Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 4

On this occasion at Canandaigua he rose to speak, and every word went to the hearts of his audience. ''Why,''

he began, ''do they conduct these hara.s.sing proceedings against these men? If any one is guilty, I am guilty.

With Samuel J. May I proposed the Jerry Rescue. We are responsible for it; why do they not prosecute us?''

And these words were followed by a train of cogent reasoning and stirring appeal.

The Jerry Rescue trials only made matters worse.

Their injustice disgusted the North, and their futility angered the South. They revealed one fact which especially vexed the Southern wing of the Democratic party, and this was, that their Northern allies could not be depended upon to execute the new compromise. In this Syracuse rescue one of the most determined leaders was a rough burly butcher, who had been all his life one of the loudest of pro-slavery Democrats, and who, until he saw Jerry dragged in manacles through the streets, had been most violent in his support of the fugitive slave law. The trials also stimulated the anti-slavery leaders and orators to new vigor. Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Sumner, and Seward aroused the anti-slavery forces as never before, and the ''Biglow Papers'' of James Russell Lowell, which made Northern pro-slavery men ridiculous, were read with more zest than ever.

But the abolition forces had the defects of their qualities, and their main difficulty really arose from the stimulus given to a thin fanaticism. There followed, in the train of the n.o.bler thinkers and orators, the ''Fool Reformers,''--sundry long-haired men and short-haired women, who thought it their duty to stir good Christian people with blasphemy, to deluge the founders of the Republic with blackguardism, and to invent ever more and more ingenious ways for driving every sober-minded man and woman out of the anti-slavery fold. More than once in those days I hung my head in disgust as I listened to these people, and wondered, for the moment, whether, after all, even the supremacy of slaveholders might not be more tolerable than the new heavens and the new earth, in which should dwell such bedraggled, screaming, denunciatory creatures.

At the next national election the Whigs nominated General Scott, a man of extraordinary merit and of grandiose appearance; but of both these qualities he was himself unfortunately too well aware; as a result the Democrats gave him the name of ''Old Fuss and Feathers,'' and a few unfortunate speeches, in one of which he expressed his joy at hearing that ''sweet Irish brogue,'' brought the laugh of the campaign upon him.

On the other hand the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce; a man greatly inferior to General Scott in military matters, but who had served well in the State politics of New Hamps.h.i.+re and in Congress, was widely beloved, of especially attractive manners, and of high personal character.

He also had been in the Mexican War, but though he had risen to be brigadier-general, his military record amounted to very little. There was in him, no doubt, some alloy of personal with public motives, but it would be unjust to say that selfishness was the only source of his political ideas. He was greatly impressed by the necessity of yielding to the South in order to save the Union, and had shown this by his utterances and votes in Congress: the South, therefore, accepted him against General Scott, who was supposed to have moderate anti- slavery views.

General Pierce was elected; the policy of his administration became more and more deeply pro-slavery; and now appeared upon the scene Stephen Arnold Douglas-- senator from Illinois, a man of remarkable ability,--a brilliant thinker and most effective speaker, with an extraordinary power of swaying men. I heard him at vari- ous times; and even after he had committed what seemed to me the unpardonable sin, it was hard to resist his eloquence. He it was who, doubtless from a mixture of motives, personal and public, had proposed the abolition of the Missouri Compromise, which since the year 1820 had been the bulwark of the new territories against the encroachments of slavery. The whole anti-slavery sentiment of the North was thereby intensified, and as the establishment of north polarity at one end of the magnet excites south polarity at the other, so Southern feeling in favor of slavery was thereby increased. Up to a recent period Southern leaders had, as a rule, deprecated slavery, and hoped for its abolition; now they as generally advocated it as good in itself;--the main foundation of civil liberty; the normal condition of the working cla.s.ses of every nation; and some of them urged the revival of the African slave-trade. The struggle became more and more bitter. I was during that time at Yale, and the general sentiment of that university in those days favored almost any concession to save the Union. The venerable Silliman, and a great majority of the older professors spoke at public meetings in favor of the pro-slavery compromise measures which they fondly hoped would settle the difficulty between North and South and restablish the Union on firm foundations. The new compromise was indeed a bitter dose for them, since it contained the fugitive slave law in its most drastic form; and every one of them, with the exception of a few theological doctrinaires who found slavery in the Bible, abhorred the whole slave system. The Yale faculty, as a rule, took ground against anti-slavery effort, and, among other ways of propagating what they considered right opinions, there was freely distributed among the students a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Boardman of Philadelphia, which went to extremes in advocating compromise with slavery and the slave power.

