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.
We require a railroad to the States of the Pacific for present uses; the
time no doubt will come when we shall have need of two or three, it may
be, more. Because of the desert character of the interior country the work
will be difficult and expensive. It will require the efforts of a united
people. The bickerings of little politicians, the jealousies of sections
must give way to dignity of purpose and zeal for the common good. If the
object be obstructed by contention and division as to whether the route
shall be Northern, Southern, or Central, the handwriting is on the wall,
and it requires little skill to see that failure is the interpretation of
the inscription. You are practical people, and may ask, How is that
contest to be avoided? By taking the question out of the hands of
politicians altogether. Let the Government give such aid as it is proper
for it to render to the company which shall propose the most feasible
plan; then leave to capitalists with judgment, sharpened by interest, the
selection of the route, and the difficulties will diminish, as did those
which you overcame when you connected your harbor with the Canadian
provinces.
It would be to trespass on your kindness and to violate the proprieties of
the occasion were I to detain the vast concourse which stands before me by
entering on the discussion of controverted topics, or by further indulging
in the expression of such reflections as circumstances suggest. I came to
your city in quest of health and repose. From the moment I entered it you
have showered upon me kindness and hospitality. Though my experience has
taught me to anticipate good rather than evil from my fellow-man, it had
not prepared me to expect such unremitting attention as has here been
bestowed. I have been jocularly asked in relation to my coming here,
whether I had secured a guarantee for my safety, and lo! I have found it.
I stand in the midst of thousands of my fellow-citizens. But, my friends,
I came neither distrusting nor apprehensive, of which you have proof in
the fact that I brought with me the objects of tenderest affection and
solicitude, my wife and my children; they have shared with me your
hospitality, and will alike remain your debtors. If, at some future time,
when I am mingled with the dust, and the arm of my infant son has been
nerved for deeds of manhood, the storm of war should burst upon your city,
I feel that, relying upon his inheriting the instincts of his ancestors
and mine, I may pledge him in that perilous hour to stand by your side in
the defense of your hearth-stones, and in maintaining the honor of a flag
whose constellation, though torn and smoked in many a battle by sea and
land, has never been stained with dishonor, and will, I trust, forever fly
as free as the breeze which unfolds it.
A stranger to you, the salubrity of your location, and the beauty of its
scenery were not wholly unknown to me, nor were there wanting associations
which busy memory connected with your people. You will pardon me for
alluding to one whose genius shed a lustre upon all it touched, and whose
qualities gathered about him hosts of friends wherever he was known.
Prentiss, a native of Portland, lived from youth to middle age in the
county of my residence; and the inquiries which have been made show me
that the youth excited the interest which the greatness of the man
justified, and that his memory thus remains a link to connect your home
with mine. A cursory view, when passing through your town on former
occasions, had impressed me with the great advantages of your harbor, its
easy entrance, its depth, and its extensive accommodations for shipping.
But its advantages and its facilities, as they have been developed by
closer inspection, have grown upon me, until I realize that it is no
boast, but the language of sober truth, which, in the present state of
commerce, pronounces them unequaled in any harbor of our country.
And surely no place could be more inviting to an invalid who sought refuge
from the heat of Southern summer. Here waving elms offer him shaded walks,
and magnificent residences, surrounded by flowers, fill the mind with
ideas of comfort and rest. If, weary of constant contact with his
fellow-men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, in the background of this
grand amphitheater, lie the eternal mountains, frowning with brow of rock
and cap of snow upon smiling fields beneath, and there in its recesses may
be found as much wildness and as much of solitude as the pilgrim, weary of
the cares of life, can desire. If he turn to the front, your capacious
harbor, studded with green islands of ever-varying light and shade, and
enlightened by all the stirring evidences of commercial activity, offer
him the mingled charms of busy life and nature’s calm repose. A few miles
further, and he may sit upon the quiet shore to listen to the murmuring
wave until the troubled spirit sinks to rest; and in the little sail that
vanishes on the illimitable sea we find the type of the voyage which he is
soon to take, when, his ephemeral existence closed, he embarks for that
better state which lies beyond the grave.
Richly endowed as you are by nature in all which contributes to pleasure
and to usefulness, the stranger can not pass without paying a tribute to
the much which your energy has achieved for yourselves. Where else will
one find a more happy union of magnificence and comfort? Where better
arrangements to facilitate commerce? Where so much of industry with so
little noise and bustle? Where, in a phrase, so much effected in
proportion to the means employed? We hear the puff of the engine, the roll
of the wheel, the ring of the ax and the saw, but the stormy, passionate
exclamation so often mingled with the sounds are nowhere heard. Yet
neither these nor other things which I have mentioned, attractive though
they be, have been to me the chief charm which I have found among you. Far
above all these, I place the gentle kindness, the cordial welcome, the
hearty grasp which made me feel truly and at once, though wandering afar,
that I was still at home. My friends, I thank you for this additional
manifestation of your good-will.
REPLY OF HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS, OF MISSISSIPPI, TO THE SPEECH OF SENATOR
DOUGLAS, IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, May 16 and 17, 1860.
[The Senate resumed the consideration of the resolutions submitted by Mr.
Davis on the first of March, relative to State rights, the institution of
slavery in the States, and the rights of citizens of the several States in
the Territories.]
