Chapter I (3)

Cotton was, as we have seen, the principal article of export, and the slaveholding cotton planters conceived the idea that to secure a market for it there must be no duties on imports, and that home manufactures of needed articles for consumption would restrict the foreign demand for the raw material. Besides, the South with its slave labor could not indulge in manufacturing. A tariff on imports meant protection to home industries and to free white labor, both inimical to slavery. Some leading Southern statesmen, adherents of slavery, had vehemently opposed the ratification of the Constitution of 1787, on the ground that as it empowered Congress to levy import duties, it would encourage and build up home industries, with free labor; and they prophesied that with them slavery would eventually become unprofitable and therefore unpopular, hence would die. This idea never left the Southern mind, so, when the Confederacy of 1861 was formed, its Constitution (framed at Montgomery, Alabama) prohibited such duties for the express reason that no branch of industry was to be promoted in the new slave government, using this language:

"Nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry."(45)

This was then supposed to be the highest bulwark of slavery. Its votaries understood its strength and weakness. Independent, well- paid free labor and industries (46) would ennoble the men of toil, bring wealth and power, build up populous towns and cities, and consequently overwhelm, politically and otherwise, the institution of slavery, or draw into successful social competition with plantation life wealthy inhabitants who knew not slavery and its demoralizing influences.

Already, in 1832, the effects of protection on the prosperity of our country were manifest, especially since the Tariff Act of 1828, which levied a duty equivalent to 45 per cent. ad valorem. The Act of 1832 made a small reduction in the duties, but because it was claimed it did not distribute them equally, nullification was determined on as the remedy.

It was agreed by the strict constructionists of that day that a State Legislature could not declare a law of the United States void, but to do this the _people_ must speak through a convention. Such a convention met in South Carolina, in November, 1832, and passed a Nullification Ordinance, declaring the tariff acts "null and void," not binding on the State, and that under them no duties should be paid in the State after February 1, 1833.

Immediately thereafter medals were struck, inscribed "_John C. Calhoun, first President of the Southern Confederacy_." Nullification, thus proclaimed, was the legitimate forerunner of secession.

President Jackson, with his heroic love of the Union, regarded the movement as only _treason;_ he called it that in his proclamations; he prepared to collect the duties in Charleston or to confiscate the cargoes; he warned the nullifiers by the presence of General Scott there that he would be promptly used to coerce the State into loyalty; and he seemed eager to find an excuse for arresting, condemning for treason, and hanging Calhoun, who then went to Washington as a Senator, resigning the Vice-Presidency.(47)

Jackson tersely said:

"To say that any State may, at pleasure, secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation."

The situation was too imminent for Calhoun's nerves. To confront an indignant nation, led by a fearless, never doubting President, was a different thing then from what it was in 1860-61 with Buchanan as President, surrounded as he was by traitors in his Cabinet. Calhoun and his State backed down, and import duties continued to be collected in South Carolina, although a gradual reduction of them was made an excuse for Calhoun and his friends in Congress, in 1833, to vote for a protective tariff act, so recently before by them declared unconstitutional.(48)

On a "Force Bill" and a new tariff act being passed (March 15, 1833) the Nullification Ordinance was repealed in South Carolina. The next Ordinance of Secession of this State (1860) was based on the principles of the first one and the doctrines of Calhoun, slavery being the direct, as it had been the indirect, cause of their first enunciation. We must not anticipate here.

In the debate, in 1833, between Webster and Calhoun, the former, as in his great reply to Hayne,(49) expounded the Constitution as a "Charter of Union for all the States."

"The Constitution does not provide for events that must be preceded by its own destruction.

"That the Constitution is not a league, confederacy, or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacity, but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and creating direct relations between itself and individuals. That no State authority has power to dissolve these relations. That as to certain purposes the people of the United States are one people."

Nullification, attempted first on account of a protective tariff to foster home and young industries and for needed revenue to carry on the Federal government, was in two years, by its author, Calhoun, transferred, for a new cause on which to attempt to justify it-- from the tariff to domestic slavery. Calhoun soon discovered and admitted that the South could not be united against the North and for _disunion_ on opposition to a protective tariff. He therefore promptly sought an opportunity to bring forward in Congress the slavery question, and to attack the "_agitators_" and opponents of slavery extension in the North, and to threaten disunion if the institution of slavery was not permitted to dictate the political policy of the Republic.

The exact method of reviving in Congress the whole subject of slavery so soon after nullification had been so signally suppressed by Jackson is worth briefly stating.

President Jackson, in his Annual Message, December, 1835, called attention to attempts to use the mails to circulate matter calculated to excite slaves to insurrection, but he did not recommend any legislation to prevent it. Mr. Calhoun moved in the Senate that so much of the message relating to mail transportation of incendiary publications be referred to a select committee of five.

He was made chairman of this committee, and, on his request, three others from the South, with but one from the North, were put on the committee, and he promptly made an elaborate and carefully- prepared report, going into the whole doctrine of states-rights and nullification.

In it he said:

"That the States which form our Federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, bound together by a constitutional _compact_, and are possessed of all the powers belonging to distinct and separate States, etc.

"The Compact itself expressly provides that all powers not delegated are reserved to the States and the people. . . . On returning to the Constitution, it will be seen that, while the power of defending the country against _external_ danger is found among the enumerated, the instrument is wholly silent as to the power of defending the _internal_ peace and security of the States: and of course reserves to the States this important power, etc.

