Chapter I (5)

"At the times mentioned in the plaintiff's declaration, the defendant, claiming to be the owner as aforesaid, laid his hands upon said plaintiff, Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie, and imprisoned them, doing in this respect, however, no more than what he might lawfully do if they were of right his slaves at such times."

It is our purpose here only to set forth what was decided, or attempted to be decided, bearing upon slavery and its political status in the United States.

This purpose we can accomplish no better than by quoting parts of the Syllabi of the case.

We quote:

"A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a 'citizen' within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.

"When the Constitution was adopted, they were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State, and were not numbered among its 'people or citizens.' Consequently, the special rights and immunities guaranteed to citizens do not apply to them. And not being 'citizens' within the meaning of the Constitution, they are not entitled to sue in that character in a court of the United States, and the Circuit Court has no jurisdiction in such a suit.

"The only two clauses in the Constitution which point to this race treat them as persons whom it was _morally_ lawful to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves.

"The change in public opinion and feeling in relation to the African race which has taken place since the adoption of the Constitution cannot change its construction and meaning, and it must be construed and administered now according to its true meaning and intention when it was formed and adopted.

"The plaintiff, having admitted (by his demurrer to the plea in abatement) that his ancestors were imported from Africa and sold as slaves, he is not a citizen of the State of Missouri according to the Constitution of the United States, and was not entitled to sue in that character in the Circuit Court.

"The clause in the Constitution authorizing Congress to make all needful rules and regulations for the government of the territory and other property of the United States applies only to territory within the chartered limits of some of the States when they were colonies of Great Britain, and which was surrendered by the British Government to the old Confederation of States in the treaty of peace. It does not apply to territory acquired by the present Federal Government, by treaty or conquest, from a foreign nation.

"The United States, under the present Constitution, cannot acquire territory to be held as a colony, to be governed at its will and pleasure. But it may acquire and may govern it as a Territory until it has a population which, in the judgment of Congress, entitles it to be admitted as a State of the Union.

"During the time it remains a Territory Congress may legislate over it within the scope of its constitutional powers in relation to citizens of the United States--and may establish a territorial government--and the form of this local government must be regulated by the discretion of Congress--but with powers not exceeding those which Congress itself, by the Constitution, is authorized to exercise over citizens of the United States, in respect to their rights of persons or rights of property.

"The Territory thus acquired is acquired by the people of the United States for their common and equal benefit, through their agent and trustee, the Federal Government. Congress can exercise no power over the rights of persons or property of a citizen in the Territory which is prohibited by the Constitution. The government and its citizens, whenever the Territory is open to settlement, both enter it with their respective rights defined and limited by the Constitution.

"Congress has no right to prohibit the citizens of any particular State or States from taking up their home there, while it permits citizens of other States to do so. Nor has it a right to give privileges to one class of citizens which it refuses to another. The territory is acquired for their equal and common benefit--and if open to any it must be open to all upon equal and the same terms.

"Every citizen has a right to take with him into the Territory any article of property which the Constitution of the United States recognizes as property.

"The Constitution of the United States recognizes slaves as property, and pledges the Federal Government to protect it. And Congress cannot exercise any more authority on property of that description than it may constitutionally exercise over property of any other kind.

"The act of Congress, therefore, prohibiting a citizen of the United States from taking with him his slaves when he removes to the Territory in question to reside, is an exercise of authority over private property which is not warranted by the Constitution--and the removal of the plaintiff, by his owner, to that Territory, gave him no title to freedom.

"The plaintiff himself acquired no title to freedom by being taken by his owner to Rock Island, in Illinois, and brought back to Missouri. This court has heretofore decided that the status or condition of a person of African descent depended on the laws of the State in which he resided."

Thus the highest and most august judicial tribunal of this country pronounced doctrines abhorrent to the age, overthrowing the acts and practices of the fathers and framers of the Republic, and pronouncing the Ordinance of 1787, in so far as it restricted human slavery, and all like enactments as, from the beginning, _unconstitutional_.

This decision startled the bench and bar and the thinking people of the whole country, not alone on account of the doctrines laid down by the court, but because of the new departure of a high court in going beyond the confines of the case made on the record to announce them.

It is, to say the least, only usual for any court to decide the issues necessary to a determination of the real case under consideration, nothing more; but the court in this case first decided that the Circuit Court, from which error was prosecuted, had no jurisdiction to render any judgment, it having found "upon the showing of Scott himself that he was still a slave; not even to render a judgment against him and in favor of defendants for costs."

In the opinion it is said:

"It is the judgment of this court that it appears by the record before us that the plaintiff in error is not a citizen of Missouri, in the same sense in which that word is used in the Constitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States, for that reason, had _no jurisdiction_ in the case, and could give no judgment in it. Its judgment for the defendant must, consequently, be reversed, and a mandate issued, directing the suit to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction."

Having thus decided, it followed that anything said or attempted to be decided on other questions was extra-judicial--mere _obiter dicta_, if even that.