Mr. Douglas having concluded his speech—
Mr. Davis arose and said:
Mr. President: When the Senator from Illinois commenced his speech, he
announced his object to be to answer to an arraignment, or, as he also
termed it, an indictment, which he said I had made against him. He
therefore caused extracts to be read from my remarks to the Senate. Those
extracts announce that I have been the uniform opponent of what is called
squatter sovereignty, and that, having opposed it heretofore, I was now,
least of all, disposed to give it quarter. At a subsequent period, the
fact was stated that the Senator from Illinois and myself had been opposed
to each other, on those questions which I considered as most distinctly
involving Southern interests in 1850. He has not answered to the
allegation. He has not attempted to show that he did not stand in that
position. It is true he has associated himself with Mr. Clay, and, before
closing, I will show that the association does not belong to him; that
upon those test questions they did not vote together. He then, somewhat
vauntingly, reminded me that he was with the victorious party, asserted
that the Democracy of the country then sustained his doctrine, and that I
was thus outside of that organization. With Mr. Clay! If he had been with
him, he would have been in good company; but the old Jackson Democracy
will be a little surprised to learn that Clay was the leader of our party,
and that a man proves his allegiance to it by showing how closely he
followed in the footsteps of Henry Clay.
When the Senator opened his argument, by declaring his purpose to be fair
and courteous, I little supposed that an explanation made by me in favor
of the Secretary of State, and which could not at all disturb the line of
his argument, would have been followed by the rude announcement that he
could not permit interruption thereafter. A Senator has the right to claim
exemption from interruption if he will follow the thread of his argument,
direct his discourse to the question at issue, and confine himself to it;
but if he makes up a medley of arraignments of the men who have been in
public life for ten years past, and addressing individuals in his
presence, he should permit an interruption to be made for correction as
often as he misrepresents their position. It would have devolved on me
more than once, if I had been responsible for his frequent references to
me, to correct him and show that he misstated facts; but as he would not
permit himself to be interrupted, I am not responsible for any thing he
has imputed to me.
The Senator commenced with a disclaimer of any purpose to follow what he
considered a bad practice of arraigning Senators here on matters for which
they stood responsible to their constituents; but straightway proceeded to
make a general arraignment of the present and the absent. I believe I
constitute the only exception to whom he granted consistency, and that at
the expense of party association, and, he would have it, at the expense of
sound judgment. He not only arraigned individuals, but even
States—Florida, Alabama, and Georgia—were brought to answer at the bar
of the Senate for the resolutions they had passed; Virginia was held
responsible for her policy; Mississippi received his critical notice.
Pray, sir, what had all this to do with the question? Especially, what had
all this to do with what he styled an indictment against him? It is a mere
resort to a species of declamation which has not been heard to-day for the
first time; a pretext to put himself in the attitude of a persecuted man,
and, like the satyr’s guest, blowing hot and cold in the same breath, in
the midst of his complaint of persecution, vaunts his supreme power. If
his opponents be the very small minority which he describes, what fear has
he of persecution or proscription?
Can he not draw a distinction between one who says: “I give no quarter to
an idea,” and one who proclaims the policy of putting the advocates of
that idea to the sword? Such was his figurative language. That figure of
the sword, however, it seemed, as he progressed in his development,
referred to the one thought always floating through his brain—exclusion
from the spoils of office, for, at last, it seemed to narrow down to the
supposition that no man who agreed with him was, with our consent, to be
either a Cabinet officer or a collector. Who has advanced any such
doctrine? Have I, at this or any other period of my acquaintance with him,
done any thing to justify him in attributing that opinion to me? I pause
for his answer.
Mr. Douglas. I do not exactly understand the Senator. I have no complaint
to make of the Senator from Mississippi of ever having been unkind or
ungenerous towards me, if that is what he means to say.
Mr. Davis. Have I ever promulgated a doctrine which indicated that if my
friends were in power, I would sacrifice every other wing of the
Democratic party?
Mr. Douglas. I understood the making of a test on this issue against me
would reach every other man that held my opinions; and, therefore, if I
was not sound enough to hold office, no man agreeing with me would be; and
hence, every man of my opinions would be excluded.
Mr. Davis. Ah, Mr. President; I believe I now have caught the clue to the
argument; it was not before apprehended. I was among those who thought the
Senator, with his opinions, ought not to be chairman of the Committee on
Territories. This, I suppose, then, is the whole imposition. But have I
not said to the Senator, at least once, that I had no disposition to
question his Democracy; that I did not wish to withhold from him any
tribute which was due to his talent and his worth? Did I not offer to
resign the only chairmanship of a committee I had if the Senate would
confer it upon him? Then, where is this spirit of proscription, the
complaint of which has constituted some hours of his speech? If others
have manifested it, I do not know it; and as the single expression of “no
quarter to the doctrine of squatter sovereignty” was the basis of his
whole allegation, I took it for granted his reference to a purpose to do
him and his friends such wrong must have been intended for me.
The fact that the Senator criticised the idea of the States prescribing
the terms on which they will act in a party convention recognized to be
representative, is suggestive of an extreme misconception of relative
position; and the presumption with which the Senator censured what he was
pleased to term “the seceders,” suggested to me a representation of the
air of the great monarch of France when, feeling royalty and power all
concentrated in his own person, he used the familiar yet remarkable
expression, “the State, that’s me.” Does the Senator consider it a modest
thing in him to announce to the Democratic Convention on what terms he
will accept the nomination; but presumptuous in a State to declare the
principle on which she will give him her vote? It is an advance on Louis
Quatorze.
Nothing but the most egregious vanity, something far surpassing even the
bursting condition of swollen pride, could have induced the Senator to
believe that I could not speak of squatter sovereignty without meaning
him.
Towards the Senator, personally, I have never manifested
hostility—indeed, could not, because I have ever felt kindly. Many years
of association, very frequent coöperation, manly support from him in times
of trial, are all remembered by me gratefully. The Senator, therefore, had
no right to assume that I was making war upon him. I addressed myself to
a doctrine of which he was not the founder, though he was one of the early
disciples; but he proved an unprofitable follower, for he became
rebellious, and ruined the logic of the doctrine. It was logical in Mr.
