Chapter VI (1)

RETURN OF MR. DAVIS TO THE SENATE--OPENING EVENTS OF MR. BUCHANAN'S
ADMINISTRATION--TRUE INTERPRETATION OF THE LEGISLATION OF 1854--
SENATOR DOUGLAS THE INSTRUMENT OF DISORGANIZATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC
PARTY--HIS ANTECEDENTS AND CHARACTER--AN ACCOMPLISHED DEMAGOGUE--DAVIS
AND DOUGLAS CONTRASTED--BOTH REPRESENTATIVES OF THEIR RESPECTIVE
SECTIONS--DOUGLAS AMBITION--HIS COUP D'ETAT, AND ITS RESULTS--THE
KANSAS QUESTION--DOUGLAS' TRIUMPHS OVER THE SOUTH AND THE UNITY OF THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY LOST--"SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY"--PROPERLY
CHARACTERIZED--DAVIS' COURSE IN THE KANSAS STRUGGLE--DEBATE WITH
SENATOR FESSENDEN--PEN-AND-INK SKETCH OF MR. DAVIS AT THIS PERIOD--
TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF POLITICAL EVENTS TO THE SOUTH--SHE RIGHTLY
INTERPRETS THEM--MR. DAVIS' COURSE SUBSEQUENT TO THE KANSAS
IMBROGLIO--HIS DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS--TWO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF
PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKING--DAVIS THE LEADER OF THE REGULAR DEMOCRACY IN
THE THIRTY-SIXTH CONGRESS--HIS RESOLUTIONS--HIS CONSISTENCY--COURSE AS
TO GENERAL LEGISLATION--VISITS THE NORTH--SPEAKS IN PORTLAND, BOSTON,
NEW YORK, AND OTHER PLACES--REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO ATTEND THE
WEBSTER BIRTH-DAY FESTIVAL--MR. SEWARD'S ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE
"IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT"--MR. DAVIS BEFORE MISSISSIPPI DEMOCRATIC
STATE CONVENTION--PROGRESS OF DISUNION--DISSOLUTION OF THE DEMOCRATIC
PARTY--SPEECHES OF MR. DAVIS AT PORTLAND AND IN SENATE.

Mr. Davis returned to the Senate at a period marked by agitation, no less menacing to the Union than that which had so seriously threatened it in 1850. His health at this time was exceedingly infirm, and for several months he was so much prostrated by his protracted sufferings, that a proper regard for the suggestions of prudence would have justified his entire abstinence from the labors and excitements of this stormy period. Again and again, however, did his heroic devotion carry him from his sick bed to the capitol, to engage in the death-struggle of the South, with her leagued enemies, for safety in the Union, which she was still loath to abandon, even under the pressure of intolerable wrong. Frequently, with attenuated frame and bandaged eyes, he was to be seen in the Senate, at moments critical in the fierce sectional conflict; and at the final struggle upon the Kansas question, not even the earnest admonitions of his physician, that to leave his chamber would probably be followed by the most dangerous results, were availing to induce his absence from the scene.

The opening events of the first session of the Thirty-fifth Congress, (the first incidental to the administration of Mr. Buchanan,) were far from being auspicious of the continued unity of the Democratic party, which, for several years past, the intelligence of the country had correctly appreciated as an essential condition to the preservation of the Union.

Mainly through the undivided support given him by the South, Mr. Buchanan was elected upon the Cincinnati platform of 1856, which was a re-affirmation of the cardinal tenets of the Democratic faith, involving also emphatic approval of the Kansas-Nebraska legislation two years previous. Not until months after his inauguration were there any indications of hostility to his administration within the ranks of his own party. Nor had there been any avowed difference of construction as to the end and effect of the legislation of 1854. The rare unanimity with which the South had been rallied to the support of the Democracy was based upon the unreserved admission, by all parties, that the Kansas-Nebraska act was designedly friendly in its _spirit_, at all events, to Southern interests. No Southern statesman, for a moment, dreamed that it was capable of an interpretation unfriendly to his section. That the plain purpose of the bill was to remove the subject of slavery outside the bounds of congressional discussion, and to place it in the disposition of the States separately, and in the _Territories_, _when organizing for admission as States_, was regarded by the South as the leading vital principle which challenged her enthusiastic support. Such, indeed, was the doctrine asserted by the entire Democratic party of the South, enunciated by the administration, and tacitly approved by the Northern Democracy. Very soon, however, after the meeting of Congress, the action of Senator Douglas revealed him as the instrument of disorganization in his party. To a proper understanding of his motives and conduct at this conjuncture, a brief statement of his antecedents is essential.

Stephen A. Douglas was now in the meridian of life and the full maturity of his unquestionably vigorous intellectual powers. For twenty-five years he had been prominent in the arena of politics, and as a member of Congress his course had been so eminently politic and judicious as to make him a favorite with the Democracy, both North and South. To an unexampled degree his public life illustrated the combination of those characteristics of the demagogue, a fertile ingenuity, facile accommodation to circumstances, and wonderful gifts of the _ad captandum_ species of oratory, so captivating to the populace, which in America peculiarly constitute the attributes of the "rising man." Douglas was not wanting in noble and attractive qualities of manhood. His courage was undoubted, his generosity was princely in its munificence to his personal friends, and he frequently manifested a lofty magnanimity. In his early youth, deprived of the advantages of fortune and position, the discipline of his career was not propitious to the development of the higher qualities of statesmanship--with which, indeed, he was scantily endowed by nature. It is as the accomplished politician, subtle, ready, fearless, and indefatigable, that he must be remembered. In this latter character he was unrivaled.

