«История Соединенных Штатов, Том 3»

compromise of that year, in leaving the question of slavery to the

States to be formed from these Territories, had already set aside the

agreement of 1820. These assumptions were totally false. The act of 1850

gave Utah and New Mexico no power as Territories over the debatable

institution, and contained not the slightest suggestion of any rule in

the matter for territories in general.

But the hint was taken, and on January 16th notice given of intention to

move an out-and-out abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. Such

abrogation was at once incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska bill reported

by Douglas, January 23, 1854. This separated Kansas from Nebraska, and

the subsequent struggle raged in reference to Kansas alone. The bill

erroneously declared it established by the acts of 1850 that "all

questions as to slavery in the Territories," no less than in the States

which should grow out of them, were to be left to the residents, subject

to appeal to the United States courts. It passed both houses by good

majorities and was signed by President Pierce May 30th. Its animus

appeared from the loss in the Senate of an amendment, moved by S. P.

Chase, of Ohio, allowing the Territory to prohibit slavery.

Franklin Pierce.

From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery.

Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and

taking heresy of "squatter sovereignty," that Congress, though

possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Constitution,

general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch

slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace "to vote

up or vote down." At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed

"nonintervention," and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery

character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the

repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render

Kansas free.

Stephen A. Douglas.

[1855]

This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid

anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was

the Kansas Aid Society, another a Massachusetts corporation entitled the

New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began

to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in

real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in

apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote

against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by

Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and

returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905

legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast

for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the

pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the

subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at

Pawnee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered

that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative

authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to

support the fugitive slave law.

The free-state settlers, now a majority, ignored this Legislature and

its acts, and at once set to work to secure Kansas admission to the

Union as a State without slavery. The Topeka convention, October 23,

1855, formed the Topeka constitution, which was adopted December 14th,

only forty-six votes being polled against it. This showed that

pro-slavery men abstained from voting. January 15, 1856, an election was

held under this constitution for state officers, a state legislature,

and a representative in Congress. The House agreed, July 3d, by one

majority, to admit Kansas with the Topeka constitution, but the Senate

refused. The Topeka Legislature assembled July 4th, but was dispersed by

United States troops.

[1856-1857]

This was done under command from Washington. President Pierce, backed by

the Senate with its steady pro-slavery majority, was resolved at all

hazards to recognize the pro-slavery authorities of Kansas and no other,

and, as it seemed, to force it to become a slave State; but fortunately

the House had an anti-slavery majority which prevented this. The friends

of freedom in Kansas had also on their side the history that was all

this time making in Kansas itself. During the summer of 1856 that

Territory was a theatre of constant war. Men were murdered, towns

sacked. Both sides were guilty of violence, but the free-state party

confessedly much the less so, having far the better cause. Nearly all

admitted that this party was in the majority. Even the governors, all

Democrats, appointed by Pierce, acknowledged this, some of them, to all

appearance, being removed as a punishment for the admission. Governor

Geary, in office from September, 1856, to March, 1857, and Governor

Walker, in office from May, 1857, were just and able men, and their

decisions, in most things favorable to the free-state cause, had much

weight with the country.

Walker's influence in the Territory led the free-state men to take part

in the territorial election of October, 1857, where they were entirely

triumphant. But the old, pro-slavery Legislature had called a

constitutional convention, which met at Lecompton, September, 1857, and

passed the Lecompton constitution. This constitution sanctioned slavery

and provided against its own submission to popular vote. It ordained

that only its provision in favor of slavery should be so submitted. This

pro-slavery clause was adopted, but only because the free-state men

would not vote. The Topeka Legislature submitted the whole constitution

to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and

Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton constitution,

although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March,

1859, had adopted constitutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being

that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not

admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the

United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the

Wyandotte constitution and hence as a free State.

It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S.

Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly

attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon

the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but

unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted

severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State.

This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the

Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon

him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never

recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial

duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate,

characterized the assault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks,

but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the

barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame,

representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the

caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he

named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for

the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would

endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a

majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned,

but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina constituency.

Charles Sumner.

While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown

cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had

gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was

to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause

2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully

legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out

the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged

to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one

citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general

Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought

was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of

the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as

to establish it.

The new southern or Calhoun theory assumed startling significance for

the Nation when, in 1857, it was proclaimed in the Dred Scott decision

of the United States Supreme Court as part of the innermost life of our

Constitution. Dred Scott was a slave of an army officer, who had taken

him from Missouri first into Illinois, a free State, then into

Wisconsin, covered by the Missouri Compromise, then back into Missouri.

Here the slave learned that by decisions of the Missouri courts his life

outside of Missouri constituted him free, and in 1848, having been

whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for assault. The decision was

in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri

Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him

also he prosecuted for assault, but as he and Sandford belonged to

different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court.

Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not

a citizen of Missouri but a slave.

It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court

having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to

the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizenship of the

negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The

upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it

was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of

pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the

old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all

other legislation against slavery in Territories unconstitutional, and

the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into

all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in

its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's

citizenship was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable

implication being that no man of African blood could be an American

citizen.

This decision rendered jubilant all friends of slavery, as also the

ultra Abolitionists, but correspondingly disheartened the sober friends

of human liberty. How, it was asked, is the cause of freedom to be

advanced when the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the highest

tribunal existing for that purpose, virtually establishes slavery in New

England itself, provided any slave-master wishes to come there with his

troop? But anti-slavery men did not despair. Patriots had of course to

obey the court till its opinion should be reversed, yet its opinion was

at once repudiated as bad law. Men like Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Giddings,

Seward, and Lincoln, appealing to both the history and the letter of the

Constitution, and to the course of legislation and of judicial decisions

on slavery even in the slave States, had been elaborating and

demonstrating the counter theory, under which our fundamental law

appeared as anything but a "covenant with hell."

The pith of this counter theory was that slaves were property not by

moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence

freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our

government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for

its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney were

right as against Douglas in ascribing to Congress all power over the

Territories, it was as impossible to find slaves in any United States

Territory as to find a king there. Slaves taken into Territories

therefore became free. Slaves taken into any free State became free.

Slaves carried from a slave State on to the high seas became free. Even

the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution must be applied in the way

least favorable to slavery.

On the other hand Douglas was right in his view that citizens and not

States were the partners in the Territories. As to the assertion of

incompatibility between citizenship and African blood, it would not

stand historical examination a moment. If it was true that the framers

of the Constitution did not consciously include colored persons in the

"ourselves and our posterity" for whom they purposed the "Blessings of

Liberty," neither did they consciously exclude, as is clear from the

fact that nearly everyone of them expected blacks some time to be free.

CHAPTER VI.

SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES

[1841]

The Democratic Party was predominantly southern, the Whig northern. Both

sought to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the

better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the

Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and

prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent

and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was

that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they

tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a

whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the

slavocracy. This status became more pronounced with the progress of the

controversy and of the South's self-assertion. It was real under

Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk,

Pierce, and Buchanan.

Whig temper toward slavery was throughout the North much better, but

whig party action was little better. Fear of losing southern supporters

permanently forbade all frank enlistment by the Whig Party for freedom.

The mighty leaders, Adams, Webster, even Clay, were well inclined, and

the party, as such, was at the South persistently accused of alliance

with the Abolitionists. This was untrue. Abolitionists, Liberal Party

men, and Free-soilers oftener voted with Democrats than with Whigs. Clay

complained once that Abolitionists denounced him as a slave-holder,

slave-holders as an Abolitionist, while both voted for Van Buren.

Compromise was the bane of this party as of the other; and each of the

resplendent chieftains named at one time or another seemed so reverent

to Belial that the record is painful reading.

When in 1841 the ship Creole sailed from Richmond with one hundred and

thirty-five slaves on board bound for the southern market, and one

Madison Washington, a recovered runaway on board, headed a dash upon

captain and crew, got possession of the vessel and took her into New

Providence, Clay was as loud as Calhoun or any southern senator in

demanding of the English Government the return of these slaves to

bondage or, at least, that of "the mutineers," as they were called.

Webster, Secretary of State at the time, instructed Edward Everett, our

English minister, to insist upon this, his arguments being sound and his

tone emphatic enough to please Mr. Calhoun. This was the time when

Giddings, of Ohio, brought into the House his resolutions to the effect

that slavery was a state institution only, and that hence any slave

carried on to the open ocean or to any other locality where only

national law prevailed, was free. He was censured in the House by a

large majority and resigned, but his Ohio constituency immediately

re-elected him.

[1836-1844]

Up to this time Giddings and Adams were the only pronounced anti-slavery

men in that body. Adams had acquiesced in the Missouri Compromise, but

all his subsequent career, especially his course in the House of

Representatives after 1830, is not only creditable to him so far as the

slavery question is concerned, but registers him as one of the most

influential opponents of slavery in our history. Refusing to be classed

with the Abolitionists, he was, in effect, the most efficient

Abolitionist of them all.

Previous to 1835, though petitions against slavery reached Congress in

great numbers and nettled many members, they had been received and

referred in the usual manner. But in February, 1836, the House created a

special committee to consider these petitions. It reported a resolution,

which passed under the previous question, that thereafter all papers of

the kind should be tabled without printing or reference. Adams declared

to the House: "I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the

Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the

rights of my constituents." In this rencounter Adams advanced the view

on which the Emancipation Proclamation by and by proceeded, that

slavery, even in States, was not beyond reach of the national arm, but

would be at the mercy of Congress the instant slave-masters should

rebel. This, the first of the gag laws, was, however, enacted. The

second, or Patton gag, was passed on December 21, 1837, and the third,

or Atherton gag, a year later. The principle of these, practically

cutting off all petitions to Congress respecting slavery, was taken up

in the twenty-first rule of the House in 1840.