Cass’s mind; he claimed the power to be inherent in the people who settled
a new Territory, and by this inherent power he held that they might
proceed to form government and to exercise its functions. There was logic
in that—logic up to the point of sovereignty. Not so with the Senator. He
says the inhabitants of the Territories derive their power to form a
government from the consent of Congress; that when we decide that there
are enough of them to constitute a government, and enact an organic law,
then they have power to legislate according to their will. This power
being derived from an act of Congress—a limited agency tied down to the
narrow sphere of the constitutional grant—is made, by that supposition,
the bestower of sovereignty on its creature.
I had occasion the other day to refer to the higher law as it made its
first appearance on earth—the occasion when the tempter entered the
garden of Eden. There is another phase of it. Whoever attempts to
interpose between the supreme law of the Creator and the creature, whether
it be in the regions of morals or politics, proclaims a theory that wars
upon every principle of government. When Congress, the agent for the
States, within the limits of its authority, forms, as it were, a
territorial constitution by its organic act, he who steps in and proclaims
to the settlers in that Territory that they have the right to overturn the
Government, to usurp to themselves powers not delegated, is preaching the
higher law in the domain of politics, which is only less mischievous than
its other form, because the other involves both politics and morals in one
ruinous confusion.
The Senator spoke of the denial of Democratic fellowship to him. After
what has been said and acknowledged by the Senator, it is not to be
supposed that it could have any application to me. It may be proper to
add, I know of no such denial on the part of other Democratic Senators.
Far be it from me to vaunt the fact of being in a majority, and to hold
him to the hard rule he prescribes to us, of surrendering an opinion where
we may happen to have been in a minority. Were I to return now to him the
measure with which he metes to us, when he assumes that a majority in the
Charleston Convention has a right to prescribe what shall be our tenets, I
might, in reply to him, say, as a sincere adherent of the Democratic
party, how can you oppose the resolutions pending before the Senate? If
twenty-seven majority in a body of three hundred and three constituent
members had, as he assumes, the power to lay down a binding law, what is
to be said of him who, with a single adherent, stands up against the whole
of his Democratic associates? He must be outside of the party, according
to his enunciation; he must be wandering in the dark regions to which he
consigns the followers of Mr. Yancey.
The Senator said he had no taste for references to things which were
personal, and then proceeded to discuss that of which he showed himself
profoundly ignorant—the condition of things in Mississippi. It is
disagreeable for me to bring before the Senate matters which belong to my
constituents and myself, and I should not do so but for the fact of their
introduction into the Senator’s elaborate speech, which is no doubt to be
spread over all parts of the country. The Senator, by some means or other,
has the name of very many citizens of Mississippi, and as there is nothing
in our condition to attract his special attention, his speech is probably
to be sent over a wide field of correspondence; and it is, therefore, the
more incumbent on me to notice his attempt to give a history of affairs
that were transacted in Mississippi. He first announces that Mississippi
rebuked the idea of intervention asserted in 1850; then that Mississippi
rejected my appeal; that Mississippi voted on the issue made up by the
compromise measure of 1850, and vaunts it as an approval of that
legislation of which he was the advocate and I the opponent. Now,
Mississippi did none of these things. Mississippi instructed her Senators,
and I obeyed her instructions. I introduced into this body the resolutions
which directed my course. On that occasion I vindicated Mississippi, and
especially the Southern rights men, from the falsehood of that day, and
reiterated now, of a purpose to dissolve the Union. I vindicated her by
extracts from the proceedings as well of her convention as of her primary
assemblies; and my remarks on that occasion, as fully as the events to
which he referred in terms of undeserved compliment, justified the Senator
in saying to-day that he knew I had always been faithful to the Government
of which I was a part.
Acting under the instructions from Mississippi—not merely voting and
yielding reluctant compliance; but, according to my ideas of the
obligation of a Senator, laboring industriously and zealously to carry out
the instructions which my State gave me, I took and maintained the
position I held in relation to the measures of 1850. As it was with me a
cordial service, I went home to vindicate the position which was hers, as
well as my own. Shortly after that a canvass was opened, in which a
distinguished gentlemen of our party, who had not been a member of
Congress, was nominated for Governor. Questions other than the compromise
measures of 1850 arose in that canvass; they were discussed in a great
degree to the exclusion of a consideration of the merits of the action of
Congress in 1850; and, at the election in September, for delegates to a
convention, we had fallen from a party majority of some eight thousand to
a minority of nearly the same number. It was after the decision of the
question involved in calling a convention—after our party was
defeated—after the candidate for Governor had retired, that the Democracy
of Mississippi called upon me to bear their standard. It was esteemed a
forlorn hope, therefore an obligation of honor not to decline the
invitation. But so far as the action in the Senate in 1850 was concerned,
if it had any effect, it must have been the reverse of that assumed, as,
in the subsequent election for State officers on the first Monday in
November, this majority of nearly eight thousand against us was reduced to
about one thousand.
But when this convention assembled, though a large majority of the members
belonged to the party which the Senator has been pleased to term the
“Submissionists”—a name which they always rejected—this convention of
the party most adverse to me, when they came to act on the subject said,
after citing the “compromise” measures of the Congress of 1850:
“And connected with them, the rejection of the proposition to exclude
slavery from the Territories of the United States, and to abolish it
in the District of Columbia; and, while they do not entirely
approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional
controversy, so long as the same, in all its features, shall be
faithfully adhered to and enforced.”