Not less than Davis was Douglas a representative man, yet no two men were more essentially dissimilar, and no two lives ever actuated by aspirations and instincts more unlike. Douglas was the representative of expediency--Davis the exponent of principles. In his party associations Douglas would tolerate the largest latitude of individual opinion, while Davis was always for a policy clearly defined and unmistakable; and upon a matter of vital principle, like Percy, would reluctantly surrender even the "ninth part of a hair." To maintain the united action of the Democratic party on election day, to defeat its opponents, to secure the rewards of success, Douglas would allow a thousand different constructions of the party creed by as many factions. Davis, on the other hand, would, and eventually did, approve the dissolution of the party, when it refused an open, manly enunciation of its faith. For mere party success Douglas cared every thing, and Davis nothing, save as it ensured the triumph of Constitutional principles. Both loved the Union and sought its perpetuity, but by different methods; Douglas by never-ending compromises of a quarrel, which he should have known that the North would never permit to be amicably settled; by staving off and ignoring issues which were to be solved only by being squarely met. Davis, too, was not unwilling to compromise, but he wearied of perpetual concession by the South, in the meanwhile the North continuing its hostility, both open and insidious, and urged a settlement of all differences upon a basis of simple and exact justice to both sections.

Douglas was preëminently the representative politician of his section, and throughout his career was a favorite with that boastful, bloated, and mongrel element, which is violently called the "American people," and which is the ruling element in elections in the Northern cities. In character and conduct he embodied many of its materialistic and socialistic ideas, its false conception of liberty, its pernicious dogmas of equality, and not a little of its rowdyism.

Davis was the champion of the South, her civilization, lights, honor, and dignity. He was the fitting and adequate exponent of a civilization which rested upon an intellectual and æsthetical development, upon lofty and generous sentiments of manhood, a dignified conservatism, and the proud associations of ancestral distinction in the history of the Union. Always the Senator in the sense of the ideal of dignity and courtesy which is suggested by that title, he was also the _gentleman_ upon all occasions; never condescending to flatter or soothe the mob, or to court popular favor, he lost none of that polished and distinguished manner, in the presence of a "fierce Democracie," which made him the ornament of the highest school of oratory and statesmanship of his country.

The ambition of Douglas was unbounded. The recognized leader, for several years, of the Northern Democracy, his many fine personal qualities and courageous resistance of the ultra Abolitionists secured for him a considerable number of supporters in the Southern wing of that party. The Presidency was the goal of his ambition, and for twenty years his course had been sedulously adjusted to the attainment of that most coveted of prizes to the American politician. On repeated occasions he had been flattered by a highly complimentary vote in the nominating conventions of the Democracy. Hitherto he had been compelled to yield his pretensions in favor of older members of his party or upon considerations of temporary availability. It was evident, however, that in order to be President, he must secure the nomination in 1860. The continued ascendancy of the Democracy was no longer, as heretofore, a foregone conclusion, and, besides, there were others equally aspiring and available. His Presidential aspirations appeared, indeed, to be without hope or resource, save through the agency of some adroit _coup d'etat_, by which the truculent and dominant free-soil sentiment of the North, which he had so much affronted by his bid for Southern support in the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, could be conciliated. In Illinois, his own State, the Abolition strength was alarmingly on the increase, and to secure his return to the Senate at the election to be held in 1858, an object of prime importance in the promotion of his more ambitious pretensions, he did not scruple to assume a position, falsifying his previous record, wantonly insulting and defiant to his Southern associates, and in bold antagonism to a Democratic administration. The sequel of this rash and ill-judged course was the overthrow of his own political fortunes, the disintegration of his party, and the attempted dissolution of the Union.

The earliest recommendations of Mr. Buchanan, respecting the Kansas controversy, which, several months since, had developed in that Territory into a species of predatory warfare, marked by deeds of violence and atrocity, between the Abolition and Pro-slavery parties, were signalized by a coalition of the followers of Douglas with the Abolitionists and other opponents of the administration. The speedy pacification of the disorders in Kansas, by the prompt admission of that Territory, was the condition essential to the success of Mr. Buchanan's entire policy. He accordingly recommended the admission of Kansas into the Union, with the "Lecompton" constitution, which had been adopted in September, 1857, by the decisive vote of six thousand two hundred and twenty-six in favor of that constitution, with slavery, and five hundred and nine for it, without slavery. A rival instrument, adopted by an election notoriously held exclusively under the control of Abolitionists, prohibiting slavery, was likewise presented.

For months the controversy was waged in Congress between the friends of the administration and its enemies, and finally resulted in a practical triumph of the Free-soil principle. The Anti-Lecompton coalition of Douglas and the Abolitionists, aided by the defection of a few Southern members, successfully embarrassed the policy of the administration by defeating its recommendations, and eventually carried a measure acceptable to Northern sentiments and interests.

Mr. Douglas thus triumphed over a Democratic administration, at the same time giving a shock to the unity of the Democratic party, from which it has never recovered, and effectually neutralized its power as a breakwater of the Union against the waves of sectional dispute. The alienation between himself and his former associates was destined never to be adjusted, as indeed it never should have been, in consideration of his inexcusable recreancy to the immemorial faith of his party. Mr. Douglas simply abandoned the South, at the very first moment when his aid was seriously demanded. Nay, more; he carried with him a quiver of Parthian arrows, which he discharged into her bosom at a most critical moment in her unequal contest.