Nor does the objection to the matters covered by the decision rest alone on its extra-judicial character, but on the fact that in settling a mere individual controversy it passed from private rights to public rights of the people in their national character, wholly pertaining to political questions, entirely beyond the province of the court, legally, judicially, or potentially. It had no legal right as a court to decide or comment upon what was not before it; it had no judicial power to make any decree to enforce public or political rights, nor yet to enforce, by any instrumentalities or judicial machinery,--fines, jails, etc.,--any such decrees.

Moreover, the decision invaded the express powers of the Constitution grated to it by the Constitution "respecting the Territory of other property belonging to the United States." This grant is preceded in the Constitution by the language, "The Congress shall have power to,"(93) etc.

The court entered the political field, though clothed only with judicial power, one of the three distinct powers of the government. For wise purposes executive, legislative, and judicial departments were provided by the Constitution, each to be potential within its sphere, acting always, of course, within their respective proper, limited, constitutionally conferred authority.

"The judicial power shall extend to all _cases_ in law and equity arising under this Constitution."(94)

This highest judicial tribunal, it is seen, passed from a case wherein no jurisdiction, as it held, rested in the courts to enter any form of judgment--not even for costs, to decide matters not pertaining in any sense to the particular case, nor even to _judicial_ public rights of the people or the government, but wholly to the political, legislative powers of Congress, not in any degree involved in the jurisdictional question arising and decided. If it be said that courts of review or error sometimes decide all the questions made on the record, though some of them may not be necessary to a complete disposition of the case before it, it must be answered that this is most rare, if at all, where the case is disposed of, as was the Dred Scott case, against the trial court's jurisdiction. But, manifestly, the many political questions discussed at great length in the opinions and formulated as _syllabi_ (quoted above) for the case, did not and could not arise of record, and they were not covered by assignments of error, and hence, whether the sole question decided or to be decided was one of jurisdiction or not, these questions can only be regarded as discussions--personal opinions of the justices--not rising to the dignity of mere volunteer opinions on matters of _law_; of no binding force even as _legal precedents_, because outside of the case and record--not even properly _obiter dicta_.

But slavery then dominated and permeated everything and everybody. Why should the justices of the Supreme Court be free from its influence? The Ordinance of 1787 was re-enacted by the First Congress under the Constitution, and its slavery restriction clause was enforced, without question, by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson and their administrations. The Missouri Compromise line had stood unassailed for above a third of a century. In 1848 Polk and his Cabinet approved the Oregon Bill prohibiting slavery; also Pierce and his Administration approved (1853) the extension of the same prohibition over Washington Territory.

Earlier, in 1845, the Texas Annexation Act, as we have seen, re- enacted the 36° 30´ line of restriction for slavery, and in 1848 the pro-slavery party in Congress voted to extend this line to California. Congress again and again exercised the power of legislating for the Territories; eleven times, between 1823 and 1838, it amended the laws of the Legislature of Florida, thus asserting the absolute right to legislate for the Territories. The Supreme Court of the United States for nearly seventy years had assumed and acted on the principle of the right of Congress to legislate for them.

Now all became changed, as though a new oracle of construction had appeared, higher and wiser than all who had gone before--an oracle who knew more of the Constitution than its makers. This new oracle did not divine the fates. The announcement of the principle that the Constitution treats negroes "as persons whom it is _morally_ lawful to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves," shocked the consciences of just men throughout the earth.

Referring to the times when the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were adopted, and speaking of the African race, the Chief-Justice, in his opinion, said:

"They had, for more than a century before, been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations: and so far inferior, _that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect:_ and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

These and kindred expressions astonished all civilization and all Christian people.

The North was stunned by the decision, some fearing that slavery was soon to become national. The South exulted boastfully of their cause,(95) loudly proclaiming the paramount, binding force of the supreme judicial tribunal in the Republic. Free labor and free laborers were decried. They were, in speech and press, called "_mud sills of society:_" only negro slavery ennobled the white race.

The over-zealous South was even persuaded that the small farmers, trafficking merchants, and mechanics did not possess bravery enough to fight for _liberty_.

Justice Catron, especially, claimed that Napoleon I., by the insertion of the third article of the treaty of cession of the Louisiana Province, had forever fastened slavery on it. But of this we have already spoken.(96)

It was slavery's last triumph. Dred Scott, his wife, and two little girls were remanded to slavery, to be freed by the irresistible might of divine justice, worked out through the expiating blood of the long-offending white race, commingled on many fields with the blood of their own race.

(92) 19th Howard (_U. S._), pp. 393-633.

(93) Con., Art. IV., Sec. 3, Par. 2.

(94) Con., Art. III., Sec. 2.

(95) Robert Toombs of Georgia in extravagant exuberance is reported to have said: "I expect to call the roll of my slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill."

(96) _Ante_, p. 43-5.