The great body of the students, also, from North and South, took the same side. It is a suggestive fact that whereas European students are generally inclined to radicalism, American students have been, since the war of the Revolution, eminently conservative.

To this pro-slavery tendency at Yale, in hope of saving the Union, there were two remarkable exceptions, one being the beloved and respected president of the university, Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, and the other his cla.s.smate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor of the great Center Church of New Haven, and frequently spoken of as the ''Congregational Pope of New England.'' They were indeed a remarkable pair; Woolsey, quiet and scholarly, at times irascible, but always kind and just; Bacon a rugged, leonine sort of man who, when he shook his mane in the pulpit and addressed the New England conscience, was heard throughout the nation.

These two, especially, braved public sentiment, as well as the opinion of their colleagues, and were supposed, at the time, to endanger the interests of Yale by standing against the fugitive slave law and other concessions to slavery and its extension. As a result Yale fell into disrepute in the South, which had, up to that time, sent large bodies of students to it, and I remember that a cla.s.smate of mine, a tall, harum-scarum, big-hearted, sandy-haired Georgian known as ''Jim'' Hamilton, left Yale in disgust, returned to his native heath, and was there welcomed with great jubilation. A poem was sent me, written by some ardent admirer of his, beginning with the words:

''G.o.d bless thee, n.o.ble Hamilton,'' &c.

On the other hand I was one of the small minority of students who remained uncompromisingly anti-slavery, and whenever I returned from Syracuse, my cla.s.smates and friends used to greet me in a jolly way by asking me ''How are you, Gerrit; how did you leave the Rev.

Antoinette Brown and brother Fred Douglas?'' In consequence I came very near being, in a small way, a martyr to my principles. Having had some success in winning essay prizes during my soph.o.m.ore and junior years, my name was naturally mentioned in connection with the election of editors for the ''Yale Literary Magazine.'' At this a very considerable body of Southern students and their Northern adherents declared against me. I neither said nor did anything in the premises, but two of my most conservative friends wrought valiantly in my behalf.

One was my dear old chum, Davies, the present Bishop of Michigan, at the very antipodes from myself on every possible question; and the other my life-long friend, Randall Lee Gibson of Kentucky, himself a large slaveholder, afterward a general in the Confederate service, and finally, at his lamented death a few years since, United States senator from Louisiana. Both these friends championed my cause, with the result that they saved me by a small majority.

As editor of the ''Yale Literary Magazine,'' through my senior year, I could publish nothing in behalf of my cherished anti-slavery ideas, since a decided majority of my fellow-editors would have certainly refused admission to any obnoxious article, and I therefore confined myself, in my editorial capacity, to literary and abstract matters; but with my college exercises it was different.

Professor Larned, who was charged with the criticism of our essays and speeches, though a very quiet man, was at heart deeply anti-slavery, and therefore it was that in sundry cla.s.s-room essays, as well as in speeches at the junior exhibition and at commencement, I was able to pour forth my ideas against what was stigmatized as the ''sum of human villainies.''

I was not free from temptation to an opposite course.

My experience at the college election had more than once suggested to my mind the idea that possibly I might be wrong, after all; that perhaps the voice of the people was really the voice of G.o.d; that if one wishes to accomplish anything he must work in harmony with the popular will; and that perhaps the best way would be to conform to the general opinion. To do so seemed, certainly, the only road to preferment of any kind. Such were the temptations which, in those days, beset every young man who dreamed of accomplis.h.i.+ng something in life, and they beset me in my turn; but there came a day when I dealt with them decisively. I had come up across New Haven Green thinking them over, and perhaps paltering rather contemptibly with my conscience; but arriving at the door of North College, I stopped a moment, ran through the whole subject in an instant, and then and there, on the stairway leading to my room, silently vowed that, come what might, I would never be an apologist for slavery or for its extension, and that what little I could do against both should be done.

