas. From the character of its population, it seemed to gravitate toward the United States. The keen eyes of the Southern leaders were early fixed upon it. Annex Texas, and a great field of expansion for slavery was open. Its votes in the Senate and House would be added to the Southern column, and from its immense domain future States might be carved. As early as 1829 Lundy's and Garrison's _Genius_ had protested against this scheme. The time was now ripe for carrying it out. Calhoun was again the leader. He claimed to be "the author of annexation," and with good reason. He exchanged the Senate for Tyler's cabinet as Secretary of War in 1844, the change being engineered by Henry A. Wise, one of the rising men in Virginia,--for the express purpose of bringing in Texas. A treaty of annexation was negotiated with Texas, and sent to the Senate. There were difficulties; the Texans had cooled in their zeal for annexation; and the American Senate was not over-favorable. To give the necessary impetus, Calhoun,--so says Van Holst, in his excellent and not unfriendly biography,--fell below his habitual sincerity, and misrepresented a dispatch of the English Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, as showing a disposition on England's part to get hold of Texas for herself. It was a Presidential year; the Democratic convention nominated James K. Polk of Tennessee, and pa.s.sed a resolution favoring annexation. But Calhoun had now shown his motive so plainly that the country took alarm, and the Senate rejected the treaty. The Whigs nominated Clay. He was believed to be opposed to the annexation scheme, but his hunger for the great prize betrayed him into an equivocal expression, which lost him the confidence of the strong anti-slavery men. Again they nominated Birney,--taking now the name of the Liberty party--and gave him so many votes that the result was to lose New York and Michigan for Clay, and Polk was elected. The administration now claimed--though in truth the combined Whig and Liberty vote put it in a minority--that it had received a plebiscite of popular support on its annexation policy. Thus emboldened, its friends,--knowing that they could not yet count on the two-thirds vote necessary for a senatorial confirmation,--dropped the treaty altogether, and brought into Congress a joint resolution affirming the annexation of Texas to the Union. This won the necessary majority in both houses, and as the last act of Tyler's administration Texas was declared a State.

Calhoun now returned to the Senate,--his temporary subst.i.tute promptly vacating at his word. Thus far he had triumphed. But his a.s.sociates in their elation were eager for another conquest. Texas is ours, now let us have California and the Pacific! But to that end, Mexico, reluctant to yield Texas, and wholly unwilling to cede more territory, must be attacked and despoiled. At that proposal Calhoun drew back. It does not appear that he had any scruples about Mexico. But, keener-sighted than his followers, he knew that any further acquisitions to the West would be stoutly and hopefully claimed by the North. His warning was in vain; he had lighted a fire and now could not check it. The next step was to force Mexico into a war. She claimed the river Nueces as her boundary with Texas, while Texas claimed the Rio Grande. Instructions were quietly given to General Taylor, in January, 1846, to throw his small force into the disputed territory, so near the Rio Grande as to invite a Mexican attack. The Mexican force did attack him, and President Polk instantly declared that "war existed by the act of Mexico"--thus allowing Congress no chance to pa.s.s on it. As is the way of nations, fighting once begun, every consideration of justice was ignored and the only word was "our country, right or wrong." Congressmen of both parties voted whatever supplies were needed for the war; and the Whigs, trying to throw the blame on the President, put no obstacles in the way of his conquest of Mexico. Only one man in Congress spoke out for justice as higher than party or country. Thomas Corwin of Ohio, in a powerful speech, denounced the whole iniquitous business, and declared that were he a Mexican facing the American invaders of his home, "I would welcome them with hospitable hands to b.l.o.o.d.y graves!"

The war called out another voice that went home to the heart of the people,--the voice of James Russell Lowell in the "Biglow Papers." In the homely Yankee vernacular he spoke for the highest conscience of New England. The righteous wrath was winged with stinging wit and lightened with broad humor. He spoke for that sentiment of the new and n.o.bler America which abhorred slavery and detested war, and saw in a war for the extension of slavery a crime against G.o.d and man. The politician's sophistries, the respectable conventionalities current in church and state, found no mercy at his hands:

Ez fer war, I call it murder,-- There you hev it plain and flat: I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that: G.o.d hez sed so plump an' fairly, It's ez long ez it is broad, An' you've got to git up airly Ef you want to take in G.o.d.