XX JOHN BROWN RAID--1859

John Brown, of Kansas fame, eccentric, misguided, and intense in his hatred of slavery, and of martyr stuff, encouraged by some of the most influential anti-slavery men of the North, who were goaded on by slavery's perennial aggressions, with a "_pike-pole_" at Harper's Ferry (October 16, 1859) pricked the fetid pit of slavery, causing a tremor to run through the whole body of it. He had with him an _army of eighteen_, five of whom were free negroes.(97) They had rifles and pistols for themselves, and a few pikes for the slaves they hoped to free.

Brown had assembled his band at the Kennedy farm in Maryland, a few miles distant from Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

He professed to believe he might succeed if he could take the latter place, as it "would serve as a notice to the slaves that their friends had come, and as a trumpet to rally them to his standard." This he stated to Frederick Douglass, whom he urged in vain to join his expedition.(98) His object was to free slaves, not to take life.

This daring body seized the United States armory, arsenal, and the rifle-works, all government property. By midnight Brown was in full possession of Harper's Ferry. Before morning he caused the arrest of two prominent slave owners, one of whom was Colonel Lewis Washington, the great grandson of a brother of George Washington, capturing of him the sword of Frederick the Great, and a brace of pistols of Lafayette, presents from them, respectively, to General Washington. It was Brown's special ambition to free the Washington slaves. Fighting began at daybreak of the 17th. The Mayor of Harper's Ferry and another fell mortally wounded.

Brown and his party by noon were driven into an engine-house near the armory, where they had barred the doors and windows, and made port-holes for their rifles. There they were besieged and fired on by their assailants.

Colonel Washington and others of their captives were held by Brown in the engine-house. Shots were returned by Brown and his men. Some idea of Brown's character and bravery can be formed from Colonel Washington's description of his conduct in the engine-house fort:

"Brown was the coolest and firmest man I ever saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead by his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm and sell their lives as dearly as they could."

He wreaked no vengeance on his prisoners. Though his sons and friends were dead and dying around him, and himself, near the end of the fight, cleaved down with a sword, and bayonets were thrust in his body, he sheltered his prisoners so that not one of them was harmed. And non-combatants were not fired on by his band.

When Brown's party in the _fort_ were reduced to himself and six men, two or more of these being wounded, Colonel Robert E. Lee, _then of the United States Army_, arrived with a company of marines. After Lee's demand to surrender was refused by Brown, an entrance was forced, and, bleeding, some dying, he and those left were taken. Of the nineteen, ten were killed, five taken prisoners, and four had succeeded in escaping, two of the four being afterwards captured in Pennsylvania. They had killed five and wounded nine of the inhabitants and of their besiegers.

Not only was all the vicinity wildly excited, but the whole South was in an uproar. Slavery had been physically assaulted in its home. The North partook of the excitement, generally condemning the rash proceeding, though many deeply sympathized with the purpose of Brown's movement, and his heroic conduct and life caused many to admire him. He was a devout believer in the literal reading of the Holy Bible, and of the special judgments of God, as he interpreted them in the Old Testament. His attack on slavery he regarded as more rational than and as likely to triumph as Joshua's attack on a walled city with trumpets and shouts, and as Gideon's band of three hundred, armed only with trumpets, lamps, and pitchers in its encounter with a great army. As Jericho's walls had fallen, and Gideon's band had put to flight Midianites and Amalekites in countless multitudes like grasshoppers, so, Brown expected, at least fondly hoped and devoutly prayed, to see the myriads of human slaves go free in America. He did not, however, expect a general rising of the slaves.

He did not seek to San Domingoize the South, and against this he provided penalties in his prepared provisional constitution.(99)

Brown had been encouraged and materially aided by Gerritt Smith, Dr. Howe of Boston, Stearns, Sanborn, Frederick Douglass, Higginson, Emerson, Parker, Phillips, and others of less renown; some, if not all, of whom had neither understood nor approved of his plan of attack.

The slaves did not rise, not did they in any considerable number even know at the time the real purpose of their would-be liberator.

During the excitement of the first news Greeley prophetically wrote:

"We deeply regret this outbreak; but remembering if their fault was grievous, grieviously have they answered for it, we will not by one reproachful word disturb the bloody shrouds wherein John Brown and his compatriots are sleeping. They dared and died for what they felt to be right, though in a manner which seems to us to be fatally wrong. Let their epitaphs remain unwritten until the _not distant day_ when no slave shall clank his chains in the shades of Monticello or by the graves of Mount Vernon."(100)

Brown's raid did not seriously, as was then expected, affect the November elections of that year, and they were favorable to the young, aggressive Republican party, formed to stay the extension of slavery.

It is not the purpose here to write a detailed history of particular events, only to name such as had a substantial effect on slavery; yet John Brown's _fate_ should be recorded. He was captured October 18th; indicted on October 20th; arraigned and put on his trial at Charlestown, in Jefferson County, Virginia, though his open wounds were still bleeding; and on October 31, 1859, a jury brought in a verdict finding him "Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel; and murder in the first degree." Save in the matter of precipitation, his trial was fair, under all the circumstances, and no other result could have been expected. November 2 he was sentenced to be hung on December 2, 1859.

