The Life of Lyman Trumbull Part 8

_Mem._: $2 sent by Trumbull June 20th, '57.

The debate in the Senate on the Lecompton Bill continued till March 23.

The best speech on the Republican side was made by Fessenden, of Maine, than whom a more consummate debater or more knightly character and presence has not graced the Senate chamber in my time, if ever. On the administration side the laboring oar was taken by Toombs, who spoke with more truculence than he had shown in the Thirty-fourth Congress.

Jefferson Davis, who had been returned to the Senate after serving as Secretary of War under Pierce, bore himself in this debate with decorum and moderation.

The Lecompton Bill pa.s.sed the Senate, but was disagreed to by the House, and a conference committee was appointed which adopted a bill proposed by Congressman English, of Indiana, which offered a large bonus of lands to Kansas, for schools, for a university, and for public buildings, if she would vote to come into the Union under the Lecompton Const.i.tution now. If she would not so vote, she should not have the lands and should not come into the Union until she should have a population sufficient to elect one member of Congress on the ratio prescribed by law. The form of submission to a popular vote was to be: "Proposition accepted," or "Proposition rejected." If there was a majority of acceptances, the territory should be admitted as a state at once. Senator Seward and Representative Howard, Republican members of the conference committee, dissented from the report. This bill pa.s.sed the House.

Douglas made a dignified speech against the English Bill, showing that it was in the nature of a bribe to the people to vote in a particular way. Although he did not think that the bribe would prevail, he could not accept the principle. The bill nevertheless pa.s.sed on the last day of April, and on the 2d of August the English proposition was voted down by the people of Kansas by an overwhelming majority. The Lecompton Const.i.tution thus disappeared from sublunary affairs, and John Calhoun disappeared from Kansas as soon as steps were taken to look into the returns of previous elections canva.s.sed by him.

The opinion of a man of high position on the att.i.tude of President Buchanan toward Lecomptonism is found in another letter to Trumbull:

J. D. Caton, chief justice of the supreme court of Illinois, Ottawa, March 6, 1858, does not think all the Presidents and all the Cabinets and all the Congresses and all the supreme courts and all the slaveholders on earth, with all the const.i.tutions that could be drawn, could ever make Kansas a slave state. "No, there has been no such expectation, and I do not believe desire on the part of the present administration to make it a slave state, but as he [Buchanan] had already been pestered to death with it, he resolved to make it a state as soon as possible, and thus being rid of it, let them fight it out as they liked. In this mood the Southern members of the Cabinet found him when the news came of that Lecompton Const.i.tution being framed, and he committed himself, thinking, no doubt, that Douglas would be hot for it and that there would be no general opposition in his own party to it.... You say that the slave trade will be established in every state in the Union in five years if the Democratic party retains power! As b.u.t.terfield told the Universalist preacher, who was proving that all men would be saved, 'We hope for better things.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[30] _Cong. Globe_, vol. 42, p. 16.

[31] _Cong. Globe_, 85th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 571.

[32] Lincoln and Herndon, by Joseph Fort Newton, p. 148.

[33] Frederick Trevor Hill in _Harper's Magazine_, July, 1907.

CHAPTER VI

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1858 AND THE JOHN BROWN RAID

The events described in the preceding chapter left Senator Douglas still the towering figure in national politics. Although he had contributed but a small part of the votes in the Senate and House by which the Lecompton Bill had been defeated, he had furnished an indispensable part. He had humbled the Buchanan administration. He had delivered Kansas from the grasp of the Border Ruffians. What he might do for freedom in the future, if properly encouraged, loomed large in the imagination of the Eastern Republicans. Greeley, Seward, Banks, Bowles, Burlingame, Henry Wilson, and scores of lesser lights were quoted as desiring to see him returned to the Senate by Republican votes. Some were even willing to support him for the Presidency.

