Stephen Arnold Douglas
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However, in his ardent advocacy of a Pacific railroad, Douglas made no question of the government's powers in that connection. True, in 1858, the committee of which he was a member threw the bill into the form of a mail contract in order that it might not run counter to the state-rights views of senators, but he seems to have favored every one of the numerous measures looking to the building of the road which had any prospect of success. At first, he was for three different roads, a northern, a central, and a southern, but it was soon clear that Congress would not go into the matter on so generous a scale. Arguing, then, for a central line, he used a language characteristic of his course on all questions that arose between the sections. "The North," he said, "by bending a little down South, can join it; and the South, by leaning a little to the North, can unite with it, too; and our Southern friends ought to be able to bend and lean a little, as well as to require us to bend and lean all the time, in order to join them."
His practical instinct and his democratic inclinations were both apparent in the plan which he proposed in 1855 for the relief of the Supreme Court. A bill reported by the Committee on the Judiciary freed the justices from their duties on circuit and provided for eleven circuit judges. Douglas proposed, as a substitute, to divide the country into nine circuits, and to establish in each of these a court of appeals which should sit once a year and which should consist of one supreme court justice and the district judges of the circuit, the assignment of each justice to be changed from year to year. His aim was twofold: to relieve the Supreme Court by making the circuit courts the final resort in all cases below a certain importance, and to keep the justices in touch with the people, and familiar with the courts, the procedure, and the local laws in all parts of the country. The scheme, though different in details, is in its main features strikingly like the system of circuit court of appeals which was adopted in 1891.
But the questions, apart from that of slavery, on which Douglas's course has the most interest for a later generation were still questions of our foreign relations. On the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, on the Treaty of Peace with Mexico, on the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1853, on the negotiations for the purchase of Cuba, on the filibuster expeditions of 1858, and the controversy of that year over Great Britain's reassertion of the right of search – on all these questions he had very positive opinions and maintained them vigorously. In the year 1853, he went abroad, studied the workings of European systems, and made the acquaintance of various foreign statesmen; but he did not change his opinions or his temper of mind. In England, rather than put on court costume, he gave up an opportunity to be presented to the Queen; and in Russia he appears to have made good his contention that, as persons of other nationalities are presented to foreign rulers in the dress which they would wear before their own sovereigns, an American should be presented in such dress as he would wear before the President.
But if he maintained the traditional, old-fashioned American attitude toward "abroad," he was very sure, when he dealt with a particular case, to take a practical and modern line of reasoning. Opposing the treaty of peace with Mexico, he objected to the boundary line, to the promise we made never to acquire any more Mexican territory as we acquired Texas, and to the stipulations about the Indians. His objections were disregarded, and the treaty was ratified; but five years later the United States paid ten million dollars to get it altered in those respects. He vigorously opposed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty in 1850, when it was ratified, and three years later, when the subject was brought up in open Senate, he stated at length his views on the whole subject of our relations with England and Central America, with Spain and Cuba, with European monarchies and Latin-American states. Whether right or wrong, they are the views on which the American people have acted as practical occasions have arisen and bid fair to act in the future.
It would have been possible, he thought, but for Clayton's mismanagement, to get from Nicaragua a grant to the United States of exclusive and perpetual control over all railroad and canal routes through that country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Instead, we had pledged ourselves to England "not to do, in all coming time, that which, in the progress of events, our interests, duty, and even safety may compel us to do." He opposed the treaty because it invited European intervention in American affairs; because it denied us the right to fortify any canal that might be built; because its language was equivocal in regard to the British protectorate over the Mosquito coast, and otherwise clearly contrary to the Monroe Doctrine; and because we made an unnecessary promise never to occupy any part of Central America. To all these objections, save the last, time has added force; and the principle of the last is now established in our national policy. That principle Douglas proclaimed so often that it almost rivals the principle of popular sovereignty itself in the matter of the frequency of its appearance in his speeches. "You may make," he declared, "as many treaties as you please to fetter the limbs of this giant Republic, and she will burst them all from her, and her course will be onward to a limit which I will not venture to prescribe." The Alleghanies had not withheld us from the basin of the Mississippi, nor the Mississippi from the plains, nor the Rocky Mountains from the Pacific coast. Now that the Pacific barred our way to the westward, who could say that we might not turn, or ought not to turn, northward or southward? Later, he came to contemplate a time when the Pacific might cease to be a barrier: when our "interests, duty, and even safety" might impel us onward to the islands of the sea. He would make no pledges for the future. Agreements not to annex territory might be reasonable in treaties between European powers, but they were contrary to the spirit of American civilization. "Europe," he said, "is antiquated, decrepit, tottering on the verge of dissolution. When you visit her, the objects which excite your admiration are the relics of past greatness: the broken columns erected to departed power. Here everything is fresh, blooming, expanding, and advancing. We wish a wise, practical policy adapted to our condition and position."