When arraigned for sentence, among other things he said:

"If it is deemed necessary I should forfeit my life in furtherance of the end of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust exactments, I say, let it be done."

A little later he wrote:

"I can leave to God the time and manner of my death, for I believe now that the sealing of my testimony before God and man with my blood will do far more to further the cause to which I have earnestly devoted myself than anything I have done in my life . . . I am quite cheerful concerning my approaching end, since I am convinced I am worth infinitely more on the gallows than I could be anywhere else."

On his way from the prison to the scaffold he handed to a guard a paper on which were written his last words.

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."

Emerson, Parker, and the Abolition press of the North eulogized Brown and his followers.

His raid was made another pretence for uniting the South.

The American Anti-Slavery Society in its calendar of events designated _1859_ as "The John Brown Year."

John Brown was immortalized in a song written and sung first in 1861, and thereafter by the Union army wherever it marched. On the spot where he was hanged a Massachusetts regiment (1862) sung:

"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on," etc.

The significance of John Brown's attack, small as it was in the point of numbers engaged in it, lies in the fact that it is the only one of its character openly made on slavery in the history of the United States, and in the further fact that it was at the threshold of _Secession--War_, ending in _universal emancipation_.

(97) _Hist. of the U. S._ (Rhodes), vol. ii., p. 393.

(98) _Ibid_., p. 392.

(99) Mason's _Report_, p. 57.

(100) _Hist. of U. S._ (Rhodes), vol. ii., p. 403; New York _Tribune_, Oct. 19th.

XXI PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1856-1860

The political campaign of 1856 has thus far been passed by, as it more appropriately belongs to a history of the political movements leading up to secession.

Between the two great parties--Republican and Democratic--the most important issue was the slavery question.

The Republican party, born of the slavery agitation, in its platform (1856) denied

"The authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, of any individual or association of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.

"Declared that the Constitution confers on Congress sovereign power over the Territories of the United States for their government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy and Slavery."

On the other hand, the Democratic party in 1856, fresh from the contest in Congress over the Nebraska Bill and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, denied the right of Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories, and declared it

"The right of the people of all the Territories, including Kansas and Nebraska . . . to form a Constitution, with or without domestic slavery, and be admitted into the Union."

There were other but minor issues discussed in 1856. John C. Fremont was nominated by the Republicans and James Buchanan by the Democrats. Douglas failed of the Presidential prize through violent antagonism from the South, especially from Jefferson Davis, Wm. L. Yancey, Robert Toombs, and other leading pro-slavery statesmen. They distrusted him, though he had led them to victory in 1854 in repealing the 36° 30´ restriction of slavery, and in throwing open, as we have seen, the Nebraska territorial empire to the influx of slaves. He was patriotic, and hence could not be depended on to take the next step towards forcing slavery into the Territories and to favor a dissolution of the Union.

Buchanan, a pliant tool, was elected by a plurality vote over Fremont and Fillmore, the candidate of the American party. Fremont carried, with good majorities, all the free States save Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.

The popular discussion of the slavery question in the campaign was thorough, memorable, exciting, educating, and, though resulting in defeat to the anti-slavery party, it marked the trend of public sentiment, and clearly foreshadowed that it would soon triumph.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 still further elucidated to the masses of the people the issues impending, and indicated that the end of slavery extension was near.

The Dred Scott decision, announced March, 1857, had completely overthrown, so far as it could be done by judicial-political _obiter dicta_, Douglas's Popular Sovereignty theory, leaving him with only the northern end (and that not united) of his party endeavoring to uphold it.

Next came the Presidential campaign of 1860, the last in which a slave party participated.

The Democratic party met in delegate convention in April, 1860, in Charleston, South Carolina, and after seven days of struggle, during which disunion threats were made by Yancey and others, the delegates from the Cotton States--South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas--seceded, for the alleged reason that a majority of the convention adopted the 1856 Democratic platform which upheld the Douglas - Popular Sovereignty doctrine as applied to the Territories.

The seceding delegates had voted for a platform declaring the right of all citizens to settle in the Territories with all their property (including slaves) "without its being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or territorial legislation," and further,

"That it is the duty of the Federal Government in all its departments to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and property in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends."

This was not only the new doctrine of the Supreme Court, but to it was superadded the further claim that the Constitution _required_ Congress and all the departments of the government to protect the slaveholder with his slaves, when once in a Territory, against territorial legislation or other unfriendly acts. By this most startling doctrine the Constitution was to become an instrument to _establish and protect slavery_ in all the territorial possessions of the Republic.

Douglas failed of nomination at Charleston for want of a two thirds vote of the entire convention as originally organized. The convention adjourned to meet, June 11th, at Baltimore, and the seceding branch of it also adjourned to meet at the same time at Richmond, but later it decided to meet with and again become a part of the convention at Baltimore. At this time the South had control of the Senate, and May 25, 1860, before the convention reassembled, and after a most acrimonious debate into which Douglas was drawn and in which Jefferson Davis bitterly assailed him, the resolutions of the latter were passed, affirming the "_property_" theory, with the new doctrine of constitutional protection of it in the Territories added.