I may add that my conscience was somewhat aided by a piece of casuistry from the most brilliant scholar in the Yale faculty of that time, Professor James Hadley.

I had been brought up with a strong conviction of the necessity of obedience to law as the first requirement in any State, and especially in a Republic; but here was the fugitive slave law. What was our duty regarding it?

This question having come up in one of our division- room debates, Professor Hadley, presiding, gave a decision to the following effect: ''On the statute books of all countries are many laws, obsolete and obsolescent; to disobey an obsolete law is frequently a necessity and never a crime. As to disobedience to an obsolescent law, the question in every man's mind must be as to the degree of its obsolescence. Laws are made obsolescent by change of circ.u.mstances, by the growth of convictions which render their execution impossible, and the like. Every man, therefore, must solemnly decide for himself at what period a law is virtually obsolete.''

I must confess that the doctrine seems to me now rather dangerous, but at that time I welcomed it as a very serviceable piece of casuistry, and felt that there was indeed, as Mr. Seward had declared, a ''higher law'' than the iniquitous enactment which allowed the taking of a peaceful citizen back into slavery, without any of the safeguards which had been developed under Anglo-Saxon liberty.

Though my political feelings throughout the senior year grew more and more intense, there was no chance for their expression either in compet.i.tion for the Clarke Essay Prize or for the De Forest Oration Gold Medal, the subjects of both being a.s.signed by the faculty; and though I afterward had the satisfaction of taking both these, my exultation was greatly alloyed by the thought that the ideas I most cherished could find little, if any, expression in them.

But on Commencement Day my chance came. Then I chose my own theme, and on the subject of ''Modern Oracles'' poured forth my views to a church full of people; many evidently disgusted, but a few as evidently pleased. I dwelt especially upon sundry utterances of John Quincy Adams, who had died not long before, and who had been, during all his later years, a most earnest opponent of slavery, and I argued that these, with the declarations of other statesmen of like tendencies, were the oracles to which the nation should listen.

Curiously enough this commencement speech secured for me the friends.h.i.+p of a man who was opposed to my ideas, but seemed to like my presenting them then and there--the governor of the State, Colonel Thomas Seymour. He had served with distinction in the Mexican War, had been elected and relected, again and again, governor of Connecticut, was devotedly pro-slavery, in the interest, as he thought, of preserving the Union; but he remembered my speech, and afterward, when he was made minister to Russia, invited me to go with him, attached me to his Legation, and became one of the dearest friends I have ever had.

Of the diplomatic phase of my life into which he initiated me, I shall speak in another chapter; but, as regards my political life, he influenced me decidedly, for his conversation and the reading he suggested led me to study closely the writings of Jefferson. The impulse thus given my mind was not spent until the Civil War, which, betraying the ultimate results of sundry Jeffersonian ideas, led me to revise my opinions somewhat and to moderate my admiration for the founder of American ''Democracy,'' though I have ever since retained a strong interest in his teaching.

But deeply as both the governor and myself felt on the slavery question, we both avoided it in our conversation.

Each knew how earnestly the other felt regarding it, and each, as if by instinct, kept clear of a discussion which could not change our opinions, and might wreck our friends.h.i.+p. The result was, that, so far as I remember, we never even alluded to it during the whole year we were together. Every other subject we discussed freely but this we never touched. The nearest approach to a discussion was when one day in the Legation Chancery at St. Petersburg, Mr. Erving, also a devoted Union pro- slavery Democrat, pointing to a map of the United States hanging on the wall, went into a rhapsody over the extension of the power and wealth of our country. I answered, ''If our country could get rid of slavery in all that beautiful region of the South, such a riddance would be cheap at the cost of fifty thousand lives and a hundred millions of dollars.'' At this Erving burst forth into a torrent of brotherly anger. ''There was no conceivable cause,'' he said, ''worth the sacrifice of fifty thousand lives, and the loss of a hundred millions of dollars would mean the blotting out of the whole prosperity of the nation.'' His deep earnestness showed me the impossibility of converting a man of his opinions, and the danger of wrecking our friends.h.i.+p by attempting it. Little did either of us dream that within ten years from that day slavery was to be abolished in the United States, at the sacrifice not of fifty thousand, but of nearly a million lives, and at the cost not merely of a hundred millions, but, when all is told, of at least ten thousand millions of dollars!