A more ardent and thoroughgoing expansionist is not to be found among eminent Americans of that time, or even of later times. While he was denouncing General Walker's lawless invasion of Central America in 1858, he took pains to make it plain that it was the filibusters' method, and not their object, which he condemned. In fact, he condemned their method chiefly because its tendency was to defeat their object.
He believed that England, notwithstanding the kinship of the two peoples and the similarity of their civilizations, was our rival by necessity, our ill-wisher because of the past. The idea that we were bound to the mother country by ties of gratitude or affection he always combated. He denied her motherhood as a historical proposition, and demanded to know of Senator Butler, of South Carolina, who was moved to eloquence over America's debt to England for a language and a literature, whether he was duly grateful also for English criticism of our institutions, and particularly for the publications of English abolitionists. As to the British claim of a right to search American vessels for slaves, he was for bringing the matter at once to an issue; for denying the right in toto; and if Great Britain chose to treat our resistance as a cause of war, he would be for prolonging the war until the British flag should disappear forever from the American continent and the adjacent islands.
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT QUESTION
On all these questions, alike of domestic and of foreign policy, Douglas took an eminently hopeful, an eminently confident and resolute stand. His opinions were such as befitted a strong, competent, successful man. They were characteristic of the West. They were based on a positive faith in democracy, in our constitution of government, in the American people. In that faith, likewise, he addressed himself to the problem which in his day, as before and after, was perplexing the champions of democracy and giving pause to the well-wishers of the Republic. A later generation has learned to think of that problem as the negro question, a race question; Douglas's generation thought of it merely as the slavery question.
The presidential election of 1848 made a good occasion for men to take account of the question, and of their own minds concerning it. In February, 1848, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded to the United States the territory out of which California, New Mexico, and Utah have been formed. With the signing of the treaty the material elements of the problem, as it presented itself to that generation, were completely arranged.
In fifteen Southern States and in the District of Columbia slavery was sanctioned and protected by law. In fifteen Northern States slavery was prohibited by law. The foreign slave trade was long since prohibited altogether, though from time to time, in a small way, it was surreptitiously revived. The domestic slave trade, among the slave States and in the District, was still permitted. There was a law on the statute book to compel the return of slaves fleeing into the free States, but certain of its provisions had been pronounced unconstitutional, and it was ineffective. Of the territory acquired from France in 1803, all that part which lay south of the line of 36° 30´, North latitude, with Missouri, which lay north of the line, was either organized into slave States or set apart for the Indians; in all that part which lay north of the line of 36° 30´, except Missouri, slavery was forbidden by a law of Congress passed in 1820. It was competent for Congress to repeal the law at any time, but from the country's long acquiescence in it, and from the circumstances of its passage, which were such that a stigma of bad faith would be fixed upon whichever section should move for its repeal, it seemed to have a force and stability more like the Constitution's itself than that of ordinary laws. There remained the territory got from Mexico, concerning which, although from the beginning of the war the question of slavery in any territory that might come to us at the end of it had been constantly in agitation, Congress had as yet passed no law. What law Congress should make about slavery in California, New Mexico, and Utah was the main question. But there was also a question of the right boundary between New Mexico and Texas, which had been admitted in 1845 as a slave State, with an agreement that she might at any time divide herself up into four States.
The material elements of the problem, then, were comparatively simple, and the immediately pressing questions were easily phrased; but the intangible element of public opinion was uncommonly hard to estimate. So far as the great parties were concerned, it was impossible to fix upon either of them any general theory about slavery or any definite policy with it. Up to this time, both had apparently gone on the understanding that it was not a proper issue in political contests. A small group of unpractical men had, in fact, tried to build up a party on the issue of opposition to it, but they had no prospect of carrying a single electoral vote. The adherents of the old parties were agreed on one thing: that there was no lawful way for Congress or the people of the free States to interfere with slavery in the slave States. They were divided among themselves, inside of party lines, on the fugitive slave law, on the interstate slave trade, on slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and on slavery in the Territories.