Then they go on to recite six different causes, for which they will resort
to the most extreme remedies which we had supposed ever could be
necessary. The case only requires that I should say that the party to
which I belonged did not then, nor at any previous time, propose to go out
of the Union, but to have a Southern convention for consultation as to
future contingencies, threatened and anticipated. It was at last narrowed
down to the question, whether we should meet South Carolina and consult
with her. Honoring that gallant State for the magnanimity she had
manifested in the first efforts for the creation of the Government, in the
preliminaries to the struggle for independence, when she, a favored
colony, feeling no oppression, nursed by the mother country, cherished in
every method, yet agreed with Massachusetts, then oppressed, to assert the
great principle of community independence, and to carry it to the extent
of war—honoring her for her unvarying defense of the Constitution
throughout her whole course—believing that she was true to her faith, and
would redeem all her pledges—feeling that a friendly hand might
restrain, while, if left to herself, her pride might precipitate her on
the trial of separation, I did desire to meet South Carolina in
convention, though nobody but ourselves should be there to join her.
But, to close the matter, this convention, in its seventh resolution,
after stating all those questions on which it would resist, declared:
“That, as the people of Mississippi, in the opinion of this
convention, desire all further agitation of the slavery question to
cease, and have acted upon and decided the foregoing questions,
thereby making it the duty of this convention to pass no act in the
perview and spirit of the law under which it is called, this
convention deems it unnecessary to refer to the people, for approval
or disapproval, at the ballot-box, its action in the premises.”
So that when the Senator appealed to this as evidence of what the people
of Mississippi had done, he was ignorant of the fact that the delegates of
the people of Mississippi did not agree with him; that their resolutions
did not sustain the view which he took, and that the people of Mississippi
never acted on them. If, then, there had been good taste in the
intervention of this local question, there was certainly very bad judgment
in hazarding his statements on a subject of which he was so little
informed.
The Senator here, as in relation to our friends at Charleston, takes kind
care of us—supposes we do not know what we are about, but that he, with
his superior discrimination, sees what must necessarily result from what
we are doing; he says that, at Charleston, they—innocent people—did not
intend to destroy the Government; but he warns them that, if they do what
they propose, they will destroy it; and so he says we of Mississippi, not
desiring to break up the Union, nevertheless pursued a course which would
have had that result if it had not been checked. Where does he get all
this information? I have been in every State of the Union except
two—three now, since Oregon has been admitted—but I have never seen a
man who had as much personal knowledge. It is equally surprising that his
facts should be so contrary to the record.
We believed then, as I believe now, that this Union, as a compact entered
into between the States, was to be preserved by good faith, and by a close
observance of the terms on which we were united. We believed then, as I
believe now, that the party which rested upon the basis of truth;
promulgated its opinions, and had them tested in the alembic of public
opinion, adopted the only path of safety. I can not respect such a
doctrine as that which says, “You may construe the Constitution your way,
and I will construe it mine; we will waive the merit of these two
constructions, and harmonize together until the courts decide the question
between us.” A man is bound to have an opinion upon any political subject
upon which he is called to act; it is skulking his responsibility for a
citizen to say, “Let us express no opinion; I will agree that you may have
yours, and I will have mine; we will coöperate politically together; we
will beat the opposition, divide the spoils, and leave it to the court to
decide the question between us.”
I do not believe that this is the path of safety; I am sure it is not the
way of honor. I believe it devolves on us, who are principally sufferers
from the danger to which this policy has exposed us, to affirm the truth
boldly, and let the people decide after the promulgation of our opinions.
Our Government, resting as it does upon public opinion and popular
consent, was not formed to deceive the people, nor does it regard the men
in office as a governing class. We, the functionaries, should derive our
opinions from the people. To know what their opinion is, it is necessary
that we should pronounce, in unmistakable language, what we ourselves
mean.
My position is, that there is no portion of our country where the people
are not sufficiently intelligent to discriminate between right and wrong,
and no portion where the sense of justice does not predominate. I,
therefore, have been always willing to unfurl our flag to its innermost
fold—to nail it to the mast, with all our principles plainly inscribed
upon it. Believing that we ask nothing but what the Constitution was
intended to confer—nothing but that which, as equals, we are entitled to
receive—I am willing that our case should be plainly stated to those who
have to decide it, and await, for good or for evil, their verdict.
For two days, the Senator spoke nominally upon the resolutions, and upon
the territorial question; but, like the witness in the French comedy, who,
when called upon to testify, commenced before the creation, and was
stopped by the judge, who told him to come down, for a beginning, to the
deluge, he commenced so far back, and narrated so minutely, that he never
got chronologically down to the point before us.
What is the question on which the Democracy are divided? Are we called
upon to settle what every body said from 1847 down to this date? Have the
Democracy divided on that? Have they divided on the resolutions of the
States in 1840, or 1844, or 1848? Have the Democracy undertaken to review
the position taken in 1854, that there should be a latitude of
construction upon a particular point of constitutional law while they did
await the decision of the Supreme Court? No, sir; the question is changed
from before to after the event; the call is on every man to come forward
now, after the Supreme Court has given all it could render upon a
political subject, and state that his creed is adherence to the rule thus
expounded in accordance with previous agreement.