The Republicans of Illinois did not share this enthusiasm. Not only had they fixed upon Lincoln as their choice for Senator, but they felt that they could not trust Douglas. He still said that he cared not whether slavery was voted down or voted up. That was the very thing they did care about. Could they a.s.sume that, after being reelected by their votes and made their standard-bearer, he would be a new man, different from the one he had been before? And if he remained of the same opinions as before, what would become of the Republican party? Who could answer for the demoralizing effects of taking him for a leader? The views of the party leaders in Illinois are set forth at considerable length in letters received by Senator Trumbull, the first one from Lincoln himself:

BLOOMINGTON, December 28, 1857.

HON. LYMAN TRUMBULL,

DEAR SIR: What does the New York _Tribune_ mean by its constant eulogizing and admiring and magnifying Douglas? Does it, in this, speak the sentiments of the Republicans at Was.h.i.+ngton?

Have they concluded that the Republican cause generally can be best promoted by sacrificing us here in Illinois? If so, we would like to know it soon; it will save us a great deal of labor to surrender at once.

As yet I have heard of no Republican here going over to Douglas, but if the _Tribune_ continues to din his praises into the ears of its five or ten thousand readers in Illinois, it is more than can be hoped that all will stand firm. I am not complaining, I only wish for a fair understanding. Please write me at Springfield.

Your obt. servant,

A. LINCOLN.

C. H. Ray, Chicago, March 9, 1858, protests against any trading with Douglas on the basis of reelecting him to the Senate by Republican votes. The Republicans of Illinois are unanimous for Lincoln and will not swerve from that purpose. Thinks that Douglas is coming to the Republican camp and that the disposal of him will be a difficult problem unless he will be content with a place in the Cabinet of the next Republican President.

J. K. Dubois, Springfield, April 8, says that Hatch (secretary of state) and himself were in Chicago a few days since. Found every man there firm and true--Judd, Peck, Ray, Scripps, W. H. Brown, etc. Herndon has just come home; says that Wilson, Banks, Greeley, etc., are for returning Douglas to the Senate. "G.o.d forbid! Are our friends crazy?"

J. M. Palmer, Carlinville, May 25:

We feel here that we have fought a strenuous and well-maintained battle with Douglas, backed up by the whole strength of the Federal patronage, and have won some prospect of overthrowing him and placing Illinois permanently in the ranks of the party of progress, whether called Republican or by some other name, and now, by a "Wall street operation,"

Lincoln, to whom we are all under great obligations, and all our men who have borne the heat and burden of the day, are to be kicked to one side and we are to throw up our caps for Judge Douglas, and he very coolly tells us all the time that we are Abolitionists and negro wors.h.i.+pers and that he accepts our votes as a favor to us! Messrs. Greeley, Seward, Burlingame, etc., are presumed to be able to estimate themselves properly, and if they fix only that value on themselves, no one has a right to complain, but if I vote for Douglas under such circ.u.mstances, may I be ----. I don't swear, but you may fill this blank as you please. Yet I have no personal feelings against Douglas.... Lincoln and his friends were under no obligation to us in that controversy [of 1855]. We had, though but five, refused to vote for him under circ.u.mstances that we thought, at the time, furnished good reason for our refusal. We elected an anti-Nebraska Democrat to the Senate, by his aid most magnanimously rendered, and that result placed us, through you, on the highest possible ground in the new party. If you had not been elected, we should have been a baffled faction at the tail of an alien organization. We have, as a consequence, an anti-Nebraska Democrat for governor, and our men are the bone and sinew of the new organization, though we are in a minority. In all these results Lincoln has contributed his efforts and the Whig element have cooperated. For myself, therefore, I am unalterably determined to do all that I can to elect Lincoln to the Senate. _I_ cannot elect him, but I can give him and all his friends conclusive proof that I am animated by honor and good faith, and will stand up for his election until the Republican party, including himself and his personal friends, say we have done enough. Hence no arrangement that looks to the election of Douglas by Republican votes, that does not meet the approval of Lincoln and his friends, can meet my approval.

The chief difficulty was that Douglas had never established for himself a character for stability. People did not know what they could depend upon in dealing with him. Other questions than Lecompton would soon come up, as to which his course would be uncertain. Who could say whether he would look northward or southward for the Presidency two years hence?