But if party lines did not yet accurately represent the divisions of opinion on these questions, there was, nevertheless, a grouping of men according to their opinions on the general question which already had its effects in politics. Every thoughtful American of that day belonged to one or another of several groups according to the view he took of two things: slavery itself, and the body of law and usage that had grown up about it. There were the abolitionists, who believed slavery to be so utterly wrong that they were ready to go all lengths to get rid of it, violating the Constitution, breaking the compromises, endangering the Union. There were the Southern fire-eaters, who not only believed slavery right but were similarly willing to go all lengths to defend and extend it. There were the moderate men who made up the bulk of the two great parties in the North, who believed slavery wrong but felt themselves bound by the compromises of the Constitution which protected it where it already existed and debarred from any method of attacking it which might bring the Union into danger. There were the moderate men of the South, Whigs and Democrats alike, who believed either that slavery was right or at least that there was no better state possible for the mass of the blacks, but who were yet devoted to the Union and respected their constitutional obligations. Finally, there were men so constituted that they could decline to take any thought whether slavery were right or wrong, and could deal with every question that arose concerning it as a question of expediency merely, or of law and precedent.
To which of these groups should Douglas join himself? Up to this time, his public record was too meagre to show clearly where he stood. In 1845, when the bill to annex Texas was before the House, he had offered an amendment extending the compromise line of 1820 through the new State, so that if Texas were ever divided slavery would be prohibited in such State or States as should be formed north of that line. Both in the House and in the Senate he had voted against the famous resolution of Mr. David Wilmot to exclude slavery from any territory that we might get from Mexico, and he continued to oppose that motion, in whatever form it appeared, until the legislature of Illinois instructed him to favor it. In 1848, he voted for the so-called Clayton Compromise, which proposed to organize California, Oregon, and New Mexico into Territories and merely extend over them the Constitution and laws of the United States so far as these should prove applicable; but he also voted for the bill to organize the Territory of Oregon with a clause prohibiting slavery. By his speeches, no less than by his votes, he was committed to the position that the Missouri Compromise was a final settlement so far as the Louisiana Purchase was concerned, and that the compromise line ought to be extended through the Mexican Cession to the Pacific. He was not clearly committed on any other of the points at issue between the friends and the opponents of slavery.
But he had roundly denounced the abolitionists, and he had married the daughter of a slaveholder. The day after his wedding his father-in-law presented him a deed to a plantation in Mississippi and a number of slaves. He gave it back, not, so he declared, because he thought it wrong to hold slaves, but because he did not know how to govern them or to manage a plantation. His wife soon fell heir to the land and negroes, and at her death they passed to her children under a will which requested that the blacks be not sold but kept and cared for by the testator's descendants. Douglas, as the guardian of his infant children, respected their grandfather's wishes. For that reason he was called a slaveholder, and a fellow senator once openly accused him of shaping his course as a public man to accord with his private interests. He denied and disproved the charge, but proudly added: "I implore my enemies, who so ruthlessly invade the private sanctuary, to do me the favor to believe that I have no wish, no aspiration, to be considered purer or better than she who was, or they who are, slaveholders."
He was of those who could be indifferent to the moral quality of slavery. He could favor whatever policy the Constitution required, or precedents favored, or public expediency demanded; if his enemies were to be believed, he could take whatever course ambition and self-interest impelled him to. Never once during his long wrestling with the slavery question did he concede that any account should be taken of the moral character of the institution, or intimate that he believed it wrong for one man to hold another man in bondage.
The Democratic National Convention of 1848, though its platform was as vague as it could be made, nominated a candidate who was committed to a particular plan with slavery in the Territories. The candidate was Lewis Cass, of Michigan, and his plan was set forth in a letter to one Nicholson, of Nashville, Tennessee, of date December 24, 1847. The plan appeared to be a very simple one. It was to leave the people of each Territory, so soon as it should be organized, free to regulate their domestic institutions as they chose. He favored it for two reasons: first, because Congress had no right to interfere; and second, because the people themselves were the best judges of what institutions they ought to have. That was the barest form of the doctrine which its opponents in derision named "squatter sovereignty." It was contrary to the doctrine of the Wilmot Proviso, which invoked the authority of Congress to exclude slavery from all the Territories, and contrary, also, to whatever doctrine or no doctrine was implied in the motion to extend the compromise line to the Pacific, exercising the authority of Congress to exclude slavery north of the line and forbearing to exercise it south of the line. It was equally contrary to a third doctrine which was brought before the convention. William L. Yancey, a delegate from Alabama, offered a resolution to the effect that neither Congress nor any territorial legislature had any right to exclude slave property from the Territories. This was a mild statement of the extreme Southern doctrine that slaves were property, so recognized by the Constitution, and that a slaveholder had the right to take his slaves anywhere but into a State where slavery was forbidden.
The doctrine of Cass seemed to accord best with that democratic theory of the government which Douglas had always professed. It accorded well with his faith in the builders of the West. It alone, of all the doctrines advanced, accorded fully with his attitude of indifference to the moral quality of slavery. He soon embraced it, therefore, and for the rest of his life he was oftenest occupied embodying it in legislation, defending it, restating it to suit new conditions, modifying it to meet fresh exigencies. Cass, though his authorship of the doctrine is disputed, was at first held responsible for it, and he advocated it with great ability. But in the end men well-nigh forgot who the author of the principle was, so preëminent was Douglas as its defender. He made it his, whosesoever it was at first, and his it will always be in history.