"It belongs to slave-holding States, whose institutions are in danger, and not to _Congress_, as is supposed by the message, to determine what papers are incendiary and intended to excite insurrection among the slaves, etc.

"It has already been stated that the States which comprise our Federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, united by a constitutional compact. Among its members the laws of nations are in full force and obligation, except as altered or modified by the compact, etc.

"Within their limits, the rights of the slave-holding States are as full to demand of the States within whose limits and jurisdiction their peace is assailed, to adopt the measures necessary to prevent the same, and, if refused or neglected, _to resort to means to protect themselves_, as if they were separate and independent communities."

Here, perhaps, was the clearest statement yet made, not only of the independence of States from Federal interference and of their right, on their own whim, to break the "_compact_," but of the right of the slaveholding States to dictate to the other States legislation on the subject of slavery.

It was at once a declaration of independence for the Southern States, and a declaration of their right to hold all the Northern States so far subject to them as to be obliged, on demand, to pass and enforce any prescribed law in the interest of slavery. The South was to be the sole judge of what law on this subject was requisite for slavery's purposes.

No duty was demanded on this question of the Federal Government; and Southern States, according to Calhoun, owed it none where slavery was concerned.

Calhoun and his committee could discover no power in the Southern States to enforce their demands save to act as separate and independent communities--that is, by setting up for themselves. This led logically to disunion, the result intended.

There was much in this report setting forth and professing to believe that it was the purpose of the North to emancipate the slaves, and through the agencies of organized anti-slavery societies bring about slave insurrections. The fanaticism of the North was descanted on, and the character of slavery and its wisdom as a social institution upheld.

He further said:

"He who regards slavery in those States simply under the relation of master and slave, as important as that relation is, viewed merely as a question of property to the slave-holding section of the Union, has a very imperfect conception of the institution, and the impossibility of abolishing it without disasters unexampled in the history of the world. To understand its nature and importance fully, it must be borne in mind that slavery, as it exists in the Southern States, involves _not only the relation of master and slave, but also the social and political relation of the two races_, of nearly equal numbers, from different quarters of the globe, and the most opposite of all others in every particular that distinguishes one race of men from another."

The whole report was replete with accusations against the North, and full of warning as to what the South would do should its demands not be complied with. The bill brought in by the committee was more remarkable than the report itself, and wholly inconsistent with its doctrine.

The bill provided high penalties for any postmaster who should knowingly receive and put into the mail any publication or picture _touching the subject of slavery_, to go into any State or Territory in which its circulation _was forbidden by state law_.

The report concluded:

"Should such be your decision, by refusing to pass this bill, I shall say to the people of the South, look to yourselves.

"But I must tell the Senate, be your decision what it may, the South will never abandon the principles of this bill. . . . We have a remedy in our own hands."

Clay, Webster, Benton, and others ably and effectually combated both the report and the bill, and the latter failed (25 to 19) in the Senate.

Besides denying the doctrine of the report, they showed the evil was not in mailing, but in taking from the mails and circulating by their own citizens the supposed objectionable publications.

Benton, himself a slaveholder, then and in subsequent years assailed and pronounced the doctrine of this report as the "_birth of disunion_." He has also shown that Calhoun delighted over the agitation of slavery more than he deprecated it; that he profoundly hoped that on the slavery question the South would be united and a Slave-Confederacy formed.(50)

In support of this Mr. Benton quotes from a letter of Mr. Calhoun to a gentleman in Alabama (1847) in which he says:

"I am much gratified with the tone and views of your letter, and concur entirely in the opinion you express, that instead of shunning, we ought to court the issue with the North on the slavery question. I would even go one step further and add that it is our duty _to force the issue_ on the North. We are now stronger relatively than we shall be hereafter, politically and morally. Unless we bring on the issue, delay to us will be dangerous indeed. . . . Something of the kind was indispensable to the South. On the contrary, if we should not meet it as we ought, I fear, greatly fear, our _doom_ will be fixed."(51)

Comment is unnecessary, but the letter, almost exultantly, mentions as fortunate that the Wilmot Proviso was offered, as it gave an opportunity to unite the South.

It proceeds:

"With this impression, I would regard any compromise or adjustment of the proviso, _or even its defeat_, without meeting the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unfortunate for us.

"This brings up the question, how can it be so met, without resorting to the dissolution of the Union.

"There is and can be but one remedy short of disunion, and that is to retaliate on our part by refusing to fulfill the stipulations in their (other States) favor, or such as we may select, as the most efficient."

The letter, still proceeding to discuss modes of dissolution or retaliation against Northern States, declares a convention of Southern States indispensable, and their co-operation absolutely essential to success, and says:

"Let that be called, and let it adopt measures to bring about the co-operation, and I would underwrite for the rest. The non- slaveholding States would be compelled to observe the stipulations of the Constitution _in our favor_, or abandon their trade with us, _or to take measures to coerce us_, which would throw on them the responsibility of dissolving the Union. Their unbounded avarice would in the end control them."(52)

It is certain that President Jackson's heroic proclamation of December, 1832, aborted the project of nullification under the South Carolina Ordinance, and certain it is, also, that the disappointed leaders of it turned from a protective tariff as a ground for it, to what they regarded as a better excuse, to wit: A slavery agitation, generated out of false alarms in the slave States.