The Senator tells us that he will abide by the decision of the Supreme
Court; but it was fairly to be inferred, from what he said, that, in the
Dred Scott case, he held that they had only decided that a negro could not
sue in a Federal Court. Was this the entertainment to which we were
invited? Was the proclaimed boon of allowing the question to go to
judicial decision, no more than that, one after another, each law might be
tested, and that, one after another, each case, under every law, might be
tried, and that after centuries should roll away, we might hope for the
period when, every case exhausted, the decision of our constitutional
right and of the federal duty would be complete? Or was it that we were to
get rid of the controversy which had divided the country for thirty years;
that we were to reach a conclusion beyond which we could see the region of
peace; that tranquillity was to be obtained by getting a decision on a
constitutional question which had been discussed until it was seen that,
legislatively, it could not or would not be decided? If, then, the Supreme
Court has judicially announced that Congress can not prohibit the
introduction of slave property into a Territory, and that no one deriving
authority from Congress can do so, and the Senator from Illinois holds
that the inhabitants derive their power from the organic act of Congress,
what restrains his acknowledgment of our right to go into the Territories,
and his recognition of the case being closed by the opinion of the court?
I can understand how one who has followed to its logical consequences the
original doctrine of squatter sovereignty might still stand out, and say
this inherent right can not be taken away by judicial decision; but is not
one who claims to derive the power of the territorial legislation from a
law of Congress, and who finds the opinion of the court conclusive as to
Congress, and to all deriving their authority from it, estopped from any
further argument?
Much of what the Senator said about the condition of public affairs can
only be regarded as the presentation of his own case, and requires no
notice from me. His witticism upon the honorable Senator, the Chairman of
the Committee on the Judiciary [Mr. Bayard], who is now absent, because of
the size of the State which he represents, reminds one that it was
mentioned as an evidence of the stupidity of a German, that he questioned
the greatness of Napoleon because he was born in the little island of
Corsica. I know not what views the Senator entertained when he measured
the capacity of the Senator from Delaware by the size of that State, or
the dignity of his action at Charleston by the number of his constituents.
If there be any political feature which stands more prominently out than
another in the Union, it is the equality of the States. Our stars have no
variant size; they shine with no unequal brilliancy. A Senator from
Delaware holds a position entitled to the same respect, as such, as the
Senator from any other State of the Union. More than that, the character,
the conduct, the information, the capacity of that Senator might claim
respect, if he was not entitled to it from his position.
Twice on this occasion, and more than the same number of times heretofore,
has the Senator referred to the great benefit derived from that provision
which grants a trial in the local court, an appeal to the Supreme Court of
the Territory, and an appeal from thence to the Supreme Court of the
United States, on every question involving title to slaves. I wish to say
that whatever merit attaches to that belongs to a Senator to whom the
advocates of negro slavery have not often been in the habit of
acknowledging their obligations—the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr.
Hale], who introduced it in 1850 as an amendment to the New Mexico Bill.
We adopted it as a fair proposition, equally acceptable upon one side and
the other. On its adoption, no one voted against it. That proposition was
incorporated in the Kansas Bill, but unless we acknowledge obligations to
the Senator from New Hampshire, how shall they be accorded for that to the
Senator from Illinois?
I am asked whether the resolutions of the Senate can have the force of
law. Of course not. The Senate, however, is an independent member of the
Government, and from its organization should be peculiarly watchful of
State rights. Before the meeting of the Charleston Convention, it was
untruly stated that these resolutions were concocted to affect the action
of the Charleston Convention. Now we are asked if they are to affect the
Baltimore Convention. They were not designed for the one; they are not
pressed in view of the other. They were introduced to obtain an
expression of the opinion of the Senate, a proceeding quite frequent in
the history of this body. It was believed that they would have a
beneficial effect, and that they were stated in terms which would show the
public the error of supposing that there was a purpose on the part of the
Democracy, or of the South, to enact what was called a slave code for the
Territories of the United States. It was believed that the assertion of
sound principles at this time would direct public opinion, and might be
fruitful of such reuniting, harmonizing results as we all desire, and
which the public need. Whether it is to have this effect or not; whether
at last we are to be shorn of our national strength by personal or
sectional strife, depends upon the conduct of those who have it in their
power to control the result. The Democratic party, in its history,
presents a high example of nationality; its power and its usefulness has
been its co-extension with the Union. The Democrats of the Northern States
who vote for these resolutions, but affirm that which we have so often
announced with pride, that there was a political opinion which pervaded
the whole country; there was a party capable to save the Union, because it
belonged to all the States. If the two Democratic Senators who alone have
declared their opposition should so vote, to that extent the effect would
be impaired, and they will stand in that isolation to which the Senator
points as a consequence so dreadful to the Southern men at Charleston.
[Here Mr. Davis gave way for a motion to adjourn, and on the 17th resumed.]
Mr. Davis. At the close of the session of yesterday, I was speaking of the
hope entertained that the Democratic party would yet be united; that the
party which had so long wielded the destinies of the country, for its
honor, for its glory, and its progress, was not about to be checked midway
in its career—to be buried in a premature grave; but that it was to go
on, with concentrated energy, toward the great ends for which it has
striven since 1800, by a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull
altogether, to bring the ship of State into that quiet harbor where
“Vessels safe, without their hawsers, ride.”
This was a hope, however, not founded on any supposition that we were to
escape from the issues which are presented—a hope not based on the
proposition that every man should have his own construction of our creed,
and that we should unite together merely for success; but that the party,
as heretofore, in each succeeding quadrennial convention, would add to the
resolutions of the preceding one such declarations as passing events
indicated, and the exigencies of the country demanded.
In the last four years a division has arisen in the Democratic party, upon
the construction of one of the articles of its creed. It behooves us, in
that state of the case, to decide what the true construction is; for, if
the party be not a union of men upon principle, the sooner it is dissolved
the better; and if it be such a union, why shall not those principles be
defined, so as to remove doubt or cavil, and be applied in every emergency
to meet the demands of each succeeding case? Thus only can we avoid
division in council and confusion in action.