Douglas knew that he need not look in either direction unless he could first secure his reelection to the Senate. Bear-like, tied to a stake, he must fight the course. His campaign against Lincoln for the senators.h.i.+p does not properly appertain to the Life of Trumbull, although the latter took an active part in it. The author's recollections and memoranda of that campaign were contributed to another publication.[34] He recalls with pity the weary but undaunted look, after nearly four months of incessant travel and speaking, of the Little Giant, whose health was already much impaired. A letter from Fessenden to Trumbull, dated November 16, 1856, spoke of him as "a dying man in almost every sense, unless he mends speedily--of which, I take it, there is little hope." In the Senate debates from 1855 on, he often spoke of his bad health, and in one instance he got out of a sick-bed to vote on the Lecompton Bill. The campaign of 1858 was a severe drain on his remaining strength, but in manner and mien he gave no sign of the waste and exhaustion within.

The Trumbull papers contain some contemporary notes on the campaign of 1858. The Buchanan Democrats in Illinois gave themselves the high-sounding t.i.tle of the National Democracy. By the Douglas men they were called "Danites," a name borrowed from the literature of Mormondom.

Traces of this sect are found in the following letters:

D. L. Phillips, Anna, Union County, February 16, 1858, says that Hon. John Dougherty will start in a few days for Was.h.i.+ngton to console the President and look for an office for himself. (He obtained the Marshals.h.i.+p of southern Illinois.)

W. H. Herndon, Springfield, July 8:

Mr. Lincoln was here a moment ago and told me that he had just seen Col. Dougherty and had a conversation with him. He told Lincoln that the National Democracy intended to run in every county and district, a National Democrat for each and every office. Lincoln replied, "If you do this the thing is settled."

... Lincoln is very certain as to Miller's and Bateman's election (on the state ticket), but is gloomy and rather uncertain about his own success.

Lincoln's own thoughts respecting the Danites are set forth incidentally in the following letter:

SPRINGFIELD, June 23, 1858.

HON. LYMAN TRUMBULL,

MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 16th reached me only yesterday.

We had already seen by telegraph a report of Douglas's onslaught upon everybody but himself. I have this morning seen the Was.h.i.+ngton _Union_, in which I think the Judge is rather worsted in regard to the onslaught.

In relation to the charge of an alliance between the Republicans and the Buchanan men in the state, if being rather pleased to see a division in the ranks of Democracy, and not doing anything to prevent it, be such an alliance, then there is such an alliance. At least, that is true of me. But if it be intended to charge that there is any alliance by which there is to be any concession of principle on either side, or furnis.h.i.+ng of sinews, or part.i.tion of offices, or swapping of votes to any extent, or the doing of anything, great or small, on the one side for a consideration expressed or implied on the other, no such thing is true so far as I know or believe.

Before this reaches you, you will have seen the proceedings of our Republican State Convention. It was really a grand affair and was in all respects all that our friends could desire.

The resolution in effect nominating me for Senator was pa.s.sed more for the object of closing down upon the everlasting croaking about Wentworth than anything else. The signs look reasonably well. Our state ticket, I think, will be elected without much difficulty. But with the advantages they have of us, we shall be hard run to carry the legislature. We shall greet your return home with great pleasure.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

The only counties in the state in which the Danites showed any vitality were Union County in the south and Bureau County in the north. They polled only 5079 votes in the whole state.

The influence of the Eastern Republicans, who were inclined to support Douglas at the beginning of the campaign, and especially that of the New York _Tribune_, is noted by Judd and Herndon.

N. B. Judd, Chicago, July 16:

We have lost some Republicans in this region.... You may attribute it to the course of the New York _Tribune_, which has tended to loosen party ties and induce old Whigs to look upon D.'s return to the Senate as rather desirable. You ought to come to Illinois as soon as you can by way of New York and straighten out the newspapers there. Even the _Evening Post_ compares Douglas to Silas Wright. Bah!