Mr. Adams was from the first the resolute and uncompromising foe of the

gag policy. Wagon-loads of petitions came to him to offer, among them

one for his own expulsion from the House and one to dissolve the Union,

and he presented all.

February 6, 1837, he inquired of Mr. Speaker whether or not it would be

appropriate to offer a petition in his hand from slaves, whereupon the

pro-slavery members flew at him like vampires. After much uproar, in

which Adams gave as good as was sent him, he sarcastically reminded his

already infuriated assailants that the petition was in favor of slavery,

not against, and that he had emphatically not offered it, but only made

an innocent inquiry of the Speaker about doing so, the proper answer to

which was so far from obvious that the Speaker himself had signified his

intention to take the sense of the House upon it. Regularly, year after

year, Adams moved the abolition of the gag rule, was beaten as

regularly, long as a matter of course, sometimes after heated debate in

which he was always victor. But little by little the majority vote

against him lessened. In 1842 the gag passed by but four votes, in 1843

it had a majority of three only, in 1844 his motion to strike it out was

carried by a vote of one hundred and eight to eighty. Adams wrote that

day in his diary: "Blessed, forever blessed be the name of God."

[1850]

But a plenitude of Whigs, not all southern, voted for each of these

gags. The worst one of all was moved by a Whig. The XXVIIth Congress,

strongly whig, voted to retain the gag, which it was left for the

XXVIIIth, strongly democratic, finally to repeal. At the South, slavery

more and more overbore party feeling. Said Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, in

1854, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery, no Democracy--I

am a pro-slavery man." It should be added, however, that as the

conflict progressed, pro-slavery Whigs became few save in the South, and

that these nearly all soon turned Democrats.

Most humiliating was the vassalage to the slave power displayed by

northern congressmen of both parties, though forming a majority in the

House during all the great days of the slavery battle. The gag history

is one example. Resolutions against unquestionably unconstitutional laws

imprisoning northern seamen at southern ports simply because they were

colored, were tabled in the House by a large majority. Slavery in the

District of Columbia, where Congress had the right of "exclusive

legislation in all cases whatsoever," so that the entire nation was

responsible, defied every effort to abolish it till 1862, after the

Civil War began. Nor was the trade there in aught alleviated till 1850,

when some modification of it was possible as an element of the

compromise described in the preceding chapter. An enlargement of

Missouri, adding to the northwest corner of that State, as slave

territory, a vast tract which the Missouri Compromise had forever

devoted to freedom, being in truth a preliminary repeal of that pact,

was carried without opposition.

The brutal and murderous lawlessness practised against Abolitionists was

praised by northern congressmen often as slavery came up in debate. Even

Senator Silas Wright, of New York, subsequently famous as a foe of

slavery, in remarks upon the reference of anti-slavery petitions,

boasted of the atrocities at Utica in 1835 and of others similar, as

proof that "resistance to these dangerous and wicked agitators in the

North had reached a point beyond law and above law." A bill, in 1836,

for closing the mails to abolitionist literature, another defiance of

the Constitution, Amendment I., secured engrossment in the Senate by the

casting vote of Vice-President Van Buren; Wright, Tallmadge, and

Buchanan also favoring; but failed to pass, nineteen to twenty-five,

because Benton, Clay, and Crittenden had the patriotism to vote nay.

Discussion hereon laid bare the vital contradiction in our governmental

system. Calhoun showed that the Constitution permits each State for

itself to define, in order to inhibit, incendiary literature.

Characteristically, he would have forced mail agents to obey state laws

upon this matter. Yet for Congress to have so directed would plainly

have been abridging freedom of the press.

Thomas H. Benton.

Had the Whig Party, while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough

boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have

been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance

passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders

and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern

members--twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri

Compromise--proved deadly to the organization, its faithful old

battalions going over in the South to the Democrats, in the North to the

Republicans.

Many Whigs took the latter course by a circuitous route. Ever since the

alien and sedition laws, cry had been raised at intervals against the

too easy attainment of citizenship by the unnumbered immigrants

thronging to our shores, and agitation raised, more or less successful,

to thrust forward "Nativism" or Americanism, with opposition to the

Roman Catholic Church, as an issue in our politics. To such movements

Whigs, as legatees of Federalism, were always more friendly than

Democrats, which was partly a cause and partly a consequence of the

affinity that naturalized citizens all along showed for the Democratic

Party.