I may mention here that it was in this companions.h.i.+p, at St. Petersburg, that I began to learn why newspaper criticism has, in our country, so little permanent effect on the reputation of eminent men. During four years before coming abroad I had read, in leading Republican journals of New York and New Haven, denunciations of Governor Thomas Hart Seymour as an ignoramus, a pretender, a blatant demagogue, a sot and companion of sots, an a.s.sociate, and fit a.s.sociate, for the most worthless of the populace. I had now found him a man of real convictions, thoroughly a gentleman, quiet, conscientious, kindly, studious, thoughtful, modest, abstemious, hardly ever touching a gla.s.s of wine, a man esteemed and beloved by all who really knew him. Thus was first revealed to me what, in my opinion, is the worst evil in American public life,--that facility for unlimited slander, of which the first result is to degrade our public men, and the second result is to rob the press of that confidence among thinking people, and that power for good and against evil which it really ought to exercise. Since that time I have seen many other examples strengthening the same conviction.

Leaving St. Petersburg, I followed historical and, to some extent, political studies at the University of Berlin, having previously given attention to them in France; and finally, traveling in Italy, became acquainted with a man who made a strong impression upon me. This was Mr. Robert Dale Owen, then the American minister at Naples, whose pictures of Neapolitan despotism, as it then existed, made me even a stronger Republican than I had been before.

Returning to America I found myself on the eve of the new presidential election. The Republicans had nominated John C. Frmont, of whom all I knew was gathered from his books of travel. The Democrats had nominated James Buchanan, whom I, as an attach of the legation at St. Petersburg, had met while he was minister of the United States at London. He was a most kindly and impressive old gentleman, had welcomed me cordially at his legation, and at a large dinner given by Mr. George Peabody, at that time the American Amphitryon in the British metropolis, discussed current questions in a way that fascinated me. Of that I may speak in another chapter; suffice it here that he was one of the most attractive men in conversation I have ever met, and that is saying much.

I took but slight part in the campaign; in fact, a natural diffidence kept me aloof from active politics. Having given up all hope or desire for political preferment, and chosen a university career, I merely published a few newspaper and magazine articles, in the general interest of anti- slavery ideas, but made no speeches, feeling myself, in fact, unfit to make them.

But I shared more and more the feelings of those who supported Frmont.

Mr. Buchanan, though personal acquaintance had taught me to like him as a man, and the reading of his despatches in the archives of our legation at St. Petersburg had forced me to respect him as a statesman, represented to me the encroachments and domination of American slavery, while Frmont represented resistance to such encroachments, and the perpetuity of freedom upon the American Continent.

On election day, 1856, I went to the polls at the City Hall of Syracuse to cast my first vote. There I chanced to meet an old schoolmate who had become a brilliant young lawyer, Victor Gardner, with whom, in the old days, I had often discussed political questions, he being a Democrat and I a Republican. But he had now come upon new ground, and, wis.h.i.+ng me to do the same, he tendered me what was known as ''The American Ticket,''

bearing at its head the name of Millard Fillmore. He claimed that it represented resistance to the encroachments and dangers which he saw in the enormous foreign immigration of the period, and above all in the increasing despotism of the Roman Catholic hierarchy controlling the Irish vote. Most eloquently did my old friend discourse on the dangers from this source. He insisted that Roman Catholic bishops and priests had wrecked every country in which they had ever gained control; that they had aided in turning the mediaeval republics into despotisms; that they had ruined Spain and the South American republics; that they had rendered Poland and Ireland unable to resist oppression; that they had hopelessly enfeebled Austria and Italy; that by St.