The convention reassembled, and at the end of five days' wrangle and recrimination, during which the members called each other "disorganizers," "bolters," "traitors," "disunionists," "abolitionists," accompanied by violent threats, it disrupted again, its chairman, Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, led the bolters and was followed by the delegates generally from the Southern States. They organized at once a separate convention.

Douglas was nominated by the originally organized convention, and John C. Breckinridge by the bolters, each on the sharply defined platform relating to slavery, mentioned above.

Still another political body assembled in Baltimore in 1860, to wit: "The Constitutional Union Convention." It met May 9th. Its platform was intended to be comprehensive and so simple and patriotic that everybody might endorse it. It declared against recognizing any principle other than

"_The Constitution of the Country, the Union of the States, and the Enforcement of the Laws._"

John Bell of Tennessee was nominated on this broad platform for President, with Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President, both eminently respectable statesmen, but the times were not auspicious for mere generalized principles or mere respectability.

The great Wigwam - Republican Convention met at Chicago, May 16, 1860, with delegates from all the free States, the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Its platform was long, and affirmed the principles of the Declaration of Independence, pronounced against interfering with slavery in the States, denounced the John Brown raid as "among the gravest of crimes," and, in the main, was temperate and conservative.

On the question of slavery in the Territories it was radical:

"That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery in to any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself," etc.

"That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom, . . . and we deny the authority of Congress, or a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory in the United States."

Lincoln of Illinois, Seward of New York, Chase of Ohio, and Cameron of Pennsylvania were the principal candidates for nomination, but the contest turned out to be between Lincoln and Seward, each of whom was regarded eminently qualified for the Presidency and an especial representative of his party on the slavery issue.

Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot, and Hannibal Hamlin, a sturdy New England statesman, was nominated for Vice-President.

Slavery, with its tri-cornered issues, was the sole absorbing question discussed in the campaign. In the South, the Breckinridge wing assailed the Douglas party, which combated _it_ there in turn. In the North, the Republican party attacked furiously both the Douglas and Breckinridge wings of the Democratic party; they, in turn, fighting back and fighting each other.

The Bell and Everett party, though it claimed to be the only party of the Constitution, fell into ridicule, as it really advocated no well-defined principles on any subject whatsoever. Bell and Everett, however, carried Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. Lincoln carried all the Northern States, save three of the electoral votes in New Jersey.

Of the 303 electoral votes, Lincoln had 180, Douglas 12 (Missouri 9 and New Jersey 3), Breckinridge 72, and Bell 39, thus giving Lincoln 57 over all. He was the first and only President elected on a direct slavery issue.

The slavery question, thus sharply presented, was decided at the polls by the people, and their verdict was for freedom in the Territories. No more slave States; no more dilution of slavery by spreading it (as was once advocated by Clay and others) for its amelioration.

It must live or die in States wherein it was established. Neither successful secession, state-rights, nor accomplished disunion could extend it. Like all wrong, it could not stand still; to flourish, it must be aggressive and progressive. To limit it was to strangle it. This its votaries well understood.

In the history of the world there never were more brilliant, more devoted, more earnest, more infatuated, and yet more inconsistent propagandists of the institution of human slavery than in our Republic during the period of the agitation of nullification--state- rights--secession--disunion lines. They were of the Calhoun school. They declaimed in halls of legislation and on the stump and rostrum for "Liberty," and hugged closely _human slavery_, often professing to believe it of _divine right_.

XXII DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION

Secession was at hand! At first it was justified under the banner of state-rights, on the theory that the Union was a voluntary compact of States which could be broken at the will of one or all. That a Republic was only an experiment, to exist until overthrown by any member of it. That the blood of the Revolution was shed, not for the establishment of an independent nation, but for a confederacy of separate states. In the guise of nullification it appeared, as we have seen, 1832; excessive tariff duties were the pretext. In 1835 it assumed to be the champion of slavery, because on the slavery question only could the South be united. It is due to history to say, of the decade preceding 1860, patriotism was not universal even in the free States. Slavery had her votaries there. Interests of trade affected many. Prejudice against the blacks and ties of kinship affected others. Parties and affiliations and love of political power controlled the policy of influential men in all sections of the country.

The South was aggressive, and smarted under its defeats in attempts to extend its beloved institution. The prayer of Calhoun for a united South was fast being realized, and a fatal destiny goaded on its leaders. Slavery, indeed, no longer stood on a firm foundation. Public sentiment had sapped it. It could not live and tolerate free speech, and a free press, or universal education even of the white race where it existed. All strangers sojourning in the South were under espionage; they, though innocent of any designs on slavery, were often brutally treated and driven away. It was only the distinguished visitors who were entertained with the much boasted-of Southern hospitality. The German or other industrious foreign emigrant rarely, if ever, ventured into the South.