Americanism had its greatest run after 1850, when the Whigs saw their

organization going to pieces, and, mistakenly in part, attributed

democratic success to the immigrant vote. A secret fraternity arose,

called the "Know-nothings," from "I don't know," the ever-repeated reply

of its members to inquiry about its nature and doings. "America for

Americans" was their cry, and they proposed to "put none but Americans

on guard." At first pursuing their aims through silent manipulation of

the old parties, by 1854 the Know-nothings swung out as a third party.

From this date they lustily competed with the Republicans for the hosts

of whig and democratic stragglers jostled from their old ranks by the

omnibus bill legislation, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the "Crime

against Kansas" committed by Pierce and his slavocratic Senate. In 1855

this party assumed national proportions, and worried seasoned

politicians not a little; but having crystallized around no living

issue, like that which nerved Republicanism, it fell like a

rocket-stick, its sparks going over to make redder still republican

fires. Henry Wilson became a Republican from the status of a

Know-nothing; so did Banks, Colfax, and a score of others subsequently

eminent among their new associates. Some had of old been Democrats,

though most had been Whigs.

Notwithstanding many appearances to the contrary, the Democracy had

begun to lose its hold upon the North from the moment of Polk's

nomination in 1844. In that act it showed preference, on the score of

availability, for a small man as presidential candidate. Harrison's

election and Van Buren's defeat in 1840 doubtless had something to do

with this. The same disposition was revealed in 1852, when Pierce was

made candidate. What harmed the party still more was swerving from

strict construction in declaring for the annexation of Texas, which in

this case did not imply enlargement of view in reading the Constitution,

but simply subserviency to the slave power. In this way Van Buren was

alienated and the vote of New York lost in 1848, insuring defeat that

year.

[1856-1860]

This particular breach was pretty well healed, but the evil survived.

Then came the compromise repeal, wherein the Democracy stood by the

South in casting to the winds, the moment it promised to be of service

to the North, a solemn bargain which had yielded the South Florida,

Arkansas, and Missouri as slave States. Northern Democrats, especially

in the rural parts, unwilling longer to serve slavery, drew off from the

party in increasing numbers. Northern States one by one passed to the

opposition. The whole of New England had gone over in 1856, also New

York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa--Buchanan having six votes

outside those of Pennsylvania, where he won, as many believed, by unfair

means. In 1860, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Indiana,

Minnesota, and Oregon crossed to the same side.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CRISIS

[1850]

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was politically a remarkable

epoch. It not only consolidated old anti-slavery men, but cooled, to say

the least, many "silvergray," or conservative Whigs, as well as many

"hards" and "hunkers" among the Democrats. But the slavocrats were blind

to the risk they were running, and grew bolder than ever. There were now

propositions for renewing the foreign slave-trade. Worse black laws were

enacted. There was increased ferocity toward all who did not pronounce

slavery a blessing, prouder domineering in politics, especially in

Congress, and perpetual threat of secession in case the slave power

should fail to have its way.

Abraham Lincoln. After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah

Brooks. (Only five copies of this photograph were printed.)

There were also plans for foreign conquest in slavery's behalf, which

received countenance from public and even from national authorities. The

idea seemed to be that the victory and territorial enlargement

consequent upon the Mexican War might be repeated in Central America and

Cuba. The efforts of Lopez in 1850 and 1851 to conquer Cuba with aid

from the United States had indeed been brought to an end through this

adventurer's execution in the latter year by the Cuban authorities.

Pierce put forth a proclamation in 1854, warning American citizens

against like attempts in future. Defying this, the next year William

Walker headed a filibustering expedition to the Pacific coast of

Nicaragua, conquering the capital of that state and setting up a

government which proceeded to re-establish slavery and invite

immigration from the United States. Driven out by a coalition of other

Central American states against him, Walker at once organized a new

raid, and landed at Punta Arenas, Nicaragua, November 25, 1857; but he

was seized by Commodore Paulding of our navy and brought to New York. He

made a similar effort the next year, and another in 1860, when he

captured Truxillo in Honduras, only to be soon overwhelmed, tried and

shot.

[1852]

If the Government at Washington was not openly implicated in any of

these movements, no more, surely, did it heartily deprecate them.

Fillmore's administration had in 1852 declined to enter into an alliance

with Great Britain and France disclaiming intention to secure Cuba. In

1854, inspired by Pierce, our ministers at London, Paris, and Madrid,

met at Ostend and put forth the "Ostend Manifesto." The tenor of this

was that Spain would be better off without Cuba and we with it, and

further, that, if Spain refused to sell, the United States ought as a

means of self-preservation to take that island by force, lest it should

become a second San Domingo. This proposition, like everything else

relating to the great Repeal, was under umbrage in 1856; but in 1858 the

southern Democrats in Congress brought in a bill to purchase Cuba for

$30,000,000, and the democratic platform of 1860 spoke for the

acquisition thereof at the earliest practicable moment, by all

"honorable and just means."