The Senator from Illinois, who preceded me, announced that he had
performed a pleasing duty in defending the Democratic party. That party
might well cry out, Save me from my defender. It was a defense of the
party by the arraignment of its prominent members. It was the preservation
of the body by the destruction of its head—for the President of the
United States is, for the time being, the head of the party that placed
him in position; and the head of the party thus in position can not be
destroyed without the disintegration of the members and the destruction of
the body itself. I suppose the Senator, however, was at his favorite
amusement of “shooting at the lump.” The “lump” heretofore has been those
Democratic Senators who dissented from him: this time he involved
Democrats all over the country. Not even the presiding officer, whose
position seals his lips, could escape him. And here let me say that I
found nothing in the extract read from that gentleman’s address, which,
construed as was no doubt intended, does not meet my approval; but if
tried by the modern lexicon of the Senator, it might be rendered a
contradiction to his avowed opinions, and by the same mode of expounding,
non-intervention would be a sin of which the whole Democracy might be
convicted, under the indictment of squatter sovereignty. The language
quoted from the address of the Vice-President is to be construed as
understood at the time, at the place, and by men such as the one who used
it.
With that force which usually enters into his addresses—with even more
than his usual eloquence—the Senator referred to the scene which awaited
him upon his return to Chicago, when, as represented, he met an infuriated
mob, who assailed him for having maintained the measures of 1850—those
compromises which, in the Northern section, it was urged had been passed
in the interest of the South. But, pray, what one of those measures was it
which excited the mob so described? Only one, I believe, was put in issue
at the North—the fugitive slave law; that one he did not vote for. But it
was the part of manliness to say that, though absent and not voting for
it, he approved of it. Such, I believe, was his commendable course on that
occasion. I give him, therefore, all due credit for not escaping from a
responsibility to which they might not have held him. Are we to give
perpetual thanks to any one because he did not yield to so senseless a
clamor, but conceded to us that small measure of constitutional
right—because he has complied with a requirement so plain that my regret
is that it ever required congressional intervention to enforce it? It
belonged to the honor of the States to execute that clause of the
Constitution. They should have executed it without congressional
intervention; congressional action should only have been useful to give
that uniformity of proceeding which State action could not have secured.
Concurring in the depicted evil of the destruction of the Democratic
organization, it must be admitted that such consequence is the inevitable
result of a radical difference of principle. The Senator laments the
disease, but instead of healing, aggravates it. While pleading the evils
of the disruption of the party, it is quite apparent that, in his mind,
there is another still greater calamity; for, through all his arraignment
of others, all his self-laudation, all his complaints of persecution, like
an air through its variations, appears and re-appears the action of the
Charleston Convention. That seemed to be the beginning and the end of his
solicitude. The oft-told tale of his removal from the chairmanship of the
Committee on Territories had to be renewed and connected with that
convention, and even assumed as the basis on which his strength was
founded in that convention. I think the Senator did himself injustice. I
think his long Career and distinguished labors, his admitted capacity for
good hereafter, constitute a better reason for the support which he
received, than the fact that his associates in the Senate had not chosen
to put him in a particular position in the organization of this body. It
is enough that that fact did not divert support from him; and I am aware
of none of his associates here who have forced it upon public attention
with a view to affect him.
He claims that an arraignment made against his Democracy has been answered
by the action of a majority of the Convention at Charleston; and then
proceeds to inform the minority men that he would scorn to be the
candidate of a party unless he received a majority of its votes. There was
no use in making that declaration; it requires not only a majority, but,
under our ruling, a vote of two-thirds, for a nomination. It was
unnecessary for any body to feel scorn toward that which he could not
receive. Other unfortunate wights might mourn the event; it belonged to
the Senator from Illinois to scorn it. The remark of Mr. Lowndes, which
has been so often quoted, and which, beautiful in itself, has acquired
additional value by time, that the Presidency was an office neither to be
sought nor declined, has no application, therefore, to the Senator, for,
under certain contingencies, he says he would decline it. It does not
devolve on me to decide whether he has sought it or not.
But, sir, what is the danger which now besets the Democratic party? Is it,
as has been asserted, the doctrine of intervention by Congress, and is
that doctrine new? Is the idea that protection, by Congress, to all rights
of person or property, wherever it has jurisdiction, so dangerous that, in
the language employed by the Senator, it would sweep the Democratic party
from the face of the earth? For what was our Government instituted? Why
did the States confer upon the Federal Government the great functions
which it possesses? For protection—mainly for protection beyond the
municipal power of the States. I shall have occasion, in the progress of
my remarks, to cite some authority, and to trace this from a very early
period. I will first, however, notice an assault which the Senator has
thought proper to make upon certain States, one of which is, in part,
represented by myself. He says they are seceders, bolters, because they
withdrew from a party convention when it failed to announce their
principles. There can be no tie to bind me to a party beyond my will. I
will admit no bond that holds me to a party a day longer than I agree to
its principles. When men meet together to confer, and ascertain whether or
not they do agree, and find that they differ—radically, essentially,
irreconcilably differ—what belongs to an honorable position except to
part? They can not consistently act together any longer. It devolves upon
them frankly to announce the difference, and each to pursue his separate
course.
The letter of Mr. Yancey—acknowledged to be a private letter, an
unguarded letter, but which, somehow or other, got into the press—was
read to sustain this general accusation against what are called the Cotton
States. I do not pretend to judge how far the Senator has the right here
to read a private letter, which, without the authority of the writer, has
gone into the public press. It is one of those questions which every man’s
sense of propriety must, in his own case, decide. Whether or not the use
of that letter was justifiable, how is it to be assumed that the Southern
States are bound by any opinion there enunciated? How to be asserted that
we, the residents in those States, have pinned our faith to the sleeve of
any man, and that we will follow his behest, no matter whither he may go?