It is not to be denied that Mr. Douglas' new interpretation of the Kansas-Nebraska act was urged by himself and his advocates as having a merit not to be overlooked by the North, in its suggestion of a method of restricting slavery, presenting superior advantages. "Squatter sovereignty," as advocated by Mr. Douglas, proposing the decision of the slavery question by the people of the Territories, while yet unprepared to ask admission as States, was far more effectual in its plans against slavery, and only less prompt and open, than the designs of the Abolitionists. It would enable the "Emigrant Aid Societies," and imported janizaries of Abolition to exclude the institutions of the South from the Territories, the joint possessions of the two sections, acquired by an enormously disproportionate sacrifice on the part of the South, with a certainty not to be realized, for years to come, perhaps, from the Abolition policy of congressional prohibition.[12] According to Mr. Douglas' theory, the existence of slavery in all the Territories was to depend upon the verdict of a few hundred settlers or "squatters" upon the public lands. It practically conceded to Northern interests and ideas every State to be hereafter admitted, and under the operation of such a policy it was not difficult to anticipate the fate of slavery, at last even in the States.

From the inception of this controversy until its close Mr. Davis was fully committed to the policy of Mr. Buchanan, and his position was in perfect harmony with that of all the leading statesmen of the South. Less prominent, perhaps, in debate, from his constant ill-health during the first session, than at any other period of his public life, he was still zealous and influential.

An interesting incident of the session was a discussion between Mr. Davis and Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, a Senator second only to Mr. Seward among Abolition leaders, in point of intellect, and behind none in his truculent animosity to Southern institutions. Reviewing the message of Mr. Buchanan with great severity, Fessenden took occasion to discuss elaborately the slavery question, with all its incidental issues. Mr. Davis replied, not at great length, but with much force and spirit. The discussion terminated with the following colloquy, which is interesting chiefly in its personal allusions:

"MR. FESSENDEN. ... Sir, I have avowed no disunion sentiments on this
floor--neither here nor elsewhere. Can the honorable gentleman from
Mississippi say as much?

"MR. DAVIS. Yes.

"MR. FESSENDEN. I am glad to hear it, then.

"MR. DAVIS. Yes. I have long sought for a respectable man who would
allege the contrary.

"MR. FESSENDEN. I make no allegation. I asked if he could say as much.
I am glad to hear him say so, because I must say to him that the
newspapers have represented him as making a speech in Mississippi, in
which he said he came into General Pierce's cabinet a disunion man. If
he never made it, very well.

"MR. DAVIS. I will thank you to produce that newspaper.

"MR. FESSENDEN. I can not produce it, but I can produce an extract
from it in another paper.

"MR. DAVIS. An extract! then that falsifies the text.

"MR. FESSENDEN. I am very glad to hear the Senator say so. I made no
accusation--I put the question to him. If he denies it, very well. I
only say that, with all the force and energy with which he denies it,
so do I. The accusation never has been made against me before. On what
ground does the Senator now put it?...

"MR. DAVIS. Does the Senator ask me for an answer?

"MR. FESSENDEN. Certainly, if the Senator feels disposed to give one.

"MR. DAVIS. If you ask me for an answer, it is easy. I said your
position was fruitful of such a result. I did not say you avowed the
object--nothing of the sort, but the reverse....

"MR. FESSENDEN. That is a matter of opinion, on which I have a right
to entertain my view as well as the Senator his....

"MR. DAVIS. Mr. President, I rise principally for the purpose of
saying that I do not know whence springs this habit of talking about
intimidation. I am not the first person toward whom a reply has been
made, that we are not to carry our ends by intimidation. I try to
intimidate nobody; I threaten nobody; and I do not believe--let me say
it once for all--that any body is afraid of me--and I do not want any
body to be afraid of me.

"MR. FESSENDEN. I am. [Laughter.]

"MR. DAVIS. I am sorry to hear it; and if the Senator is really so, I
shall never speak to him in decided terms again.

"MR. FESSENDEN. I speak of it only in an intellectual point of view.
[Laughter.]

"MR. DAVIS. Then, sir, the Senator was in a Pickwickian sense when he
began; there were no threats, no intimidations, and he is just where
he would have been if he had said nothing." [Laughter.]...

While the Kansas question was pending in Congress, a sketch of Mr. Davis, in connection with two other prominent Southern Senators, which appeared in the correspondence of a leading journal, was extensively copied in the newspapers of the day. We extract that portion which relates specially to Mr. Davis. The portrait is from the pen of one who had no sympathy with his political views:

DAVIS, HUNTER, AND TOOMBS, THE SOUTHERN TRIUMVIRATE.

[Correspondence of the Missouri Democrat.]

"WASHINGTON CITY, January 21.