[1854]

Thus an institution, barbarous, anti-democratic, sectional, an

unmitigated curse even to its section, not so much as named in the

Constitution, beginning with apology from all, by the zeal and

unscrupulousness of advocates, the consolidation of political power at

the South, and apathy, sycophancy, divided counsels, and commercial

greed in the North, gradually amassed might, till, at the middle of Mr.

Buchanan's term, every branch of the national Government was its tool,

the Supreme Court included, enabling it authoritatively to mis-read the

Constitution, declare the Union a pro-slavery compact, and act

accordingly. But justice would not be mocked, and, though advancing upon

halting foot, dealt the death-blow like lightning at last.

We have seen the feeble efforts of the old Liberty Party to make head

against slavery, Birney and Earle being its candidates in 1840, Birney

and Morris in 1844. In 1848 these "conscience Free-soilers" were

re-enforced by what have been called the "political Free-soilers" of the

State of New York, led by ex-President Van Buren. This astute organizer,

aware that his defeat in the democratic convention of 1844 had resulted

from southern and pro-slavery influences, led a bolt in the New York

Democracy. His partisans in this were known as the "Barn-burners," while

the administration Democrats were called the "Hunkers." In the

democratic convention of 1848 at Baltimore appeared representatives of

both factions, and both sets were admitted, each with half the state

vote. This satisfied neither side. The Barn-burners called a convention

at Utica in June, and put Van Buren in nomination for the presidency.

The Liberty Party men had the preceding year nominated Hale for this

office, but now, seeing their opportunity, they called a new convention

at Buffalo for August 9, 1848, to which all Free-soilers were invited;

and this convention made Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams its

candidates for President and Vice-President. The platform declared

against any further extension of slavery. The party was henceforth known

as the "Free-soilers," the name coming from its insistence that the

territory conquered from Mexico should forever remain free. Its platform

denounced slavery as a sin against God and a crime against man, and

repudiated the compromise of 1850. It also laid special emphasis upon

the wickedness of the new fugitive slave law, of which it demanded the

repeal. By 1852 the regular Democracy in New York had won back a large

proportion of the Barn-burners or free-soil revolters, so that the

free-soil prospect in this year was not encouraging. Only 146,149

free-soil votes were polled in all the northern states.

[1856]

What quickened this drooping movement into new and triumphant life was

the revocation of the Missouri Compromise. This rallied to the free-soil

standard nearly all the northern Whigs, many old Barn-burners who since

1848 had returned to the democratic fold, and vast numbers of other

anti-Lecompton Democrats. Most of the Know-nothings throughout the North

also joined it, while of course it had in all its anti-slavery measures

the hearty co-operation, directly political or other, of the

Abolitionists. The first national convention of this new party,

fortunately styling itself "Republican," was in 1856. Whig doctrine

early appeared in the party by the demand for protection, internal

improvements, and a national banking system; in fact, Republicanism may

be said to have received nearly entire the whig mantle, as the Whigs did

that of Federalism.

But the living soul and integrating idea of the party was new, the rigid

confinement of slavery and the slave power to their narrowest

constitutional limits. It denounced the repeal of the Missouri

Compromise. In the election of this year, 1856, eleven States chose

Republican electors, viz.: all New England, also New York, Ohio,

Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Evidently the Democracy had at last found

a foe at which it were best not to sneer. The Dred Scott decision

immensely aided the growth of this new political power, as it was now

quite generally believed in the North that the whole policy of the South

was a greedy, selfish grasping for the extension of slavery.

[1858]

Out of this conviction, apparently, grew the John Brown raid into

Virginia in 1858. John Brown was an enthusiast, whom sufferings from the

Border Ruffians in Kansas, where one of his sons had been atrociously

murdered and another driven to insanity by cruel treatment as a

prisoner, had frenzied in his opposition to slavery. He had dedicated

himself to its extirpation. The intrepid old man formed the purpose of

invading Virginia, and of placing himself with a few white allies at the

head of a slave insurrection that should sweep the State. Friends in

the North had contributed money for the purchase of arms, and on October

16th, Brown, with fourteen white men and four negroes, seized the United

States Armory at Harper's Ferry. He stopped the railway trains, freed

some slaves, and assumed to rule the town. United States troops were at

once despatched to the scene, when the misguided hero, with his devoted

band, fortified themselves in the engine house, surrendering only after

thirteen of them, including two of Brown's sons, were killed or mortally

wounded. Brown and the other survivors were soon tried, convicted, and

hung. This insane attempt was deprecated by nearly all of all parties;

but the fate of Brown, with his resolute bravery, begot him large

sympathy, and the false assumption of the South that he really

represented northern feeling made his deed helpful to the anti-slavery

movement, of which the Republican Party was now the centre.

John Brown.