Its towns and cities languished. Slavery was bucolic and patriarchal. It could not, in its most prosperous state, flourish on small plantations; nor could the many own slaves or be interested in their labor. Not exceeding two tenths of the white race South owned, at any time, or were interested in slave labor or slaves. The eight tenths had no political or social standing. They were, in a large sense, in another form, white slaves.

The Border States held their negroes by a precarious tenure. The most intelligent were constantly escaping. The inter-traffic in slaves bred in the more northern slave States was likely to become less profitable. And patrols by night, to insure order, had become generally necessary.

The publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had a great effect on public sentiment North, and some influence even in the South. _The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It_, written by Hilton R. Helper, a poor white man of North Carolina (1857), an arraignment of slavery from the standpoint of the white majority South, was denounced as incendiary in Congress. Sherman of Ohio, having in some way endorsed its publication, when a candidate for Speaker, was denounced by Millson of Virginia, who declared that "one who consciously, deliberately, and of purpose lent his name and influence to the propagation of such writings is not only not fit to be Speaker, but is not fit to live."

Sherman's endorsement of the Helper book caused his defeat for Speaker, and a riot occurred in the House during this contest: Not quite bloodshed. Of the scene, Morris of Illinois said:

"A few more such scenes . . . and we shall hear the crack of the revolver and see the gleam of the brandished blade."

The contents of the book, though temperate in tone, were said by Pryor of Virginia to deal only "in rebellion, treason, and insurrection."

Scenes, most extraordinary, were not unfrequently enacted in the House of Representatives, all having the effect to inflame the public mind. Some of these were brought on by violent speeches of Northern statesmen, made in response to the defiant attitude or utterances of Southern men, boastful of their bravery.

One such scene was precipitated in 1860 by Owen Lovejoy of Illinois, who, in a speech to the House, denounced

"Slaveholding as worse than robbing, than piracy, than polygamy. The enslavement of human beings because they are inferior . . . is the doctrine of the Democrats, and the doctrine of devils as well! and there is no place in the universe outside the five-points of hell and the Democratic party where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace."

Lovejoy had more than an ordinary excuse for using such violent language.

As long before as November 7, 1837, his brother, Elijah P. Lovejoy, had been murdered at Alton, Illinois, while defending his printing- press from a mob, chiefly from Missouri, his offence being that he published an Abolition paper (_The Observer_). His press had thrice before in a year been destroyed.

Pryor of Virginia, Barksdale of Mississippi, and others resented Lovejoy's expletives, calling him "an infamous, perjured villain," "a perjured negro-thief," and demanding of the Speaker to "order that blackhearted scoundrel and negro-stealing thief to take his seat."

Personal conflicts were imminent between opposing members. Potter of Iowa, Kellogg of Illinois, and others promptly and fiercely came to Lovejoy's defence. The latter finished his speech amid excitement and threats. Pryor afterwards demanded of Potter "the satisfaction usual among gentlemen," who promptly proposed to give it to him, naming bowie-knives as the weapons for the duel. This mode of gaining "_satisfaction_" was not accepted, because it was "vulgar, barbarous, and inhuman." Potter thenceforth became a hero, and less was heard of Northern cowardice.

This, and like incidents, kindled the fast-spreading flame,--real battle-fires were then almost in sight.

It must not be assumed the Republican party, before the war, favored the abolition of slavery. Its principal leaders denied they were abolitionists; on the contrary, they insisted that their party would not interfere with slavery where it existed by State law.

The sentiment of the people in that party, however, was, on this question, in advance even of its progressive leaders. The enforcement of the Fugitive-Slave Law caused many and most important accessions to the Abolitionists. Wendell Phillips became an Abolitionist on seeing Garrison dragged by a mob through the streets of Boston; Josiah Quincy by the martyrdom of Lovejoy; other men of much note, and multitudes of the moving, controlling masses, were decided to oppose human slavery by kindred scenes all over the North. They took solemn, often secret vows, on witnessing men and women carried off in chains to slavery, to wage eternal war on the institution; this, in imitation of the vow of Hannibal of old to his father, Hamilcar, to wage eternal war on Rome.

At last, through causes for the existence of which the South was chiefly to blame, the sentiment North was culminating so strongly against slavery that soon, had secession and war not come, slavery would have everywhere been assailed. It is impossible to stay the march of a great moral movement, when backed by enlightened masses, as to stem the rushing waters of a great stream in flood time. Hence, the experiment of dissolution of the Union to save slavery was due, if ever, to be tried in _1861!_

Secession was made easier by reason of a long cherished habit of the Southern people to speak of themselves boastfully as citizens of their respective States, thus, "I am a Virginian"; "I am a Kentuckian," seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were citizens of the United States. This habit destroyed in some degree national patriotism, and promoted a State pride, baleful in its consequences. In many of the slave State voting was done _viva voce;_ that is, by the voter announcing at the polls to the judges the name of the person for whom he voted for each office. This, it was contended, promoted frankness, manliness, independence, and honesty in elections. On the other hand, it was claimed, with much truth, that it was a most refined and certain method of coercing the dependent poorer classes into voting as the dominant class might desire, and hence almost totally destructive of independence in voting.