'Tain't your eppyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right; 'Tain't a follerin' your bell-wethers Will excuse ye in his sight; Ef you take a sword and draw it, An' go stick a feller thru, Guv'ment ain't to answer for it, G.o.d'll send the bill to you.

Ma.s.sachusetts, G.o.d forgive her, She's a kneelin' with the rest, She, that ought to hav' clung forever In her grand old eagle-nest.

Let our dear old Bay State proudly Put the trumpet to her mouth, Let her ring this messidge loudly In the ears of all the South:

"I'll return ye good fer evil Much ez we frail mortals can, But I won't go help the Devil Makin' man the cus o' man; Call me coward, call me traitor, Jest ez suits your mean idees, Here I stand a tyrant-hater, An' the friend o' G.o.d and Peace."

CHAPTER IX

HOW DEAL WITH THE TERRITORIES?

Meanwhile, the American army,--accepting as its sole part to obey orders, not questioning why,--though such officers as Grant and Lee had no liking for the task set them,--and reinforced by volunteer regiments from the Southwest,--was steadily fighting its way to the Mexican capital; Taylor's force advancing from Texas, while Scott moved from Vera Cruz. The Mexicans resisted bravely, but were beaten again and again, and upon the capture of the city of Mexico they gave up the contest.

Spite of the _eclat_ of victories, the war had been so little popular in the North that the congressional election of 1846 displaced the administration majority in the House and gave the Whigs a preponderance.

But, with the excitement of the complete victory over Mexico in the next year, came a fresh wave of the aggressive temper. It was freely advocated that Mexico should be annexed bodily. Against this madness Henry Clay spoke out with his old-time power. Clearly the country would tolerate no such extreme, and the annexationists contented themselves with mulcting Mexico, upon the payment of $6,000,000, of the vast territory known as California.

Then set in with full vigor the controversy over the new territory which Calhoun had foreseen. Calhoun had been left in a sort of isolation by his defection from the administration upon the war, but he did not break with President Polk; for the reason, says Von Holst, that he wanted to save his influence to oppose the tendency to a war with England. Oregon had been held in joint occupancy by the two nations for many years; now a line of demarcation was to be drawn, and there was a loud popular demand for maintaining at any cost the extreme northern line of lat.i.tude--it was "Fifty-four-forty or fight." But the sense of the country was against coming to extremities, and Calhoun--a statesman when slavery was not concerned--threw his influence with the moderate sentiment which secured the acceptance of the line of 49 degrees. But he looked with foreboding eyes on the deepening conflict of the sections and the advantage which gravitated toward the North;--from political causes, he declared, unwilling or unable to recognize that the industrial superiority lay inevitably with free labor. He met the danger with a bolder and more advanced claim. The South, he declared, had had enough of compromise over territory; it must now fall back on its ultimate right under the Const.i.tution; and that right was that slaves, being lawful property, might be taken into any territory of the United States, and Congress had no right to forbid their introduction; neither had Congress a right to refuse admission of any State whose people desired to retain slavery. This was a claim for the nationalization of slavery; and it was not until after Calhoun's death that the South came to this position, staked its cause upon it, and when it was rejected by the popular vote broke with the Union.

But Calhoun's logic and pa.s.sion had not yet brought his section up to his own position, and over the division of the newly acquired territory North and South disputed as before. While the war was still waging, President Polk asked for an appropriation to be expended as compensation for new territory; and David Wilmot, a Democratic member from Pennsylvania, moved that a proviso be added, stipulating that from any new territory acquired by purchase slavery should be excluded. This was pa.s.sed by the House, but rejected by the Senate. The Senate was long the stronghold of the South, the States having an equal representation, while in the House the greater increase of free State population gave them a fresh advantage at each new census and apportionment. The "Wilmot proviso" was for some years the watchword of the anti-extensionists. To the typical Northerner, it seemed monstrous that slavery should be introduced by law in territory where it had no previous existence. To the typical Southerner it seemed no less unjust that his peculiar inst.i.tutions and usages should be excluded from the common domain, for which his section had paid its share of money and more than its share of blood.