[1860]

Notwithstanding all this the Democracy might still have elected a

president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud

with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that

very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State

and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the

northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the

doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede

from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did

not so desire, but sincerely believed in that doctrine as part and

parcel of the true democratic faith. But it was now obvious that the

working out of the Douglas theory was absolutely sure to make free all

the western States henceforth to be formed. This would, of course,

remove the Senate from the domination of slavery. Hence the South was

irrevocably opposed to it, and insisted with all its might upon the

Calhoun-Taney contention that the national Government must protect

slavery in all the Territories to which it pleased to go. In a passage

at arms with Douglas as they were stumping Illinois for the senatorship

in 1858, Lincoln keenly forced upon him the question whether under the

Dred Scott decision any Territory could possibly be kept free from

slavery. "If," said he, "Douglas answers yes, he can never be President;

if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator." Douglas replied in

the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South

a doomed man.

The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic

convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the

delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though

willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott

decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from

Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from

Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded.

Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not

two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and

when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds

vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new

seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The

so-called Constitutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket,

Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and

Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between

the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted.

The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal

Hamlin, of Maine. Lincoln was already a marked man in his party,

especially in the West, his brilliant joint debate with Judge Douglas

during some months in 1858 having brought out his matchless good sense

and good nature, his rare knowledge of our history and law, and his high

quality as thinker and speaker. Born in Kentucky in 1809, removing to

Indiana in 1816, to Illinois in 1830, reared in extreme poverty and

wholly self-educated, this man had risen by his wits, his sturdy

perseverance and industry, his extraordinary ability, and his proverbial

honesty, to be the acknowledged peer of the "Little Giant" himself. He

began political life a Whig and ably represented that party in the

national Congress from 1847 to 1849, making his voice heard against the

high-handed procedure of the Administration in the Mexican War. But as

with Seward, Greeley, Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, Sherman, Dayton,

Corwin, and Collamer, subsequent events had intensified his anti-slavery

feeling, convincing him, as he avowed, that the Union could not

"permanently continue half slave and half free." He was thus drawn to

unite his fortunes with the Republicans. His nomination was received

coolly in the East, where Seward had been preferred; but as men studied

Lincoln's record they were convinced of the wisdom which had made him

the party's leader. He swept New England, New York, New Jersey,

Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin,

California, Minnesota, and Oregon, having 180 electoral votes to

Breckenridge's 72, Bell's 39, and Douglas's 12.

William H. Seward.

From a photograph by Brady.

CHAPTER VIII.

MATERIAL PROGRESS

[1860]

The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,443,321. In spite of

the threatening political complications between 1840 and 1860, these

years were characterized by astonishing economic prosperity. The decade

after 1848 was, indeed, in point of advance in material weal, the golden

age of our history. Between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the nation

swelled 120 per cent., the value of its farms 103 per cent., its total

manufacturing product 87 per cent., its manufactured export 171 per

cent., its railroad mileage 220 per cent. Making all due allowance for

the rise of prices during the period, this is still a remarkable

exhibit.

The great West continued to come under the hand of civilization. Between

1850 and 1860 our centre of population made a longer stride westward

than during any other decade--from east of the meridian of Parkersburg,

W. Va., to the meridian of Chillicothe, O. Florida and Texas having been

admitted to statehood in 1845, Iowa followed next year, Wisconsin in

1848, California in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized

Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska,

Utah, and Washington Territories were organized before 1860. By this

date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was

sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in

1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In

1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable

routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties

the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places

become dense.

Elias Howe.

Immigration hither was unfortunately checked a little later by Indian

hostilities, the gravest attacks being in 1847 and 1855. In the latter

year Major Haller, leading an exploring party, was surrounded by the

savages and cut off from food and water, only making his escape by a

fight of two days against overwhelming odds. He and his party at last

hewed their desperate way through, losing their entire outfit, besides

one-fifth of their number. The whole territory was harassed by Indians

on the war path, and General Wool had to be sent up from San Francisco

to restore peace. This done, immigration was renewed. A thousand new

inhabitants came to Oregon in 1852, and its northern half was organized

as Washington Territory the following year. The Pacific Mail Steamship

Company had been chartered in 1848, and four years earlier a newspaper

started, the first in English on that coast. Its seat was Oregon City,

its name the Flumgudgeon Gazette.

The Vandalia. The Pioneer Propeller On the Lakes.

Old Stone Towers of the Niagara Suspension Bridge.

The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common

with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting

sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The

same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its

theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to

be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built

in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856.

The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855.

The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of canals. The

Miami Canal, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 1825,

was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and

Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts was, in

1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to

railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the

State the canal and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and

soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller

from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next

year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga.,

was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston

& Maine Railway finished to Berwick.

The New Iron Towers of the Niagara Bridge.