"Yesterday, when Hale was speaking, the right side of the chamber was
empty, (as it generally is during the delivery of an antislavery
speech,) with the exception of a group of three who sat near the
centre of the vacant space. This remarkable group, which wore the air
if not the ensigns of power, authority, and public care, was composed
of Senators Davis, Hunter, and Toombs. They were engaged in an earnest
colloquy, which, however, was foreign to the argument Hale was
elaborating; for though the connection of their words was broken
before it reached the gallery, their voices were distinctly audible,
and gave signs of their abstraction. They were thinking aloud. If they
had met together, under the supervision of some artist gifted with the
faculty of illustrating history and character by attitude and
expression, who designed to paint them, in fresco, on the walls of the
new Senate chamber, the combination could not have been more
appropriately arranged than chance arranged it on this occasion.
Toombs sits among the opposition on the left, Hunter and Davis on the
right; and the fact that the two first came to Davis' seat--the one
gravitating to it from a remote, the other from a near point--may be
held to indicate which of the three is the preponderating body in the
system, if preponderance there be; and whose figure should occupy the
foreground of the picture if any precedence is to be accorded. Davis
sat erect and composed; Hunter, listening, rested his head on his
hand; and Toombs, inclining forward, was speaking vehemently. Their
respective attitudes were no bad illustration of their individuality.
Davis impressed the spectator, who observed the easy but authoritative
bearing with which he put aside or assented to Toomb's suggestions,
with the notion of some slight superiority, some hardly-acknowledged
leadership; and Hunter's attentiveness and impassibility were
characteristic of his nature, for his profundity of intellect wears
the guise of stolidity, and his continuous industry that of inertia;
while Toomb's quick utterance and restless head bespoke his nervous
temperament and activity of mind. But, though each is different from
either of the others, the three have several attributes in common.
They are equally eminent as statesmen and debaters; they are devoted
to the same cause; they are equals in rank, and rivals in ambition;
and they are about the same age, and none of them--let young America
take notice--wears either beard or mustache. I come again to the
traits which distinguish them from each other. In face and form, Davis
represents the Norman type with singular fidelity, if my conception of
that type be correct. He is tall and sinewy, with fair hair, gray
eyes, which are clear rather than bright, high forehead, straight
nose, thin, compressed lips, and pointed chin. His cheek bones are
hollow, and the vicinity of his mouth is deeply furrowed with
intersecting lines. Leanness of face, length and sharpness of feature,
and length of limb, and intensity of expression, rendered acute by
angular, facial outline, are the general characteristics of his
appearance."

The controversy, excited by the question of the admission of Kansas, can not be viewed as having terminated with the mere practical decision of her status, as a State tolerating or prohibiting slavery. Southern men had freely admitted the improbability of the permanent abiding of the institution in that Territory, or elsewhere, north of the line of 36° 30', and their defeat had a far more alarming significance than the exclusion of slavery from soil where the laws of nature opposed its location. Important conclusions were deducible from the lesson of Kansas, which the South must have been smitten with voluntary blindness not to have accepted. Of the purpose of the Republican party, never to consent to the admission of additional slave States, there was added to constantly accumulating proof from other sources, the bold declarations of Abolition members of Congress. Recent experience clearly demonstrated that the South could no longer rely upon the Northern Democracy in support of the plainest guarantees of the Constitution, for the protection of her property, when they were in conflict with the dominant fanaticism of that section. Accordingly, the Southern Democracy, wisely and bravely resolved, and the unfortunate issue should not prejudge their action, to require of their Northern associates, as the condition of continued coöperation, a pledge of better faith in the future.

It was in the progress of events, which may be justly called the sequel of the Kansas controversy, that Mr. Davis was most conspicuous during his second service in the Senate. His course was such as might have been anticipated from his zealous and vigilant regard for constitutional principles, and the rights and interests of his section. His feeble health had prevented his frequent participation in the struggles incidental to the Kansas question, but in those subsequent struggles, which marked the dissolution of the Democratic party, he was the constant, bold, and able adversary of Douglas. The ingenious sophistries of the latter were subjected to no more searching and scathing refutations than those with which Davis met his every attempt at their illustration.

At this period the position of Mr. Davis was no less prominent than in 1850, though his speeches were less frequent and voluminous. Upon both occasions his elevation was an ample reward to honorable ambition, but would have been perilous in the extreme had he been deficient in those great and rare qualities which were necessary to its maintenance. Among his numerous contests with the distinguished exponents of the sentiment in opposition to the South, none are more memorable than his collisions with Douglas.

Of these the most striking occurred on the 23d of February, 1859, and on the 16th and 17th of May, 1860. To have matched Douglas with an ordinary contestant, must always have resulted in disaster; it would have been to renew the contest of Athelstane against Ivanhoe. Douglas was accustomed to testify, cheerfully, to the power of Davis, as evinced in their senatorial struggles; and it is very certain that at no other hands did he fare so badly, unless an exception be made in favor of the remarkable speech of Senator Benjamin, of Louisiana. The latter was an adept in the strategy of debate, a parliamentary Suchet.

The 23d of February, 1859, was the occasion of a protracted battle between Davis and Douglas, lasting from midday until nearly night. This speech of Mr. Davis is, in many respects, inferior to his higher oratorical efforts, realizing less of the forms of oratory which he usually illustrated so happily, and is wanting somewhat in that symmetry, harmony, and comeliness in all its features, with which his senatorial efforts are generally wrought to the perfection of expression. The circumstances under which it was delivered, however, fully meet this criticism, and show a most remarkable readiness for the instantaneous and hurried grapple of debate, and this latter quality was the strong point of Douglas' oratory. The latter had replied at great length, and with evident preparation, to a speech made by Mr. Davis' colleague (Mr. Brown), who was not present during Douglas' rejoinder. Without hesitation Mr. Davis assumed the place of his absent colleague, and the result was a running debate, lasting several hours, and exhibiting on both sides all the vivacious readiness of a gladiatorial combat.