While the question of the new territory had scarcely taken definite form, there came the Presidential election of 1848. In the Whig convention Clay's ambition received its final disappointment; Webster had hardly a chance; all the statesmen of the party were set aside in favor of General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, an upright, soldierly man, a slaveholder, entirely unversed in civil affairs, and his claim resting solely on successful generals.h.i.+p in the war. The Democrats nominated Lewis Ca.s.s of Michigan, a mediocre politician, regarded by the South as a trustworthy servant. The third party displayed new strength, and exchanged the name of "Liberty" for "Free Soil." Under the stimulus of recent events recruits of power and promise came to its standard. In Ma.s.sachusetts it gained such men as Samuel h.o.a.r, Charles Sumner, Charles Francis Adams, and Henry Wilson from the Whigs; and from the Democrats, Robert Rantoul and N. P. Banks. Wilson and Charles Allen, delegates to the Whig convention, declared,--when that body in its resolutions absolutely ignored the question of slavery extension, and sank all principles in a hurrah for "Old Rough and Ready,"--that they would no longer support the party. They went home to work with their old friends, the "Conscience Whigs," for the success of the Free Soil party, whose convention was to meet at Buffalo. To that convention came strong allies from Ohio. There were Joshua Giddings, for years one of the few congressmen cla.s.sed distinctly as anti-slavery, and Salmon P. Chase. New York State offered a reinforcement strong in numbers, but in some respects questionable. The anti-slavery Democrats in the State, nicknamed "Barnburners"--because "they would burn the barn to get rid of the rats"--were ready to break with their party, but their quarrel was partly a personal one. They were welcomed, however, and from their ranks was selected the Presidential candidate--of all men, ex-President Martin Van Buren, known of old as "the Northern man with Southern principles,"

but willing now to Northernize his principles with the Presidency in view. Such a nomination went far to take the heart out of the genuine anti-slavery men; and the strong name of Charles Francis Adams for vice-president could not make good the weakness of the head of the ticket. Should a real Free Soiler vote for Van Buren,--the probable effect being to improve Ca.s.s's chances over Taylor, just as the Birney vote four years earlier had beaten Clay and brought in Polk and all his consequences--or vote for Taylor, trusting to his personal character and the influences surrounding him for a practical advantage to the side of freedom? The latter alternative was the choice of many, including Horace Greeley and his a.s.sociates, Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward. With such help, and mainly on his strength as a military hero, Taylor was elected. In the result there was considerable hope for the anti-slavery cause. For Seward, who had been chosen to the Senate from New York, was very influential with the new President, and Seward was one of the coming men, clearly destined to be a leader among those who were to succeed the great triumvirate of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. He was high-minded, cultivated, and united lofty ideals with practical wisdom.

A thorough const.i.tutionalist, he believed there were legitimate ways of advancing freedom under the Const.i.tution; and in a speech at Cleveland he had declared: "Slavery can be limited to its present bounds; it can be ameliorated; it can be abolished; and you and I must do it." Ohio sent to the Senate another of the coming men, Salmon P. Chase, resembling Seward in his broad and philosophical views and his firm but const.i.tutional opposition to slavery.

CHAPTER X

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

To win California as slave territory the Southern leaders had forced the war on Mexico. The territory was won, and no political force had developed strong enough to halt their progress. But now came a check from the realm which could not be cajoled or brow-beaten,--the world of natural and industrial forces. Gold was discovered in California. There was a rush of immigrants, and a swift opening and settlement of the country. The pioneers--hardy, enterprising and democratic--had no use nor room for slaves. They held a convention, with the encouragement of President Taylor; framed a Const.i.tution in which slavery was excluded from the future State--this by unanimous vote, including the 15 delegates who had come from slave States; and the popular vote ratified the proposed Const.i.tution by 10 to 1. Then they asked for admission to the Union.

The Southern faction was wrathful. The extremists were for excluding the new State unless slavery was permitted. But it was clear that slavery could not be forced on a State against the wish of its entire people.

Then compensation was sought in concessions to be made by the North. The remainder of the new domain, Utah and New Mexico, was not ripe for Statehood; but let slavery, it was urged, be established as a territorial condition. Then came up another grievance of the South. Its fugitive slaves, escaping over the border line, were systematically helped, either to make their way to Canada and the protection of the British flag, or to safe homes in the Northern States. Naturally the slaves who dared the perils of escape were either the most energetic or the most wronged, and sympathy for them at the North was active and resourceful. Along their most frequented routes of flight were systematic provisions of shelter and help, known as "the underground railroad." The Federal Const.i.tution required their return, but this task had been left to State laws and courts, and was performed slackly, if at all. The total number of fugitives was not large nor the pecuniary loss heavy, but the South was exasperated by what it considered a petty and contemptible depredation. So there was a demand that the Federal government should undertake and enforce the return of fugitive slaves.