The first railway out of Chicago--it was the first in Illinois--was

built in 1850, to Elgin. Chicago had no railway connection with the East

till two years later, when the Michigan Southern was opened. The

Michigan Central was finished soon after the Southern, and the Rock

Island before the end of the year. The Michigan Central had direct

connection east across Canada to Niagara Falls by 1854. In 1856 the

Burlington route reached the Mississippi and the Rock Island went on to

Iowa City. This year witnessed the opening of the first railroad in

California--from Sacramento to Folsom. In 1857 Chicago and St. Louis

were joined by rails, as also the latter city with Baltimore, over the

Parkersburg branch of the Baltimore & Ohio.

Birthplace of S. F. B. Morse, at Charlestown, Mass. Built 1775.

S. F. B. Morse.

We now come to an improvement of which the preceding period knew

nothing, the magnetic telegraph, introduced by Professor Morse in 1844.

In this year Morse secured a congressional appropriation of $30,000 for

a line from Washington to Baltimore. The wires were at first encased in

tubes underground. In spite of the success of the project, further

governmental patronage was refused, the Postmaster-General advising

against it under the conviction that the invention could not become

practically valuable. Morse appealed for aid from private capitalists.

Ezra Cornell, of New York, soon opened a short line in Boston for

exhibition, following this with a similar enterprise in New York City.

The admission fee was twelve and a half cents. Few cared to pay even

this trifle, so that the undertaking was hardly a success in either

city.

Amos Kendall then engaged as Morse's agent, and by dint of great effort

secured subscriptions for a line from New York to Philadelphia, being

obliged to sell the shares for one-half their face value. Incorporation

was secured from the Maryland Legislature, under the first American

charter, for the telegraph business. The line was completed in 1845 to

the Hudson opposite the upper end of Manhattan Island, and an effort

made to insulate the wire and connect with the city along the bottom of

the river. This failed, and for some time messages had to be taken over

in boats. In 1846 the wire was carried on to Baltimore. In the same year

Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were connected by telegraph, New York and

Albany, New York and Boston, Boston and Buffalo. The first line in

California was erected in 1853.

The First Telegraphic Instrument, as exhibited in 1837 by Morse.

In 1850 Hiram Sibley embarked in the telegraph business. He bought the

House patent, and next year organized the New York and Mississippi

Valley Telegraph Company. By 1853 or 1854, some twenty companies had

started, with a capital of $7,000,000--too many for good management or

high profits. Accordingly, Sibley and Cornell united in buying them up,

and thus formed, in 1856, the Western Union, which Sibley's energy

extended all over the country east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1860 he

went to Washington with a scheme for a transcontinental telegraph line,

and secured from Congress a subsidy of $40,000 for ten years. Just then

the Overland Telegraph Company was started in San Francisco. It and

Sibley united, breaking ground July 1, 1861, and proceeding at the rate

of nearly ten miles of wire per day. On October 25th, telegraph wire

stretched all the way between the two oceans. In 1864 this line was

amalgamated with the Western Union.

Calenders heated internally by Steam, for spreading India Rubber into

Sheets or upon Cloth, called the "Chaffee Machine."

Still more wonderful, ocean telegraphy was broached and made successful

during these years. Tentative efforts to operate the current under water

were made between Governor's Island and New York City so early as 1842.

A copper wire was used, insulated with hemp string coated with India

rubber and pitch. In 1846 a similar arrangement was encased in lead

pipe. This device failed, and sub-aqueous telegraphy seems to have been

for the time given up.

In 1854 Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, with Peter Cooper and other

capitalists of that city, organized the New York, Newfoundland, and

London Telegraph Company, stock a million and a half dollars, and began

plans to connect New York with St. Johns, Newfoundland, by a cable under

the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Little progress was made, however, till 1857,

when it was attempted to lay a cable across the Atlantic from

Newfoundland. The paying out was begun at Queenstown and proceeded

successfully until three hundred and thirty-five miles had been laid,

when the cable parted. Nothing more was done till the next year in June.

Then, in 1858, after several more unsuccessful efforts, the two

continents were successfully joined. The two ships containing the cable

met in mid-ocean, where it was spliced and the paying out begun in each

direction. The one reached Newfoundland the same day, August 5th, on

which the other reached Valencia, Ireland. No break had occurred, and

after the necessary arrangements had been effected, the first message

was transmitted on August 16th. It was from the Queen of Great Britain

to the President of the United States, and read, "Glory to God in the

highest, peace on earth and good will to men." A monster celebration of

the event was had in New York next day.

The Great Eastern Laying the Atlantic Cable.

Although inter-continental communication had been actually opened, the

cable did not work, nor did ocean cabling become a successful and

regular business till 1866, when a new cable was laid. This event

attracted the more attention from the fact that the largest ship ever

built was used in paying out the cable. It was the Great Eastern, 680

feet long and 83 broad, with 25,000 tons displacement.

Sounding Machine used by a Cable Expedition.