In their ordinary and characteristic speeches there was an antithesis, no less marked than in their characters as men. Douglas was peculiarly _American_ in his style of speaking. He dealt largely in the _argumentum ad hominem_; was very adroit in pointing out immaterial inconsistencies in his antagonists; he rarely discussed general principles; always avoided questions of abstract political science, and struggled to force the entire question into juxtaposition with the practical considerations of the immediate present.

In nearly all of Davis' speeches is recognized the pervasion of intellect, which is preserved even in his most impassioned passages. He goes to the very "foundations of jurisprudence," illustrates by historical example, and throws upon his subject the full radiance of that noble light which is shed by diligent inquiry into the abstract truths of political and moral science. Strength, animation, energy without vehemence, classical elegance, and a luminous simplicity, are features in Mr. Davis' oratory which rendered him one of the most finished, logical, and effective of contemporary parliamentary speakers.

During the Thirty-sixth Congress, which assembled in December, 1859, Mr. Davis was the recognized leader of the Democratic majority of the Senate. His efforts, during this session, were probably the ablest of his life, and never did his great powers of analysis and generalization appear to greater advantage. On the second of February, 1860, Mr. Davis presented a series of seven resolves, which embodied the views of the administration, of an overwhelming majority of the Democratic members of the Senate, and of the Southern Democracy, and were opposed by Mr. Douglas (though absent from the Senate by sickness), Mr. Pugh, and by the Abolition Senators. They are important as the substantial expression of the doctrines upon which the Southern Democracy were already prepared to insist at the approaching National Convention.

The _first_ resolution affirms the sovereignty of the States and their delegation of authority to the Federal Government, to secure each State against _domestic_ no less than foreign dangers. This resolution was designed with special reference to the recent outrages of John Brown and his associate conspirators, several of whom had expiated their crimes upon the gallows, at the hands of the authorities of Virginia.

Resolution _second_ affirms the recognition of slavery as property by the Constitution, and that all efforts to injure it by citizens of non-slaveholding States are violations of faith.

_Third_ insists upon the absolute equality of the States.

The _fourth_ resolution of the series, which embodied the material point of difference between Mr. Douglas and the majority of Democratic Senators, was modified, as stated by Mr. Davis, "after conference with friends," and finally made to read thus:

"_Resolved_, That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature,
whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect and
unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the
constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his
slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy
the same while the territorial condition remains."

_Fifth_ declares it the duty of Congress to supply any needed protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, provided the executive and judicial authority has not the adequate means.

The _sixth_ resolution was an emphatic repudiation of what Mr. Douglas, by an ingenious perversion of terms, and a bold array of sophisms, was pleased to designate "popular sovereignty"--reading thus:

"_Resolved_, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the United States,
when they rightfully form a constitution to be admitted as a State
into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a
State when forming a new constitution, decide for themselves whether
slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited
within their jurisdiction; and 'they shall be admitted into the Union,
with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the
time of their admission.'"

The _seventh_ and last of the series affirmed the validity and sanctity of the Fugitive Slave Law, and denounced all acts, whether of individuals or of State Legislatures, to defeat its action.

The struggle upon these resolutions lasted more than three months, the Senate not reaching a vote upon the first of the series until May 24, 1860. They constituted substantially the platform presented by the South at the Charleston Democratic Convention, in April, and upon which, after the withdrawal of the Southern delegations, the Presidential ticket of Breckinridge and Lane was nominated, and supported in the ensuing canvass, receiving the electoral votes of eleven States of the South.

It was alleged against these resolutions, and the general principle of protection to Southern property in the Territories, which their advocates demanded should be asserted in the Democratic creed, that they involved a new issue, raised for factious purposes, and were not sanctioned by any previous action of the party. This, even if it had been true, which assuredly it was not, constituted no sufficient reason for denying a plain constitutional right.

But, however sustained might have been this charge of inconsistency against other Southern leaders, it had no application to Davis. Indeed, Douglas unequivocally admitted that the position assumed by Davis in 1860 was precisely that to which he had held for twenty years previous. While the Oregon Bill was pending in the Senate, on the 23d of June, 1848, Mr. Davis offered this amendment:

"_Provided_, That nothing contained in this act shall be so construed
as to authorize the prohibition of domestic slavery in said Territory
whilst it remains in the condition of a Territory of the United
States."

Eleven years afterwards, in his address before the Mississippi Democratic Convention, July 5, 1859, he said:

"But if the rules of proceeding remain unchanged, then all the
remedies of the civil law would be available for the protection of
property in slaves; or if the language of the organic act, by
specifying chancery and common-law jurisdiction, denies to us the more
ample remedies of the civil law, then those known to the common law
are certainly in force; and these, I have been assured by the highest
authority, will be found sufficient. If this be so, then we are
content; if it should prove otherwise, then we but ask what justice
can not deny--the legislation needful to enable the General Government
to perform its legitimate functions; and, in the meantime, we deny the
power of Congress to abridge or to destroy our constitutional rights,
or of the Territorial Legislature to obstruct the remedies known to
the common law of the United States."

In 1848 he advocated General Cass' election _in spite_ of the Nicholson letter, and not because he either approved or failed to detect the dangerous heresies which it contained. As a choice of evils, he preferred Cass, even upon the Nicholson letter, to General Taylor, his father-in-law, both because Cass was the choice of his own party, and he distrusted the influences which he foresaw would govern the administration of Taylor.