After the tariff compromise of 1833, in which Calhoun sullenly acquiesced, he returned home and immediately announced that the South would never unite against the North on the tariff question, --"That the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep her out,--and consequently the basis of Southern union must be shifted to the slave question," which was then accordingly done.(53)

Jackson, discussing nullification, is reported to have said:

"It was the _tariff_ this time; next time it will be the _negro_."

This new and dangerous departure was not overlooked. The report and bill of 1835 relating to the use of the mails was only a chapter in execution of the new plan.

The observing friends of the Union did not overlook or misunderstand the movement. They at once took alarm. Mr. Clay, in May, 1833, wrote a letter to Mr. Madison expressing his apprehensions of the new danger, which brought from him a prompt response.

Mr. Madison in his letter said:

"It is painful to see the unceasing efforts to alarm the South by imputations against the North of unconstitutional designs on the subject of the slaves. You are right. I have no doubt that no such intermeddling disposition exists in the body of our Northern brethren. Their good faith is sufficiently guaranteed by the interest they have as merchants, ship-owners, and as manufacturers, in preserving a union with the slave-holding states. On the other hand, what madness in the South to look for greater safety in _disunion_."(54)

What Clay and Madison saw in 1833 as the real starting-point for ultimate secession proved true to history. From that time dates the machinations which led, through the steps that successively followed, to actual dissolution of the Union in 1860-61; then to coercion--War; then to the eradication of slavery. It was Southern madness that hastened the destruction of American slavery. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

The excuse for even this much significance given to "nullification" is, that in less than thirty years, under a new name--"state-rights" --it worked secession--disunion, and lit up the whole country with the flames and frenzy of internal war that did not die down for four years more; and then only when slavery was consumed.

The great abolition movement commenced in earnest, January 1, 1831. Wm. Lloyd Garrison published, at Boston, the _Liberator_, with the motto--"_Our countrymen are all mankind_." Benjamin Lundy, and perhaps others, had preceded Garrison, but not until after the Webster-Hayne debate did the abolition movement spread. Thenceforth it took deeper root in the human conscience, and it had advocates of determined spirit throughout the North, led on fearlessly, not alone by Garrison, but by Rev. Dr. Channing, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, and, later, by Rev. Samuel May (Syracuse, N. Y.), Gerritt Smith, the poet Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, Joshua R. Giddings, Owen Lovejoy, and others, who spoke from pulpit, rostrum, and some in the halls of legislation; others in the courts and through the press. The enforcement of the fugitive-slave law was often violent, and always added new fuel to the fierce and constantly growing opposition to slavery.

The Anti-Slavery party was not one wholly built on abstract sentiment of philanthropists, but it involved physical resistance: Violence to violence.

The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded at a National Anti- Slavery Convention held in Philadelphia, in December, 1831.

Hard upon the establishment of the _Liberator_ came the Nat Turner insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia (August, 1831). This gave to the South a fresh ground to complain of the North. Turner's insurrection was held to be the legitimate fruit of abolition agitation. Turner was an African of natural capacity, who quoted the Bible fluently, prayed vehemently, and preached to his fellow slaves.

He told them, as did Joan of Arc, of "_Voices_" and "_Visions_," and of his communion with the Holy Spirit. An eclipse of the sun was the signal to strike their enemies and for freedom. The massacre lasted forty-eight hours, and sixty-one whites, women and children not spared, were victims. On the other hand, negroes were shot, tortured, hanged, and burned at the stake on whom the slightest suspicion of complicity fell.

The Nat Turner negro slave insurrection is the only one known to slavery in the United States. Others may possibly have been contemplated. The John Brown raid was not a negro insurrection. Even in the midst of the war (1861-65), believed by most slaves to be a war for their freedom, insurrections were unknown.(55)

The African race, the most wronged through the centuries, has been the most docile and the least revengeful of the races of the world.

(45) Confederate Con., Art. 1, Sec. 8, par. 1.

(46) The South in the days of slavery had, practically, no manufactories.

(47) Benton, _Thirty Years' View_, vol. i., p. 343.

(48) Rhodes, _Hist. U. S._, vol. i., pp. 49-50.

(49) January 26, 1830.

(50) For this report and history see Benton's _Thirty Years' View_, vol. i, pp. 580, etc.

(51) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., chap. clxxxix.; Historical, etc. Examination, _Dred Scott Case_ (Benton), p. 139.

(52) Historical, etc., Examination, _Dred Scott Case_ (Benton), p. 141-4.

(53) _Ibid_., p. 181.

(54) Historical, etc., Ex., _Dred Scott Case_, pp. 181-2.

(55) There were some small insurrections and some threatened ones in the colonies as early as 1660, the guilty negroes or Indians being then punished by crucifixion, burning, and by starvation; other insurrections took place in the Carolinas and Georgia in 1734, and the Cato insurrection occurred at Stono, S. C., in 1740. There was a wide spread "Negro Plot" in New York in 1712. These attempts alarmed the colonies and caused some of them to take steps to abolish slavery.--_Sup. of African Slave-Trade U. S._, pp. 6, 10, 22, 206.