Street railways became common in our largest cities before 1860, the

first in New England, that between Boston and Cambridge, dating from

1856. Sleeping-cars began to be used in 1858. The express business went

on developing, being opened westward from Buffalo first in 1845. A steam

fire-engine was tried in New York in 1841, but the invention was

successful only in 1853. Baltimore used one in 1858. Goodyear

triumphantly vulcanized rubber in 1844, making serviceable a gum which

had been used in various forms already but without ability to stand

heat. Elias Howe took out his first patent for a sewing machine in 1846,

being kept in vigorous fight against infringements for the next eight

years. The anaesthetic power of ether was discovered in 1844.

Gutta-percha was first imported hither in 1847. The first application of

the Bessemer steel process in this country was made in New Jersey in

1856, the manufacture of watches by machinery begun in 1857,

photo-lithography in 1859. New York had a clearing house in 1853, Boston

in 1855. The petroleum business may with propriety be dated from 1860,

although the existence of oil in Northwestern Pennsylvania had been long

known, and some use made of it since 1826. For several years experiments

had been making in refining the oil. The excellence of the light from it

now drew attention to the value of the product, wells began to be bored

and oil land sold for fabulous prices.

Cyrus W. Field.

Paying out Cable Gear. From Chart House.

We close this chapter with a word about the painful financial crisis

that swept over the country in the autumn of 1857. Its causes are

somewhat occult, but two appear to have been the chief, viz., the

over-rapid building of railroads and the speculation induced by the

prosperity and the rise of prices incident to the new output of gold.

Interest on the best securities rose to three, four, and five per cent.

a month. On ordinary securities no money at all could be had. Commercial

houses of the highest repute went down. The climax was in September and

October. The three leading banks in Philadelphia suspended specie

payments, at once followed in this by all the banks of the Middle

States, and upon the 13th of the next month by the New York banks.

Manufacturing was very largely abandoned for the time, at least thirty

thousand operatives being thrown out of work in New York City alone.

Prices even of agricultural produce fell enormously. Tramps were to be

met on every road. Easier times fortunately returned by spring, when

business resumed pretty nearly its former prosperous march.

Shore End of Cable-exact size. [About 3.5 inches in diameter.]

Barnacles on Cable.

PERIOD IV.

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

1860-1868

CHAPTER I.

CAUSES OF THE WAR

[1861]

It were a mistake to refer the great Rebellion, for ultimate source, to

ambiguity in the Constitution or to the wickedness of politicians or of

the people. It was simply the last resort in an "irrepressible conflict"

of principle--in the struggle for and against the genius of the world's

advance. Economic, social, and moral evolution, resulting in two

radically different civilizations, had enforced upon each section

unfaithfulness to the spirit and even to the letter of its

constitutional covenant. The South was not to blame that slavery was at

first profitable; and if it deemed it so too long and even thought of it

as a good morally, these convictions, however big with ill consequences

to the nation, were but errors of view, not strange considering the then

status of slavery in the world.

The South's pride, holding it to the course once chosen, was also no

indictable offence. Nor could the North on its part be taxed with crime

for its "higher law fanaticism," which was simply the spirit of the age;

or for seeing early what all believe now, that slavery was a blight upon

the land. Much as was "nominated in the bond" of the Constitution,

neither law nor equity forbade free States to increase the more rapidly

in numbers, wealth, and other elements of prosperity; and northern

congressmen must have been other than human, if, seeing this increase

and being in the majority, they had gone on punctiliously heeding formal

obligation against manifest national weal. And when, in 1854, the great

sacred compact of 1820 was set aside by the authority of the South

itself, the North felt free even from formal fetters. All talk of

extra-legal negotiations and understandings touching slavery was now at

an end. The northern majority was at last united to legislate upon

slavery as it would, subject only to the Constitution. The South too

late saw this, and fearing that the peculiar institution, shut up to its

old home, would die, sought separation, with such chance of expansion as

this might yield.

The South had come to love slavery too well, the Constitution too

little. Upon conserving slavery all parties there, however dissident as

to modes, however hostile in other matters, were unconditionally bent.

The chief argument even of those opposing disunion was that it

endangered slavery. Our new government, said Alexander H. Stephens, soon

to be vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, is founded, its

cornerstone rests, upon the great physical, philosophical, and moral

truth, to which Jefferson and the men of his day were blind, that the

negro, by nature or the curse of Canaan, is not equal to the white man;

that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is, by ordination of

Providence, whose wisdom it is not for us to inquire into or question,

his natural and normal condition. As the apostle of such a principle the

South could not but abjure the old establishment, whose genius and

working were inevitably in the contrary direction. Many confessed it to

be the essential nature of our Government, and not unfair treatment

under it, against which they rebelled.

Slavery had also bred hatred of the Union indirectly, by fostering

anti-democratic habits of thought, feeling, and action. "The form of

liberty existed, the press seemed to be free, the deliberations of

legislative bodies were tumultuous, and every man boasted of his

independence. But the spirit of true liberty, tolerance of the minority