The attention of Mr. Davis was far from being confined to the slavery question and the issues which grew out of it during the important period which we have sketched. His extensive acquaintance with the practical labors of legislation, and his uniformly thorough information upon all questions of domestic economy, foreign affairs, the finances, and the army, were amply exemplified, to the great benefit of the country.

During the debate in the Thirty-fifth Congress, on the bill proposing the issue of $20,000,000 of Treasury notes, which he opposed, he avowed himself in favor of the abolition of custom-houses, and the disbanding of the army of retainers employed to collect the import duties. Free trade was always an important article of his political creed. He valued its fraternizing effects upon mankind, its advantages to the laboring classes; and held that, under a system of free trade, the Government would not be defrauded. He traced the financial distress of the country, in the "crisis" of 1857, to its commercial dependence on New York, whose embarrassments must, so long as that dependence continued, always afflict the country at large. The army, as on previous occasions, received a large share of his attention, and he advocated its increase on a plan similar to that of Mr. Calhoun, when Secretary of War under President Monroe, providing a skeleton organization in peace, capable of expansion in the event of war. The fishing bounties he opposed, as being obnoxious to the objections urged against class legislation.

In the summer of 1858, during the recess of Congress, Mr. Davis visited the North, with a view to the recuperation of his health. Sailing from Baltimore to Boston, he traversed a considerable portion of New England, and sojourned for some time in Portland, Maine. His health was materially benefited by the bracing salubrity of that delightful locality, and, both here and at other points, he was received with demonstrations of profound respect. Upon several occasions he was persuaded to deliver public addresses, which were largely read and criticized. They were every-where commended for their admirable catholicity of sentiment, and not less for their bold assertions of principles than for their emphatic avowals of attachment to the union of the States. His speech at Portland, Maine,[13] was especially admired for its statesman-like dignity, and was singularly free from partisan or sectional temper. In his journey through the States of Massachusetts and New York, he was tendered distinguished honors, and addressed the people of the leading cities. On the 10th of October, he spoke in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and, on the 19th, he addressed an immense Democratic ratification meeting in New York.

The following is an extract from his address upon the latter occasion:

"To each community belongs the right to decide for itself what
institutions it will have--to each people sovereign in their own
sphere. It belongs only to them to decide what shall be property. You
have decided it for yourselves, Mississippi has done so. Who has the
right to gainsay it? [Applause.] It was the assertion of the right of
independence--of that very right which led your fathers into the war
of the Revolution. [Applause.] It is that which constitutes the
doctrine of State Rights, on which it is my pleasure to stand.
Congress has no power to determine what shall be property anywhere.
Congress has only such grants as are contained in the Constitution;
and it conferred no power to rule with despotic hands over the
independence of the Territories."

The second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress was comparatively uneventful. Mr. Davis was an influential advocate of the Pacific Railroad by the Southern route. His most elaborate effort during this session was his argument against the French Spoliation Bill--denying that the failure of the Government, in its earlier history, to prosecute the just claims of American citizens on the Government of France, made it incumbent upon the present generation to satisfy the obligations of justice incurred in the past.

In reply to an invitation to attend the Webster Birthday Festival, held in Boston, in January, 1859, Mr. Davis wrote as follows:

"At a time when partisans avow the purpose to obliterate the landmarks
of our fathers, and fanaticism assails the barriers they erected for
the protection of rights coeval with and essential to the existence of
the Union--when Federal offices have been sought by inciting
constituencies to hostile aggressions, and exercised, not as a trust
for the common welfare, but as the means of disturbing domestic
tranquillity--when oaths to support the Constitution have been taken
with a mental reservation to disregard its spirit, and subvert the
purposes for which it was established--surely it becomes all who are
faithful to the compact of our Union, and who are resolved to maintain
and preserve it, to compare differences on questions of mere
expediency, and, forming deep around the institutions we inherited,
stand united to uphold, with unfaltering intent, a banner on which is
inscribed the Constitutional Union of free, equal, and independent
States.

"May the vows of 'love and allegiance,' which you propose to renew as
a fitting tribute to the memory of the illustrious statesman whose
birth you commemorate, find an echo in the heart of every patriot in
our land, and tend to the revival of that fraternity which bore our
fathers through the Revolution to the consummation of the independence
they transmitted to us, and the establishment of the more perfect
Union which their wisdom devised to bless their posterity for ever!

"Though deprived of the pleasure of mingling my affectionate memories
and aspirations with yours, I send you my cordial greeting to the
friends of the Constitution, and ask to be enrolled among those whose
mission is, by fraternity and good faith to every constitutional
obligation, to insure that, from the Aroostook to San Diego, from Key
West to Puget's Sound, the grand arch of our political temple shall
stand unshaken."

In the meantime a variety of events measurably added to the vehemence of the sectional dispute, which never, for a moment, had exhibited any abatement since the opening of the Kansas _imbroglio_. The antagonism between the two sections, becoming more and more pronounced each day, rapidly developed the true character of the struggle, as one for existence on the part of the South, against the revolutionary designs of the North. Mr. Seward, the Ajax of Black Republicanism, the founder and leader of the party organized for the destruction of Southern institutions, in the fall of 1858, at the city of Rochester, for the first time proclaimed his revolutionary doctrine of an "irrepressible conflict" between the civilizations of the two sections. This announcement, from such a source, could only be accepted by the South as a menace to her peace and security. Such was her construction of it.