XIV TEXAS--ADMISSION INTO THE UNION (1845)

Texas was a province of Mexico when the latter seceded from Spain through a "Proclamation of Independence" by Iturbide (February 24, 1821) with a view to establishing a constitutional monarchy. At the end of about two years of Iturbide's reign, this form of government was overthrown, and he was compelled (March 19, 1823) to resign his crown. Through the efforts, principally of General Santa Anna, a Republic was established under a Constitution, modelled, in large part, on that of the United States, which went into full effect October 4, 1824. Spain did not formally recognize the independence of Mexico until 1836. The Mexican Republic was opposed to slavery, and after some of her provinces had decreed freedom to slaves its President (Guerro), September 15, 1829, decreed its total abolition, but as Texas, on account of slave- holding settlers from the United States, demurred to the decree, another one followed, April 5, 1837, by the Mexican Congress, also abolishing slavery, without exception, in Texas. Despite these decrees the American settlers carried slaves into Texas, which became part of the State of Coahuila, whose Constitution also forbade the importation of slaves.

Thus was slavery extension to the southwest cut off by a power not likely ever to be in sympathy with it. It is worthy of note that neither the independent Spanish blood (notwithstanding Spain's deep guilt in the conduct of the slave trade), nor that blood as intermixed with the Indian, nor the Mexican Indians themselves, ever willingly maintained human slavery in America. Mexico's established religion under the Constitution, being Roman Catholic, did not permit its perpetuation. The Pope of Rome, in the nineteenth century and earlier, had denounced it as inhuman and contrary to the divine justice.

The maintenance of slavery in Texas was regarded as of paramount importance to the South, and as slavery could not exist in Texas under Mexican authority, efforts were put forth to secure her independence, then to annex her to the United States as a State wherein slavery should exist. Even Clay, as Secretary of State, under Adams, in 1827, proposed to purchase Texas. President Jackson, in 1830, offered $5,000,000 for Texas. The Mexican Government, foreseeing the coming danger, by law prohibited American immigration into Texas, but this was unavailing, as the ever-unscrupulous hand of slavery was reaching out for more room and more territory to perpetuate itself. Americans, like their natural kinsmen the Englishmen, then regarded not the rights of others, the weak especially, when the slave power was involved.

Sam Houston, of Tennessee, a capable man who had fought under Jackson in the Indian wars, inspired by his pro-slavery proclivities in 1835, went to Texas avowedly to wrest Texas from free Mexico, and, it is said, of his real intentions President Jackson was not ignorant.

The unfortunate internal political contentions in Mexico gave the intruding Americans pretexts for disputes which soon led to the desired conflicts with the Mexican authorities.

Santa Anna, who had, through a revolution, put himself at the head of the new Mexican Republic, attempted to coerce the invading settlers to observance of the laws, but in this was only partially successful. On March 2, 1836, a Texas _Declaration of Independence_ was issued, signed by about _sixty_ men, _two_ of whom only were Texas-Mexicans, and this was followed by a Constitution for the Republic of Texas, chief among its objects being the establishment of human slavery. Santa Anna, with the natural fierceness of the Spanish-Indian, waged a ferocious war on the revolutionists. A garrison of 250 men at "The Alamo," a small mission church near San Antonio, was taken by him after heroic resistance, and massacred to a man.

"Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat, but The Alamo had none."

David Crockett, an uneducated, eccentric Tennessean, who was a celebrated hunter, Indian fighter, story teller, wit, and member of Congress three terms (where he opposed President Jackson, and refused to obey any party commanding him "to-go-wo-haw-gee," just at his pleasure) here lost his life. On the 27th of the same month 500 more Americans at Goliad were also massacred. These atrocities were used successfully to produce sympathy and create excitement in the United States. On April 21, 1836, a decisive battle was fought at San Jacinto between Santa Anna's army of 1500 men and a body of 800 men under General Sam Houston, in which the former was defeated, and Santa Anna, the President of Mexico, captured. While a prisoner, to save his life he immediately concluded an armistice with Houston, agreeing to evacuate Texas and procure the recognition by Mexico of its independence. This the Mexican Congress afterwards refused. But in October, 1836, with a Constitution modelled on that of the United States, the Republic of Texas (recognizing slavery) was organized, with Houston as President, and forthwith the United States recognized its independence.

In a few months application was made to the United States to receive it into the Union, but on account of a purpose to divide Texas into a number of slave States to secure the preponderance of the slave political power in the Union, which for want of sufficient population was not immediately possible, her admission was delayed, and Sam Houston's Republic of Texas existed for above eight years. President Van Buren, who succeeded Jackson as President, was opposed to its annexation, and it was left to the apostate Tyler to take up the business.

He, too, would have failed but Mr. Upshur, his Secretary of State, being killed in 1844 by the accidental explosion of a cannon, John C. Calhoun became his successor. The latter at once arranged a treaty of annexation, but this the Senate rejected. Both Van Buren and Clay, leading candidates of their respective parties for the Presidency in 1844, were opposed to the annexation; the former was defeated for nomination, and the latter at the election, because, during the canvass, to please the slaveholding Whigs he sought to shift his position, thus losing his anti-slavery friends, "whose votes would have elected him"; and Polk became President. Annexation, however, did not wait for his administration.

In the House of Representatives, in December, 1844, an attempt was made to admit Texas, half to be free and half slave, making two States.