During the session of 1848–49, he introduced a bill to admit California as a State, leaving the people to settle the slavery question as they pleased. But his first great opportunity came in the session of 1849–50.
Cass had been beaten in the election. Zachary Taylor, the successful candidate of the Whigs, was a Southerner and a slaveholder, but he was elected on a non-committal platform, and he had never declared, if indeed he had ever formed, any opinions on the questions in dispute. His first message merely notified Congress that California, whither people were rushing from all parts of the country in search of gold, had of her own motion made ready for statehood; he expressed a hope that New Mexico would shortly follow her example, and recommended that both be admitted into the Union with such constitutions as they might present. Immediately, the House, where the free-soilers held a balance of power, fell into a long wrangle over the speakership; and the Senate was soon in fierce debate over certain anti-slavery resolutions presented from the legislature of Vermont. The North seemed to be united on the Wilmot Proviso as it had never before been united on any measure of opposition to slavery, and the South, fearing to lose the fruits of her many victories in statesmanship, in diplomacy, and on Mexican battlefields, was threatening disunion if, by the admission of California as a free State with no slave State to balance, her equality of representation in the Senate should be destroyed. The portents were all of disagreement, struggle, disaster.
But at the end of January, Henry Clay, though he had come back to the scene of his many stirring conflicts in the past minded to be "a calm and quiet looker-on," roused himself to one more essay of that statesmanship of compromise in which he was a master. He made a plan of settlement that covered all the controversies and put it in the form of a series of resolutions. It was to admit California with her free-state constitution; to organize the remainder of the Mexican Cession into Territories, with no restriction as to slavery; to pay Texas a sum of money on condition that she yielded in the dispute over the boundary between her and New Mexico; to prohibit the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia; to leave the interstate slave trade alone; and to pass an effective fugitive slave law.
For two days, Clay spoke for his plan. Age, though it had not bereft him of his consummate skill in oratory, added pathos to his genuine fervor of patriotism as in that profound crisis of our affairs he pleaded with his fellow senators and with his divided countrymen. There followed the most notable series of set speeches in the history of Congress. One after another, the old leaders, Calhoun, Webster, Benton, Cass, and the rest, – for all were still there, – rose and solemnly addressed themselves to the state of the country and the plan of settlement. All but Calhoun: now very near his end, he was too weak to stand or speak, and Mason, of Virginia, read for him, while he sat gloomily silent, his last bitter arraignment of the North. He was against the plan. Benton, though on opposite grounds, also found fault with it. Webster, to the rage and sorrow of his own New England, gave it his support. Then the new men spoke. Jefferson Davis, on whom, as Calhoun was borne away to his grave, the mantle of his leadership seemed visibly to fall, steadfastly asserted the Southern claim that slaveholders had a right to go into any Territory with their slaves, but offered, as the extreme concession of the South, to extend the Missouri line to the Pacific if property in slaves were protected below the line. Chase, of Ohio, impressive in appearance but stiff in manner, argued weightily for the constitutionality and rightfulness of the Wilmot Proviso. Seward, of New York, though the shrewdest politician of the anti-slavery forces, enraged the Southerners and startled the country with the announcement that "a higher law than the Constitution" enjoined upon Congress to guard these fresh lands for freedom.
But none of the new men, and none of the old leaders but Clay himself, had such a part as Douglas in the actual settlement. He supported the resolutions, and as chairman of the Committee on Territories he wrote and introduced two bills: one to admit California, and one to organize the Territories of New Mexico and Utah with no restrictions as to slavery and to adjust the dispute with Texas. When Clay was put at the head of a Committee of Thirteen, to which all the subjects of dispute were referred, he was often in consultation with the chairman of the Committee on Territories. Douglas was of opinion that the various measures proposed would have a better chance of passing separately than all in one, but Clay decided to deal with California, the Territories, and the Texas boundary in a single measure. This, with separate bills on the fugitive slave law and the slave trade in the District, he reported early in May. The Omnibus, as the first bill was called, was simply Douglas's two bills joined together with a wafer: the words, "Mr. Clay, from the Committee of Thirteen," were substituted for the words, "Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories." But there was one important change. Douglas's bill gave the territorial legislatures authority over all rightful subjects of legislation, subject to the Constitution, save that they could pass no law interfering with the primary disposal of the soil. Clay's committee, contrary to his wish, added the clause, "nor in respect to African slavery." Douglas moved to strike out the exception. He was voted down, but bided his time, persuaded another senator to renew the motion at a favorable moment, and it passed.