In his address before the Mississippi Democratic Convention, in July, 1859, from which we have already quoted, Mr. Davis said:

"We have witnessed the organization of a party seeking the possession
of the Government, not for the common good, not for their own
particular benefit, but as the means of executing a hostile purpose
against a portion of the States."

Approaching more directly the doctrine of Mr. Seward, he said:

"The success of such a party would indeed produce an 'irrepressible
conflict.' To you would be presented the question, Will you allow the
Constitutional Union to be changed into the despotism of a majority?
Will you become the subjects of a hostile Government? or will you,
outside of the Union, assert the equality, the liberty and sovereignty
to which you were born? For myself I say, as I said on a former
occasion, in the contingency of the election of a President on the
platform of Mr. Seward's Rochester speech, let the Union be dissolved.
Let the 'great, but not the greatest, evil' come; for, as did the
great and good Calhoun, from whom is drawn that expression of value, I
love and venerate the Union of these States, but I love liberty and
Mississippi more."

When Congress assembled, in December, 1859, the lawless expedition of John Brown had greatly accelerated the inevitable climax of disunion. Thenceforward the incipient revolution was, to a great extent, transferred from the hands of Congress, whose action was but lightly regarded in comparison with the animated scenes which marked the State conventions and popular assemblages, held with reference to the approaching presidential nominations.

Mr. Davis approved the test made at the Charleston Convention, by the Southern Democracy, as to the construction of the Cincinnati platform, and the demand for a more explicit announcement of the position of the party concerning slavery in the Territories. His speech, in reply to Judge Douglas, on the 16th and 17th of May, 1860, is a vindication of Southern action at Charleston, and an exhaustive discussion of all the phases of the issue upon which the Democracy had divided.

Events soon demonstrated the irreconcilable nature of the antagonism which had severed this giant organization. It had simply realized the destiny of political parties. In one generation they rise, as a virtue and a necessity, to remedy disorders and reform abuses; in another generation, they are themselves the apologists of corruption and the perpetrators of wrong. The Democratic party became insensible to the appeals of principle, and its fifty years' lease of power terminated, not speedily to be recovered.

HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS AT PORTLAND, MAINE.

[From the Eastern Argus.]

We are gratified in being able to offer our readers a faithful and quite full report of the speech of Hon. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, on the occasion of the serenade given him by the citizens of Portland, without distinction of party, on Friday evening last. It will be read with interest and pleasure, and we can not doubt that every sentiment, uttered by the distinguished Mississippian, will find a hearty response and approval from the citizens of Maine. The occasion was indeed a pleasing, a hopeful one. It was in every respect the expression of generous sentiments, of kindness, hospitality, friendly regard, and the brotherhood of American citizenship. Prominent men of all parties were present, and the expression, without exception, so far as we have heard, has been that of unmingled gratification; and the scene was equally pleasant to look upon. The beautiful mansion of Rensallaer Cram, Esq., directly opposite to Madame Blanchard's, was illuminated, and the light thrown from the windows of the two houses revealed to view the large and perfectly orderly assemblage with which Park and Danforth Streets were crowded. We regret that our readers can get no idea of the musical voice and inspiring eloquence of the speaker from a report of his remarks; but it is the best we can do for them. After the music had ceased, Mr. Davis appeared upon the steps, and as soon as the prolonged applause with which he was greeted had subsided, he spoke in substance as follows:

FELLOW-CITIZENS: Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation of your kindness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive your purpose as to appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is not the less gratifying to me to be made the medium through which Maine tenders an expression of regard to her sister, Mississippi. It is, moreover, with feelings of profound gratification that I witness this indication of that national sentiment and fraternity which made us, and which alone can keep us, one people. At a period but as yesterday, when compared with the life of nations, these States were separate, and, in some respects, opposing colonies, their only relation to each other was that of a common allegiance to the Government of Great Britain. So separate, indeed almost hostile, was their attitude, that when General Stark, of Bennington memory, was captured by savages on the headwaters of the Kennebec, he was subsequently taken by them to Albany, where they went to sell furs, and again led away a captive, without interference on the part of the inhabitants of that neighboring colony to demand or obtain his release. United as we now are, were a citizen of the United States, as an act of hostility to our country, imprisoned or slain in any quarter of the world, whether on land or sea, the people of each and every State of the Union, with one heart and with one voice, would demand redress, and woe be to him against whom a brother's blood cried to us from the ground. Such is the fruit of the wisdom and the justice with which our fathers bound contending colonies into confederation, and blended different habits and rival interests into a harmonious whole, so that, shoulder to shoulder, they entered on the trial of the Revolution, and step with step trod its thorny paths until they reached the height of national independence, and founded the constitutional representative liberty which is our birthright.

When the mother country entered upon her career of oppression, in disregard of chartered and constitutional rights, our forefathers did not stop to measure the exact weight of the burden, or to ask whether the pressure bore most upon this colony or upon that, but saw in it the infraction of a great principle, the denial of a common right, in defense of which they made common cause--Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina vieing with each other as to who should be foremost in the struggle, where the penalty of failure would be a dishonorable grave. Tempered by the trials and sacrifices of the Revolution, dignified by its noble purposes, elevated by its brilliant triumphs, endeared to each other by its glorious memories, they abandoned the Confederacy, not to fly apart when the outward pressure of hostile fleets and armies were removed, but to draw closer their embrace in the formation of a more perfect Union.