By resolutions of Congress, dated March 1, 1845, consent was given to erect Texas into a State with a view to annexation; and in order that she might be admitted into the Union such resolutions provided that thereafter four other States, with her consent, might be formed out of its territory. In August succeeding, a Constitution was framed prohibiting emancipation of slaves (56) and authorizing their importation into Texas, which was thereafter adopted by the people of the Republic of Texas, under which Congress, by resolution (December 29, 1845) formally admitted Texas into the Union--the last slave State admitted.

As a sop to Northern "dough-faces," and to induce them to vote for the resolutions of March 1st, it recited that the new States lying south of latitude 36° 30´ should be admitted with or without slavery as their inhabitants might decide, those north of the line without slavery. In the subsequent adjustment of the north boundary line of Texas, it was found _no part of it_ was within two hundred miles of 36° 30´; so all of Texas (in territory an empire, in area 240,000 square miles, six times greater than Ohio) was thus dedicated forever, by law, to human slavery, in the professed interest of the nineteenth century civilization. The intrigue, the bad faith, the perfidy by which this great political and moral wrong was consummated were laid up against the "day of wrath."

(56) How different is Texas' Constitution of 1876, the first paragraph of which runs: "Texas is a free and independent State."

XV MEXICAN WAR--ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO 1846-8

With Texas came naturally a desire for more slave territory. Wrong is never satiated; it hungers as it feeds on its prey.

Pretence for quarrel arose over the boundary between Texas and Mexico. The United States unjustly claimed that the Rio Grande was the southwestern boundary of Texas instead of the Nueces, as Mexico maintained. Mexico was invaded, her cities, including her ancient capital, were taken, and her badly-organized armies overthrown. Congress, by an Act of May 13, 1846, declared that "by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war existed between that government and the United States," and it virtually ended in September, 1847, though the final treaty of peace at Guadalupe Hidalgo was not signed until February 2, 1848. While the annexation of Texas was regarded by Mexico as a cause of war, yet she did not declare war on that ground.

The principle of "manifest destiny" was proclaimed for the United States. In the prosecution of the war, with shameless effrontery it was justified on the necessity that "_we want room_" for the two hundred millions of inhabitants soon to be under our flag.

Answering this cry, put up by Senator Cass of Michigan, Senator Thomas Corwin, in a spirit of prophecy, said:

"But you still say you want _room_ for your people. This has been the plea of every robber-chief from Nimrod to the present hour. I dare say, when Tamerlane descended from his throne, built of seventy thousand human skulls, and marched his ferocious battalions to further slaughter,--I dare say he said, 'I want room.' Alexander, too, the mighty 'Macedonian Madman,' when he wandered with his Greeks to the plains of India, and fought a bloody battle on the very ground where recently England and the Sikhs engaged in a strife for 'room' . . . Sir, he made quite as much of that sort of history as you ever will. Mr. President, do you remember the last chapter in that history? It is soon read. Oh! I wish we could understand its moral. Ammon's son (so was Alexander named), after all his victories, died drunk in Babylon. The vast empire he conquered to 'get room' became the prey of the generals he trained; it was desparted, torn to pieces, and so ended. Sir, there is a very significant appendix; it is this: The descendants of the Greeks-- of Alexander's Greeks--are now governed by a descendant of Attilla."

Through the greed of the slave power Texas was acquired, and they still longed for more slave territory, and weak Mexico alone could be depleted to obtain it.

Southern California and New Mexico had a sufficiently warm climate for slavery to flourish in.

The war was far from popular, though the pride of national patriotism supported it. Clay and Webster each opposed it, and each gave a son to it.(57)

Abraham Lincoln, then for a single term in Congress, spoke against it, but, like most other members holding similar views, voted men, money, and supplies to carry it on.

Senator Benton of Missouri, a party friend to the administration of Polk and favoring the war, said:

"The truth was, an intrigue was laid for peace before the war was declared! And this intrigue was even part of the scheme for making war. It is impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike, or more intriguing, than that of Mr. Polk. They were men of peace, with objects to be accomplished by means of war. . . . They wanted a small war, just large enough to require a treaty of peace, and not large enough to make military reputations dangerous for the Presidency."(58)

It was predicted the war would not last to exceed "90 to 120 days." The proposed conquest of Mexico was so inlaid with treachery that this prediction was justified. The Administration conspired with the then exiled Santa Anna "not to obstruct his return to Mexico."

"It was the arrangement with Santa Anna! We to put him back in Mexico, and he to make peace with us: of course an _agreeable peace_ . . . not without receiving a consideration: and in this case some millions of dollars were required--not for himself, of course, but to enable him to promote the peace at home."(59)

Accordingly, in August, 1846, before Buena Vista and other signal successes in the war, the President asked an appropriation of $2,000,000 to be used in promoting a peace.

But already jealousy and envy toward the generals in the field had arisen, which culminated in President Polk offering to confer on Senator Thomas H. Benton (of his own party) the rank of Lieutenant- General, with full command, thus superseding the Whig Generals, Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, then possible Presidential candidates.(60)

The acquisition of more territory from Mexico being no secret, a bill for the desired appropriation precipitated, unexpectedly, a most violent discussion of the slavery question, never again allayed until slavery was eliminated from the Union.

A Democratic Representative from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, who favored the acquisition of California and New Mexico, for the purpose of "_preserving the equilibrium of States_," and as an offset to the already acquired slave State of Texas, which was then expected to be soon erected into five slave States, moved, August, 1846, the following proviso to the "two million bill":

"That no part of the territory to be acquired should be open to the introduction of slavery."