An anecdote is told of John Randolph of Roanoke, who, when at the Court of St. James (England) was conspicuous for his boasting that he was a _Virginian_. He was introduced by an English official for an after-dinner speech with a request that he should tell the distinguishing difference between a _Virginian_ and a citizen of the American Republic. He curtly responded:

"The difference is in the system of voting on election days; in Virginia a voter must stand up, look the candidates in the eye, and bravely and honestly name his preference, like a man; while generally a voter in other States of the Union is permitted to sneak to the polls like a thief, and slip a folded paper into a hole in a box, then in a cowardly way steal home; the one promotes manliness, the other cowardice."

XXIII SECESSION OF STATES--1860-1

From what has been said, it will be seen the hour had arrived for practical secession--disunion--or a total abandonment by the South of its defiant position on slavery. The latter was not to be expected of the proud race of Southern statesmen and slaveholders. They had pushed their cause too far to recede, and the North, though conceding generally that there was no constitutional power to interfere with slavery where it existed, was equally determined not to permit its extension. In secession lay the only hope of either forcing the North to recede from its position, or, if successful, to create a new government wherein slavery should be universal and fundamental. Never before had it been proposed to establish a nation solely to perpetuate human slavery.

The election of Lincoln was already announced as a sufficient cause for secession. The South had failed to make California slave; to make four more slave States out of Texas; to secure pledges that out of the New Mexico Territory other slave States should be formed; and to make Kansas a slave State. It had also failed to acquire Cuba, already slave, for division into more slave States. There was, moreover, a certainly that many more free States would be admitted from the territorial domain of the great West. The political equilibrium in Congress on the line of slavery had therefore become impossible for all the future. These were the grievances over which the South brooded.

But was it not in the divine plan that slavery in the Republic should come to a violent end? Nowhere among the kingdoms and empires of the earth had it become, or had it ever been so deeply implanted, as a part of a political system. In the proud, boastful, free Republic of America, in the afternoon of the nineteenth century, where the Christian religion was taught, where liberty of conscience was guaranteed by organic law, where civilization was assumed to exist in its most enlightened and progressive stage, there, _alone_, the slave owner marshalled boastfully his human slaves, selling them on the auction block or otherwise at will, to be carried to distant parts, separating wife and husband, parents and children, and in a thousand ways shocking all the purer instincts of humanity.

Nor did its evil effects begin or cease with the black slave.

Jefferson, speaking of slavery in the United States when it existed in a more modified form, described its immoral effect on the master and his family thus:

"The whole commerce between master and slave is perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . . The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of small slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."(101)

The virtue of the white race was necessarily involved in the institution. The blood of the dominant race became intermingled with the black, and often white blood predominated in the slave. The offspring of slaveholders became slaves, and were dealt in the same as the pure African. Concubinage existed generally where slaves were numerous.

The rule was that any person born of a slave mother was doomed to perpetual slavery.

As early as 1856, perhaps earlier, conferences were proposed among leaders in some of the Southern States looking to secession. They were repeated again in 1858, and before the election of Lincoln in 1860.(102) And Southern secret societies were formed in 1860 to promote the same end.

The existence of a disunion cabal in Buchanan's Cabinet, working to bring about disunion, was hardly a secret.

Howell Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, John B. Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and possibly others, were of the Cabinet cabal.

Buchanan, though himself desiring to preserve the Union, had not the bold temperament, and he had too long been a political tool of the slave power to effectually resist its violent aggressions; nor did he have the discernment to discover that his official household was the centre of a disunion movement. His Secretary of War distributed officers of the army believed to be friendly to the South where they could become available to it; he sent from the North small arms and cannon, ammunition and stores where they could be seized at the right time.(103) Members of the Cabinet kept the secession leaders advised of all acts of the administration, and generally aided them. The auspicious time, if ever, seemed to have come for a successful dissolution of the Union. The army and navy were full of able Southern men, ready, as the sequel proves, to go with their States, abandon the country that had nurtured and educated them, and the flag that had been their glory.

Governor Wm. H. Gist, of South Carolina, October 5, 1860, by confidential letters to the governors of the cotton States, fairly inaugurated disunion, based on the anticipated election of Abraham Lincoln a month thence.(104)

One week later, without waiting for a consultation of governors of slave States, he, by proclamation, convened the Legislature of South Carolina to "_take action for the safety and protection of the State_."

This body met November 5th, the day preceding the Presidential election.

The alleged grounds of justification for this early meeting were:

"The strong possibility of the election to the Presidency of a sectional candidate by a party committed to the support of measures which, if carried out, will inevitably destroy _our equality in the Union_," etc.