By such men, thus trained and ennobled, our Constitution was framed. It stands a monument of principle, of forecast, and, above all, of that liberality which made each willing to sacrifice local interest, individual prejudice, or temporary good to the general welfare and the perpetuity of the republican institutions which they had passed through fire and blood to secure. The grants were as broad as were necessary for the functions of the general agent, and the mutual concessions were twice blessed, blessing him who gave and him who received. Whatever was necessary for domestic government--requisite in the social organization of each community--was retained by the States and the people thereof; and these it was made the duty of all to defend and maintain. Such, in very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathers bequeathed to us. Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity? Yes, yes, the heart responds; and the judgment answers, the task is easily performed. It but requires that each should attend to that which most concerns him, and on which alone he has rightful power to decide and to act; that each should adhere to the terms of a written compact, and that all should coöperate for that which interest, duty, and honor demand.

For the general affairs of our country, both foreign and domestic, we have a national Executive and a national Legislature. Representatives and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts affect the whole country, and their obligations are to the whole people. He who, holding either seat, would confine his investigations to the mere interests of his immediate constituents, would be derelict to his plain duty; and he who would legislate in hostility to any section, would be morally unfit for the station, and surely an unsafe depository, if not a treacherous guardian, of the inheritance with which we are blessed. No one more than myself recognizes the binding force of the allegiance which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but that State being a party to our compact, a member of the Union, fealty to the Federal Constitution is not in opposition to, but flows from the allegiance due to one of the United States. Washington was not less a Virginian when he commanded at Boston, nor did Gates or Greene weaken the bonds which bound them to their several States by their campaigns in the South. In proportion as a citizen loves his own State, will he strive to honor by preserving her name and her fame free from the tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations and to fulfill her duties to her sister States. Each page of our history is illustrated by the names and deeds of those who have well understood and discharged the obligation. Have we so degenerated that we can no longer emulate their virtues? Have the purposes for which our Union was formed lost their value? Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a crime? Shall the North not rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South has given to her great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the world, and put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the United States? Shall the South not exult in the fact that the industry and persevering intelligence of the North has placed her mechanical skill in the front ranks of the civilized world--that our mother country, whose haughty Minister, some eighty odd years ago, declared that not a hob-nail should be made in the colonies, which are now the United States, was brought, some four years ago, to recognize our preëminence by sending a commission to examine our workshops and our machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the arms requisite for their defense? Do not our whole people, interior and seaboard, North, South, East and West, alike feel proud of the hardihood, the enterprise, the skill, and the courage of the Yankee sailor, who has borne our flag far as the ocean bears its foam, and caused the name and character of the United States to be known and respected wherever there is wealth enough to woo commerce and intelligence to honor merit? So long as we preserve and appreciate the achievements of Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin and Madison, of Hamilton, of Hancock, and of Rutledge, men who labored for the whole country, and lived for mankind, we can not sink to the petty strife which would sap the foundations and destroy the political fabric our fathers erected and bequeathed as an inheritance to our posterity forever.

Since the formation of the Constitution a vast extension of territory, and the varied relations arising therefrom, have presented problems which could not have been foreseen. It is just cause for admiration, even wonder, that the provisions of the fundamental law should have been so fully adequate to all the wants of government, new in its organization, and new in many of the principles on which it was founded. Whatever fears may have once existed as to the consequences of territorial expansion must give way before the evidence which the past affords. The General Government, strictly confined to its delegated functions, and the State left in the undisturbed exercise of all else, we have a theory and practice which fits our Government for immeasurable domain, and might, under a millennium of nations, embrace mankind.

From the slope of the Atlantic our population, with ceaseless tide, has poured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, with eddying whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific; from the West and the East the tides are rushing toward each other, and the mind is carried to the day when all the cultivable land will be inhabited, and the American people will sigh for more wildernesses to conquer. But there is here a physico-political problem presented for our solution. Were it purely physical your past triumphs would leave but little doubt of your capacity to solve it. A community which, when less than twenty thousand, conceived the grand project of crossing the White Mountains, and unaided, save by the stimulus which jeers and prophecies of failure gave, successfully executed the Herculean work, might well be impatient if it were suggested that a physical problem was before us too difficult for mastery. The history of man teaches that high mountains and wide deserts have resisted the permanent extension of empire, and have formed the immutable boundaries of States. From time to time, under some able leader, have the hordes of the upper plains of Asia swept over the adjacent country, and rolled their conquering columns over Southern Europe. Yet, after the lapse of a few generations, the physical law, to which I have referred, has asserted its supremacy, and the boundaries of those States differ little now from those which were obtained three thousand years ago.

Rome flew her conquering eagles over the then known world, and has now subsided into the little territory on which the great city was originally built. The Alps and the Pyranees have been unable to restrain imperial France; but her expansion was a feverish action, her advance and her retreat were tracked with blood, and those mountain ridges are the reëstablished limits of her empire. Shall the Rocky Mountains prove a dividing barrier to us? Were ours a central consolidated Government, instead of a Union of sovereign States, our fate might be learned from the history of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and independent spirit of our forefathers, this is not the case. Each State having sole charge of its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem, which to others has been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe, and easy communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific will give co-intelligence, unity of interest, and coöperation among all parts of our continent-wide Republic. The net-work of railroads which bind the North and the South, the slope of the Atlantic and the valley of the Mississippi, together testify that our people have the power to perform, in that regard, whatever it is their will to do.