This famous "Wilmot Proviso" never became a part of any law; its sole importance was in its frequent presentation and the violent discussions over it.

Thus far the national wrong against Mexico had for its manifest object the spread of slavery.

The proposition to seize Mexican territory and dedicate it to freedom threw the advocates of slavery and the war into a frenzy, and consternation in high circles prevailed.

The proviso was adopted in the House, but failed in the Senate. It was, in February, 1847, again, by the House, tacked on the "three million bill," but being struck out in the Senate, the bill passed the House without it. But the proviso had done its work; the whole North was alive to its importance, and Presidential and Congressional _timber_ blossomed or withered accordingly as it did or did not fly a banner inscribed "_Wilmot Proviso_."

Calhoun, professing great alarm and great concern for the Constitution, on February 19, 1847, introduced into the Senate his celebrated resolution declaring, among other things, that the Territories belonged to the "several States . . . as their joint and common property." "That the enactment of any law which should . . . deprive the citizens of any of the States . . . from emigrating with their property [slaves] into any of the Territories . . . would be a violation of the Constitution and the rights of the States, . . . and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself."

Here was the doctrine of state-rights born into full life, with the old doctrine of nullification embodied. Benton, speaking of the dangerous character of Calhoun's resolution, said of them:

"As Sylla saw in the young Caesar many Mariuses, so did he see in them many nullifications."

Benton, quite familiar with the whole history of slavery before, during, and after the Mexican War, himself a Senator from a slave State, says the Wilmot proviso "was secretly cherished as a means of keeping up discord, and forcing the issue between the North and the South," by Calhoun and his friends, citing Mr. Calhoun's Alabama letter of 1847, already quoted, in proof of his statement.

By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February, 1848) for $15,000,000 (above $3,000,000 more than was paid Napoleon for the Louisiana Purchase), New Mexico and Upper California were ceded by Mexico to the United States, and the Rio Grande from El Paso to its mouth became the boundary between the two countries. Upper California is now the State of California, and the New Mexico thus acquired included much of the present New Mexico, nearly all of Arizona, substantially all of Utah and Nevada, and the western portion of Colorado, in area 545,000 square miles, which, together with the Gadsden Purchase, by further treaty with Mexico (December 30, 1853) for $10,000,000 more, completed the despoiling of the sister Republic. The territory acquired by the last treaty now constitutes the southern part of Arizona and the southwest corner of New Mexico.

Almost contemporaneous with the invasion of Mexico, and as part of the plan for the acquisition of her territory, Buchanan, then Secretary of State, dispatched Lieutenant Gillespie, of the United States Army, _via_ Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and Mazatlan, to Monterey, Upper California, ostensibly with dispatches to a consul, but really for the purpose of presenting a mere _letter of introduction_ and a verbal request to Captain John C. Fremont, U.S.A., then on an exploring expedition to the Pacific Coast. The Lieutenant found Fremont at the north end of the Great Klamath Lake, Oregon, in the midst of hostile Indians. The _letter_ being presented, Gillespie verbally communicated from the Secretary a request for him to counteract any foreign scheme on California, and to cultivate the good-will of the inhabitants towards the United States.

On this information Fremont returned, in May, 1846 (the month the war opened on the Rio Grande), to the valley of the Sacramento. His arrival there was timely, as already the ever-grasping hand of the British was at work. There had been inaugurated (1) the massacre of American settlers, (2) the subjection of California to British protection, and (3) the transfer of its public domain to British subjects. Fremont did not even know war had broken out between the United States and Mexico, yet he organized at first a defensive war in the Sacramento Valley for the protection of American settlers, and blood was shed; then he resolved to overturn the Mexican authority, and establish "California Independence." The celerity with which all this was accomplished was romantic. In thirty days all Northern California was freed from Mexican rule--the flag of independence raised; American settlers were saved, and the British party overthrown.

Since its discovery by Sir Francis Drake--two hundred years--England had sought to possess the splendid Bay of California, with its great seaport and the tributary country. The war between the United States and Mexico seemed her opportune time for the acquisition, but her efforts, both by sea and land, were thwarted by her only less voracious daughter.(61)

Often in human affairs events concur to control or turn aside the most carefully guarded plans. California and the other Mexican acquisitions were by the war party--the slave propagandists--fore- ordained to be slave territory. The free State men had done little to favor its theft and purchase, and it was therefore claimed that they of right should have little interest in its disposition.

Just nine days (January 24, 1848) before the treaty of peace (Guadalupe Hidalgo), John A. Sutter, a Swiss by parentage, German by birth (Baden), American by residence and naturalization (Missouri), Mexican in turn, by residence and naturalization, together with James A. Marshall, a Jerseyman wheelwright in Sutter's employ, while the latter was walking in a newly-constructed and recently flooded saw-mill tail-race, in the small valley of Coloma, about forty-five miles from Sacramento (then Sutter's Fort), in the foot- hills of the Sierras, picked up some small, shining yellow particles, which proved to be free _gold_.(62)

"_The accursed thirst for gold_" was now soon to outrun the _accursed greed_ for more slave territory. The race was unequal. The whole world joined in the race for gold. The hunger for wealth seized all alike, the common laborer, the small farmer, the merchant, the mechanic, the politician, the lawyer and the clergyman, the soldier and the sailor from the army and navy; from all countries and climes came the gold seeker; only the slaveholder with his slaves alone were left behind. There was no place for the latter with freemen who themselves swung the pick and rocked the cradle in search of the precious metal.