But was this the only source of information, or was the impression
otherwise sustained? Did Mr. Yancey, in his speech delivered at
Charleston, justify the conclusions which the Senator draws from this
letter? Did he admit them to be correct? There he might have found the
latest evidence, and the best authority. Speaking to that point, Mr.
Yancey said:
“It has been charged, in order to demoralize whatever influence we
might be entitled to, either from our personal or political
characteristics, or as representatives of the State of Alabama, that
we are disruptionists, disunionists per se; that we desire to break
up the party in the State of Alabama—to break up the party of the
Union, and to dissolve the Union itself. Each and all of these
allegations, come from what quarter they may, I pronounce to be false.
There is no disunionist, that I know of, in the delegation from the
State of Alabama. There is no disruptionist that I know of; and if
there are factionists in our delegation, they could not have got in
there, with the knowledge upon the part of our State Convention that
they were of so unenviable a character. We come here with two great
purposes: first, to save the constitutional rights of the South, if it
lay in our power to do so. We desire to save the South by the best
means that present themselves to us; and the State of Alabama believes
that the best means now in existence is the organization of the
Democratic party, if we shall be able to persuade it to adopt the
constitutional basis upon which we think the South alone can be
saved.”
He further says:
“We have come here, then, with the twofold purpose of saving the
country and saving the Democracy; and if the Democracy will not lend
itself to that high, holy, and elevated purpose; if it can not elevate
itself above the mere question of how perfect shall be its mere
personal organization, and how wide-spread shall be its mere voting
success, then we say to you, gentlemen, mournfully and regretfully,
that, in the opinion of the State of Alabama, and, I believe, of the
whole South, you have failed in your mission, and it will be our duty
to go forth, and make an appeal to the loyalty of the country to stand
by that Constitution which party organizations have deliberately
rejected.” [Applause.]
Mr. Yancey answers for himself. It was needless to go back to old letters.
Here were his remarks delivered before the convention, speaking to the
point in issue, and answering both as to his purposes and as to the
motives of those with whom he conferred and acted.
The Senator next cited the resolutions of the State of Alabama; and here
he seemed to rest the main point in his argument. The Senator said that
Alabama, in 1856, had demanded of the Democratic convention,
non-intervention, and that, in 1860, she had retired from the convention
because it insisted upon non-intervention. He read one of the resolutions
of the Alabama Convention of 1856; but the one which bore upon the point
was not read. The one which was conclusive as to the position of Alabama
then, and its relation to her position now, was exactly the one that was
omitted—I read from the resolutions of this year—was as follows:
“Resolved, further, That we re-affirm so much of the first
resolution of the platform adopted in the convention by the Democracy
of this State, on the 8th of January, 1856, as relates to the subject
of slavery, to-wit.”
It then goes on to quote from that resolution of 1856, as follows:
“The unqualified right of the people of the slaveholding States to
the protection of their property in the States, in the Territories,
and in the wilderness, in which territorial governments are as yet
unorganized.”
That was the resolution of 1856; and like it was one of February, 1848:
“That it is the duty of the General Government by all proper
legislation, to secure an entry into those Territories to all the
citizens of the United States, together with their property, of every
description; and that the same shall be protected by the United
States, while the Territories are under its authority.”
So stands the record of that State which is now held responsible for
retiring, and is alleged to have withdrawn because she received now what,
in former times, she had demanded as the full measure of her rights. Did
she receive it? The argument could only be made by concealing the fact
that her resolutions of 1848 and 1856 asserted the right to protection,
and claimed it from the General Government. What, then, is the necessary
inference? That, in the Cincinnati platform, they believed they obtained
that which they asserted, or that which necessarily involved it. So much
for the point of faith; so much for the point of consistency in the
assertion of right. But if it were otherwise; if they had neglected to
assert a right; would that destroy it? If they had failed at some time to
claim this protection, are they to be estopped, in all time to come, from
claiming it? Constitutional right is eternal—not to be sacrificed by any
body of men. A single man may revive it at any period of the existence of
the Constitution. So the argument would be worthless, if the facts were as
stated. That they are not so stated, is shown by the record.
Here allow me to say, in all sincerity, that I dislike thus to speak about
conventions; it does not belong to the duties of the Senate; we did not
assemble here to make a President, except in the single contingency of a
failure by the people and by the House of Representatives to elect. When
that contingency arrives, the question will be before us. I am sorry that
it should have been prematurely introduced. But since the action of the
recent convention at Charleston is presented as the basis of argument, it
may be as well to refer to it, and see what it is. The majority report,
presented by seventeen States of the Union, and those the States most
reliable to give Democratic votes—the States counted so certain to give
Democratic votes that they have been regarded as a fixed basis, a nucleus
to which others were to be attracted—these seventeen States reported to
the convention a series of resolutions, one of which asserted the right to
protection. A minority of States reported another series, excluding the
avowal of the right—not exactly denying it, but not avowing it—and a
second minority report was submitted, being the Cincinnati platform, pure
and simple. It is true that a majority of delegates adopted the minority
report, but not a majority of States, nor does it appear, by an analysis
of the votes, and the best evidence I have been able to obtain, that it
was by a majority of delegates, if each had been left to his own choice;
but that, by one of those ingenious arrangements—one of those incidents
which, among jurists, is described as the favor the vigilant receives from
the law—it so happened that, in certain States, the delegates were
instructed to vote as a unit; in other States they were not; so that,
wherever they were instructed to vote as a unit, the vote must so be cast,
and wherever they were not, they might disintegrate. Thus minorities were
bound in one instance, and released in another; and, by a comparison made
by those who had an opportunity to know, it appears that the minority
report could not have got a majority of the delegates, if each delegate
had been permitted to cast his own vote in the Convention. Neither could
it have obtained, as appears by the action of the committee, in a majority
of the States, if they had been spoken as such. So that this vaunt as to
the effect of the adoption of the platform by a majority, seems to have
very little of substance in it. Again, I find that, after this adoption
of a platform, a delegate from Tennessee offered a resolution:
“That all the citizens of the United States have an equal right to
settle, with their property, in the Territories of the United States;
and that, under the decision of the Supreme Court of the United
States, which we recognize as a correct exposition of the Constitution
of the United States, neither their rights of person or property can
be destroyed or impaired by congressional or territorial legislation.”