Bartholomew ma.s.sacres and clearing out of Huguenots they had made, first, terrorism, and, finally, despotism necessary in France; that they had rendered every people they had controlled careless of truth and inclined to despotism,--either of monarchs or ''bosses'';--that our prisons were filled with the youth whom they had trained in religion and morals; that they were ready to ravage the world with fire and sword to gain the slightest point for the Papacy; that they were the sworn foes of our public- school system, without which no such thing as republican government could exist among us; that, in fact, their bishops and priests were the enemies of everything we Americans should hold dear, and that their church was not so much a religious organization as a political conspiracy against the best that mankind had achieved.

''Look at the Italians, Spanish, French to-day, ''he said. ''The Church has had them under its complete control fifteen hundred years, and you see the result. Look at the Irish all about us;--always screaming for liberty, yet the most abject slaves of their pa.s.sions and of their priesthood.''

He spoke with the deepest earnestness and even eloquence; others gathered round, and some took his tickets.

I refused them, saying, ''No. The question of all questions to me is whether slavery or freedom is to rule this Republic,'' and, having taken a Republican ticket, I went up-stairs to the polls. On my arrival at the ballot-box came a most exasperating thing. A drunken Irish Democrat standing there challenged my vote. He had, perhaps, not been in the country six months; I had lived in that very ward since my childhood, knew and was known by every other person present; and such was my disgust that it is not at all unlikely that if one of Gardner's tickets had been in my pocket, it would have gone into the ballot-box. But persons standing by,--Democrats as well as Republicans,--having quieted this perfervid patriot, and saved me from the ignominy of swearing in my vote, I carried out my original intention, and cast my first vote for the Republican candidate.

Certainly Providence was kind to the United States in that contest. For Frmont was not elected. Looking back over the history of the United States I see, thus far, no instant when everything we hold dear was so much in peril as on that election day.

We of the Republican party were fearfully mistaken, and among many evidences in history that there is ''a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,'' I think that the non-election of Frmont is one of the most convincing. His election would have precipitated the contest brought on four years later by the election of Lincoln. But the Northern States had in 1856 no such preponderance as they had four years later.

No series of events had then occurred to arouse and consolidate anti-slavery feeling like those between 1856 and 1860. Moreover, of all candidates for the Presidency ever formally nominated by either of the great parties up to that time, Frmont was probably the most unfit. He had gained credit for his expedition across the plains to California, and deservedly; his popular name of ''Pathfinder''

might have been of some little use in a political campaign, and some romantic interest attached to him on account of his marriage with Jessie Benton, daughter of the burly, doughty, honest-purposed, headstrong senator from Missouri.

But his earlier career, when closely examined, and, even more than that, his later career, during the Civil War, showed doubtful fitness for any duties demanding clear purpose, consecutive thought, adhesion to a broad policy, wisdom in counsel, or steadiness in action. Had he been elected in 1856 one of two things would undoubtedly have followed: either the Union would have been permanently dissolved, or it would have been reestablished by anchoring slavery forever in the Const.i.tution. Never was there a greater escape.

On March 1, 1857, I visited Was.h.i.+ngton for the first time. It was indeed the first time I had ever trodden the soil of a slave State, and, going through Baltimore, a sense of this gave me a feeling of horror. The whole atmosphere of that city seemed gloomy, and the city of Was.h.i.+ngton no better. Our little company established itself at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, then a famous hostelry. Henry Clay had died there not long before, and various eminent statesmen had made it, and were then making it, their headquarters.

On the evening of my arrival a curious occurrence showed me the difference between Northern and Southern civilization. As I sat in the reading-room, there rattled upon my ear utterances betokening a vigorous dispute in the adjoining bar-room, and, as they were loud and long, I rose and walked toward the disputants, as men are wont to do on such occasions in the North; when, to my surprise I found that, though the voices were growing steadily louder, people were very generally leaving the room; presently, the reason dawned upon me: it was a case in which revolvers might be drawn at any moment, and the bystanders evidently thought life and limb more valuable than any information they were likely to obtain by remaining.