California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona still give up their gold and their silver to the free miner; and the financial condition and prosperity of the civilized countries of the world have been favorably affected by these productions, but of this we are not here to speak. Slavery is our text, and we must not stray too far from it.

Turning back to the negotiations for the first treaty with Mexico, we find, to her everlasting credit, though compelled to part with her possessions, she still desired they should continue to be free.

Slavery, as has already been shown, did not exist in Mexico by law; and California and New Mexico held no slaves, so, during the negotiations, the Mexican representatives begged for the incorporation of an article providing that slavery should be prohibited in all the territory to be ceded. N. P. Trist, the American Commissioner, promptly and fiercely resented the bare mention of the subject. He replied that if the territory to be acquired were tenfold more valuable, and covered _a foot thick_ with pure gold, on the single condition that slavery was to be excluded therefrom, the proposition would not be for a moment entertained, nor even communicated to the President.(63)

Though the invocation was in behalf of humanity, the "invincible Anglo-Saxon race" (so cried Senator Preston in 1836) "could not listen to the prayer of superstitious Catholicism, goaded on by a miserable priesthood."

Now that California and New Mexico were United States territory, how was it to be devoted to slavery to reward the friends of its acquisition?

As slavery was prohibited under Mexican law, this territory must by the law of nations remain free until slavery was, by positive enactment, authorized therein. This ancient and universal law, however, was soon to be disregarded or denied by the advocates of the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States spread itself over territories, and, by force of it, legalized human slavery therein, and guaranteed to citizens of a State the right to carry their property--human slaves included--into United States territory and there hold it, by force of and protected by the Constitution, in defiance of unfriendly territorial or Congressional legislation. This novel claim also sprung from the brain of Calhoun, and was met with the true view of slavery, to wit: That it was a creature solely of law; that it existed nowhere of natural right; that whenever a slave was taken from a jurisdiction where slaves could be held by law, to one where no law made him a slave, his shackles fell off and he became a free man. The soundness of the rule that a citizen of a State could carry his personal property from his State to a Territory was admitted, but it was claimed he could not hold it there if it were not such as the laws of the Territory recognized as property. In other words, he might transfer his property from a State to a Territory, but he could not take with him the law of his State authorizing him to hold it as property. The law of the _situs_ is of universal application governing property.

It remains to briefly note the effort to extend and interpret the Constitution, with the sole view to establish and perpetuate human slavery.

Near the close of the session of Congress (1848-49), Mr. Walker of Wisconsin, at the instigation of Calhoun moved, as a rider on an appropriation bill, a section providing a temporary government for such Territories, including a provision to "_extend the Constitution of the United States to the Territories_." This astounding proposition was defended by Calhoun, and, with his characteristic straightforwardness, he avowed the true object of the amendment was to override the anti-slavery laws of the Territories, and plant the institution of slavery therein, beyond the reach of Congressional or territorial law.

Mr. Webster expounded the Constitution and combated the newly brought forward slave-extension doctrine, but a majority of the Senate voted for the amendment.

The House, however, voted down the rider, and between the two branches of Congress it failed. For a time appropriations of necessary supplies for the government were made to depend on the success of the measure.(64)

Thus again the newly acquired domain escaped the doom of perpetual slavery.

But we have done with the Mexican War and the acquisition of Mexican territory. It remains to be told how this vast domain was disposed of. No part of it ever became slave.

There was not time in Polk's administration to dispose of it. General Zachary Taylor, the hero of Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and Buena Vista, became President, March 4, 1849. He was wholly without political experience and had never even voted at an election. He was purely a professional soldier, and a Southerner by birth and training; was a patriot, possessed of great common sense, and knew nothing of intrigue, and was endowed with a high sense of justice, and believed in the rights of the majority. He belonged to no cabal to promote, extend, or perpetuate slavery, and, probably, in his conscience was opposed to it. His Southern friends could not use him, and when they demanded his aid, as President, to plant slavery in California, he not only declined to serve them, but openly declared that California should be free. In different words, but words of like import, he responded to them, as he did to General Wool, at a critical moment in the battle of Buena Vista. Wool remarked: "_General, we are whipped_." Taylor responded: "_That is for me to determine_."(65)

(57) Lt.-Col. Henry Clay, Jr., fell at Buena Vista February 23, 1847, and Maj. Edward Webster died at San Angel, Mexico, January 23, 1848.

(58) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., p. 680.

(59) _Ibid_., p. 681.

(60) Taylor became President March, 1849, succeeding Polk, and died in office July 9, 1850. Scott was nominated by his party (Whig) in 1852, and defeated; Franklin Pierce, a subordinate General of the war, was elected by his party (Democrat) President in 1852.

(61) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., pp. 688-692.

(62) _Hist. Ready Ref._, vol. i, p. 350.

(63) Trist's letter to Buchanan, Secretary of State, Von Holst, vol. iii., p. 334.

(64) Historical Ex., etc., _Dred Scott Case_, pp. 151-9. This is the first Congress where its sessions were continued after twelve o'clock midnight, of March 3d, in the odd years. _Ibid_., pp. 136-9.