This was the avowed reason, finally, for secession, though the true reason was the absolute restriction of slavery and the overthrow of the slave power in the Republic. The election of a Republican President was, of course, a disappointment to Southern statesmen, long used to absolute sway in Congress and in the administration of the government. The charge that Lincoln was a sectional President was true only to the extent that freedom was sectional. Slavery only was then, by secessionists, regarded as national.

The first important step of the South Carolina Legislature was to appropriate $100,000 to be expended by the Governor in purchasing small-arms and a battery of rifled cannon. Without opposition a convention was called to take "into consideration the dangers incident to the position of the State in the Federal Union." Her two United States Senators and other of her Federal officers forthwith resigned. A grand mass meeting was held, November 17th, at Charleston, generally participated in by the ladies, merchants, etc. The Stars and Stripes were not displayed, but a white palmetto flag, after solemn prayer, was unfurled in its stead. Disunion was here inaugurated. November 13th the Legislature of South Carolina stayed the collection of all debts due to citizens of non- slaveholding States. It was not sufficient to repudiate the Union, but honest debts must also be repudiated.

The convention thus called first met at Columbia, December 17th, thence adjourned to Charleston, where (appropriately) on December 20, 1860, an Ordinance of Secession was passed reading thus:

"_An Ordinance,

"To dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled 'The Constitution of the United States of America_.'

"We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained: That the Ordinance adopted by us in convention on the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and also, all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved."

This action was taken in Buchanan's administration while secessionists and promoters of disunion were yet in his Cabinet, and Jefferson Davis and others were still plotting in Congress.

Great stress was laid upon the right to rescind the original Ordinance of 1788 ratifying the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of the States was denominated only a "_compact_." The passage of the Ordinance of Secession was followed by "bonfires and illuminations, ringing of bells, insults to the Stars and Stripes," participated in by South Carolina aristocracy, especially cheered on by the first ladies of the State and city, little dreaming that slavery's opening death-knell was being proclaimed.(105)

It was fitting that South Carolina should lead the van of secession. She had, in a Colonial state, furnished more Tories in the Revolution of 1776 than any of the other colonies; she had initiated secession through nullification in 1832; and her greatest statesman, Calhoun, was the first to propose disunion as a remedy for slavery restrictions.

Events succeeded rapidly.

An Alabama convention met, and, on January 8, 1861, received commissioners from South Carolina, and on the 11th passed, in secret session, an Ordinance of Secession, refusing to submit it to a vote of her people.

Mississippi, on January 9, 1861, passed, through a convention, a like Ordinance.

Georgia, January 19th, by a convention passed her Ordinance of Secession.

Louisiana's convention passed an Ordinance of Secession January 25, 1861.

Texas passed, in convention, on February 1, 1861, a like Ordinance, which was ratified by a vote of her people February 24th.(106)

Thus seven States resolved to secede before Abraham Lincoln became President.

And each of these States had prepared for armed opposition; most, if not all, of their Senators and Representatives in Congress had withdrawn; in most of the States named United States forts, arms, military stores, and other public property had been seized; and many officers of the army and navy had deserted, weakly excusing their action by declaring they must go with their States.

Events were happening in Washington. Cass resigned as Secretary of State because Buchanan adhered to the doctrine that there was no power to coerce a seceding State. Under this baleful doctrine, secession had secured, apparently, a free and bloodless right of way in its mad rush to dissolve the Union and to establish a slave empire. It was at first thought by Southern leaders wise to postpone the formation of a "Confederacy" until Lincoln was inaugurated. But about January 1st there came a Cabinet rupture. Floyd was driven from it, and Joseph Holt of Kentucky, a most able and patriotic Union man, succeeded him. Later, Edwin M. Stanton and Jeremiah Black came into the Cabinet, Buchanan yielding to more patriotic influences and adopting more decided Union measures, though not based wholly on a coercive policy.

But, on January 5, 1861, a "Central Cabal," consisting of "Southern Statesmen," who still lingered at Washington, where they could best promote and direct the secession of the States and keep the administration in check, if not control it, met in one of the rooms of the _Capitol_ to devise an ultimate programme for the future. It agreed on these propositions:

First. Immediate secession of States.

Second. A convention to meet at Montgomery, Alabama, not later than February 15th, to organize a Confederacy.

To prevent hostile legislation under the changed and more loyal impulses of the President and his reconstructed Cabinet, the cotton States Senators should remain awhile in their places, to "keep the hands of Buchanan tied."(107)

This cabal appointed Senators Jefferson Davis, Slidell, and Mallory "to carry out the objects of the meeting."

Thus, beneath the "Dome of the Capitol," treason was plotted by Senators and Representatives who still held their seats and official places, and still received their pay from the United States Treasury, for the sole purpose of enabling them the better to accomplish the end sought. Think of the prospective President of the "Confederate States of America," their future Minister to the Court of France, and their future Secretary of the Navy, plotting secretly in the Capitol at Washington to destroy the Union! But these were treasonable times.