On the evening of the third of March I went with the crowd to the White House. We were marshalled through the halls, President Pierce standing in the small chamber adjoining the East Room to receive the guests, around him being members of the Cabinet, with others distinguished in the civil, military, and naval service, and, among them, especially prominent, Senator Douglas, then at the height of his career. Persons in the procession were formally presented, receiving a kindly handshake, and then allowed to pa.s.s on. My abhorrence of the Presi- dent and of Douglas was so bitter that I did a thing for which the only excuse was my youth:--I held my right hand by my side, walked by and refused to be presented.

Next morning I was in the crowd at the east front of the Capitol, and, at the time appointed, Mr. Buchanan came forth and took the oath administered to him by the Chief Justice, Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland. Though Taney was very decrepit and feeble, I looked at him much as a Spanish Protestant in the sixteenth century would have looked at Torquemada; for, as Chief Justice, he was understood to be in the forefront of those who would fasten African slavery on the whole country; and this view of him seemed justified when, two days after the inauguration, he gave forth the Dred Scott decision, which interpreted the Const.i.tution in accordance with the ultra pro-slavery theory of Calhoun.

Having taken the oath, Mr. Buchanan delivered the inaugural address, and it made a deep impression upon me.

I began to suspect then, and I fully believe now, that he was sincere, as, indeed, were most of those whom men of my way of thinking in those days attacked as pro-slavery tools and ridiculed as ''doughfaces.'' We who had lived remote from the scene of action, and apart from pressing responsibility, had not realized the danger of civil war and disunion. Mr. Buchanan, and men like him, in Congress, constantly a.s.sociating with Southern men, realized both these dangers. They honestly and patriotically shrank from this horrible prospect; and so, had we realized what was to come, would most of us have done. I did not see this then, but looking back across the abyss of years I distinctly see it now. The leaders on both sides were honest and patriotic, and, as I firmly believe, instruments of that ''Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.''

There was in Mr. Buchanan's inaugural address a tone of deep earnestness. He declared that all his efforts should be given to restore the Union, and to restablish it upon permanent foundations; besought his fellow-citizens throughout the Union to second him in this effort, and promised that under no circ.u.mstances would he be a candidate for relection. My anti-slavery feelings remained as deep as ever, but, hearing this speech, there came into my mind an inkling of the truth: ''Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute.''

During my stay in Was.h.i.+ngton I several times visited the Senate and the House, in the old quarters which they shortly afterward vacated in order to enter the more commodious rooms of the Capitol, then nearly finished.

The Senate was in the room at present occupied by the Supreme Court, and from the gallery I looked down upon it with mingled feelings of awe, distrust, and aversion. There, as its president, sat Mason of Virginia, author of the fugitive slave law; there, at the desk in front of him, sat Ca.s.s of Michigan, who, for years, had been especially subservient to the slave power; Douglas of Illinois, who had brought about the destruction of the Missouri Compromise; Butler of South Carolina, who represented in perfection the slave-owning aristocracy; Slidell and Benjamin of Louisiana, destined soon to play leading parts in the disruption of the Union.

But there were others. There was Seward, of my own State, whom I had been brought up to revere, and who seemed to me, in the struggle then going on, the incarnation of righteousness; there was Charles Sumner of Ma.s.sachusetts, just recovering from the murderous blows given him by Preston Brooks of South Carolina, --a martyr, as I held, to his devotion to freedom; there was John Parker Hale of New Hamps.h.i.+re, who had been virtually threatened with murder, as a penalty for his opposition to slavery; and there was bluff Ben Wade of Ohio, whose courage strengthened the whole North.

The House of Representatives interested me less. In it there sat various men now mainly pa.s.sed out of human memory; and, unfortunately, the hall, though one of the finest, architecturally, in the world, was one of the least suited to its purpose. To hear anything either in the galleries or on the floor was almost an impossibility.