(65) _Hist. of Mexican War_ (Wilcox), p. 223.

XVI COMPROMISE MEASURES--1850

The slavery agitation first began in 1832 on a false tariff issue, and precipitated upon the country in 1835, on the lines of nullification and disunion, and was again revived at the close of the Mexican War, and continued violently through 1849 and 1850. The year 1850 will be ever memorable in the history of the United States as a year wherein all the baleful seeds of disunion were sown, which grew, to ripen, a little more than ten years later, into _disunion_ in fact. Prophetically, a leading South Carolina paper in its New Year-Day edition, said:

"When the future historian shall address himself to the task of portraying the rise, progress, and decline of the American union, the year _1850_ will arrest his attention, as denoting and presenting the first marshalling and arraying of those hostile forces and opposing elements which resulted in dissolution."

At the close of Polk's administration an inflammatory address, drawn and signed by Calhoun and forty-one other members of Congress from the slave States, was issued, filled with unfounded charges against the North, professing to be a warning to the South that a purpose existed to abolish slavery and bring on a conflict between the white and black races, and to San Domingoize the South, which could only be avoided, the address states:

"By fleeing the homes of ourselves and ancestors, and by abandoning our country to our slaves, to become the permanent abode of disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness."

This manifesto did not go quite to the extent of declaring for a dissolution of the Union, but it appealed to the South to become united, saying, if the North did not yield to its demands, the South would be the assailed, and

"Would stand justified by all laws, human and divine, in repelling a blow so dangerous, without looking to consequences, and to resort to all means necessary for that purpose."(66)

The _Southern Press_ was set up in Washington to inculcate the advantages of disunion, and to inflame the South against the North. It portrayed the advantages which would result from Southern independence; and assumed to tell how Southern cities would recover colonial superiority; how ships of all nations would crowd Southern ports and carry off the rich staples, bringing back ample returns, and how Great Britain would be the ally of the new "United States South." In brief, it asserted that a Southern convention should meet and decree a separation unless the North surrendered to Southern demands for the extension of slavery, for its protection in the States, and for the certain return of fugitive slaves; it urged also that military preparation be made to maintain what the convention might decree.

A disunion convention actually met at Nashville, near the home of Jackson, but the old hero was then in his grave.(67) It assumed to represent seven States. It invited the assembling of a "Southern Congress." South Carolina and Mississippi alone responded to this call. In the Legislature of South Carolina secession and disunion speeches were delivered, and throughout the South public addresses were made, and the press advocated and threatened dissolution of the Union unless the North yielded all.(68)

All this and more to immediately effect the introduction of slavery into California and New Mexico. The South saw clearly that the free people of the Republic were resolved that there should be no more slave States, but believed that the mercantile, trading people, and small farmers of the North would not fight for their rights, and hence intimidation seemed to them to promise success.

It had its effect on many, and, unfortunately, on some of America's greatest statesmen.

By a singular coincidence the Thirty-first Congress, which met December, 1849, embraced among its members Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Cass, Corwin, Seward, Salmon P. Chase, John P. Hale, Hamlin of Maine, James M. Mason, Douglas of Illinois, Foote and Davis of Mississippi, of the Senate; and Joshua R. Giddings, Horace Mann, Wilmot of Pennsylvania, Robert C. Schenck, Robert C. Winthrop, Alexander H. Stephens, and Thaddeus Stevens, of the House.

To avert the impending storm of slavery agitation then threatening disunion, Clay, by a set of resolutions, with a view to a "_lasting compromise_," on January 29, 1850, proposed in the Senate a general plan of compromise and a committee of thirteen to report a bill or bills in accordance therewith.

His plan was:

1. The admission of California with her free Constitution.

2. Territorial governments for the other territory acquired from Mexico, without any restriction as to slavery.

3. The disputed boundary between Texas and New Mexico to be determined.

4. The _bona fide_ public debt of Texas, contracted prior to annexation, to be paid from duties on foreign imports, upon condition that Texas relinquish her claim to any part of New Mexico.

5. The declaration that it was inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, without the consent of Maryland and the people of the District, and without compensation to owners of slaves.

6. The prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

7. A more effectual provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves.

8. A declaration that Congress has no power to interfere with the slave trade between States.

These resolutions and the plan embodied led to a most noteworthy discussion, chiefly participated in by Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, Seward, and Foote. The debate was opened by Clay. He favored the admission of California with her already formed free State Constitution, but he exclaimed:

"I shall go with the Senator from the South who goes farthest in making penal laws and imposing the heaviest sanctions for the recovery of fugitive slaves and the restoration of them by their owners."

He, however, tried to hold the olive branch to both the North and the South, and pleaded for the Union. He pathetically pleaded for mutual concessions, and deprecated, what he then apprehended, _war_ between the sections, exclaiming:

"War and dissolution of the Union are identical."

After prophesying that if a war came it would be more ferocious, bloody, implacable, and exterminating than were the wars of Greece, the Commoners of England, or the Revolutions of France, Senator Clay predicted that it would be "not of two or three years' duration, but a war of interminable duration, during which some Philip or Alexander, some Caesar or Napoleon, would arise and cut the Gordian knot and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the several portions of this common empire."

Happily, events have falsified most of these prophecies.