It does not appear that a vote was taken on it. There is a current belief
that it would have been adopted. If it had been, it would have been an
acknowledgment by the Democracy, in convention assembled, that the
question had been settled by the decisions of the Supreme Court. But in
the progress of the convention, when they came to balloting, it appears,
by an analysis of the vote for candidates, that the Senator from Illinois
received from seventeen undoubted Democratic States of the Union, casting
one hundred and twenty-seven electoral votes, but eleven votes. It is not
such a great triumph, then, in the Democratic view, as is claimed. It does
not suffice to add up the number of votes where they do not avail. It is
not fair to bring the votes of Vermont, where I believe nobody expects we
shall be successful, and count them for a particular candidate. The
electoral votes—and these alone, tell upon the result; and it appears
that in those States which have been counted certain to cast their
electoral votes for the candidate who might have been nominated at that
convention, the Senator received but eleven. This is but meagre claim to
bind us to his car as the successful champion of the majority. This is but
small basis for the boast that his hopes were gratified, that he would not
receive the nomination unless sustained by a majority of the party, and
that his opinions had received the indorsement of the Democracy.
My devotion to the party is life-long. If the assertion be allowable, it
may be said that I inherited my political principles. I derive them from a
revolutionary father—one of the earnest friends of Mr. Jefferson; who,
after the revolution which achieved our independence, bore his full part
in the civil revolution of 1800, which emancipated us from federal
usurpation and consolidation. I therefore have all that devotion to party
which belongs to habitual reverence and confidence. But, sir, that
devotion to party rests on the assumption that it is to maintain sound
principles; that it is to strive hereafter, as heretofore, to carry out
the great cardinal creed in which the Democratic party was founded. When
the resolutions of 1798 and 1799 are discarded; when we fly from the
extreme of monarchy to land in the danger to republics, anarchy, and the
Democratic party says its arm is paralyzed—can not be raised to maintain
constitutional rights, my devotion to its organization is at an end. It
fails thenceforward in the purposes for which it was established; and if
there be a constitutional party in the land which, in the language of Mr.
Jefferson, would find in the vigor of the Federal Government the best hope
for our liberty and security, to that party I should attach myself
whenever that sad contingency arose.
The resolutions of 1798 and 1799, though directed against usurpation, were
equally directed against the dangers of anarchy. Their principles are
alike applicable to both. Their cardinal creed was a Federal Government,
according to the grants conferred upon it, and these righteously
administered. It is not fair to the men who taught us the lessons of
Democracy that they should be held responsible for a theory which leaves
the Federal Government, as one who has abdicated all authority, to stand
at the mercy of local usurpations. Least of all does their teaching
maintain that this Government has no power over the Territories; that this
Government has no obligation to protect the rights of person and property
in the Territories; for, among the first acts under the Constitution, was
one which both asserted and exercised the power.
After the adoption of the Constitution, in 1789, an act was passed, to
which reference is frequently made as being a confirmation of the
ordinance of 1787; and this has been repeated so often that it has
received general belief. There was a constitutional provision which
required all obligations and engagements under the confederation to hold
good under the Constitution. If there was an obligation or an engagement
growing out of the ordinance of 1787, out of the deed of cession by
Virginia, it was transmitted to the Government established under the
Constitution; but that Congress under the Constitution gave it no
vitality—that they added no force to it, is apparent from the fact which
is so often relied upon as authority. It was in view of this fact, in full
remembrance of this and of other facts connected with it, that Mr. Madison
said, in relation to passing regulations for the Territories, that
“Congress did not regard the interdiction of slavery among the needful
regulations contemplated by the Constitution, since, in none of the
territorial governments created by them, was such an interdict found.” I
am aware that Justice McLean has viewed this as an historical error of Mr.
Madison. I shall not assume to decide between such high authorities. The
act is as follows:
“An Act to provide for the government of the Territory north-west of
the Ohio River.
“Whereas, In order that the ordinance of the United States in Congress
assembled, for the government of the territory north-west of the river
Ohio, may continue to have full effect, it is requisite that certain
provisions should be made so as to adapt the same to the present
Constitution of the United States.
“Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, in all
cases in which, by the said ordinance, any information is to be given,
or communication made, by the governor of the said Territory to the
United States in Congress assembled, or to any of their officers, it
shall be the duty of the said governor to give such information, and
to make such communication, to the President of the United States; and
the President shall nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent
of the Senate, shall appoint all officers which, by the said
ordinance, were to have been appointed by the United States in
Congress assembled; and all officers so appointed shall be
commissioned by him; and in all cases where the United States in
Congress assembled might, by the said ordinance, make any commission,
or remove from any office, the President is hereby declared to have
the same powers to revocation and removal.
“Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That in the case of the death,
removal, resignation, or necessary absence of the governor of the said
Territory, the secretary thereof shall be, and he is hereby authorized
and required to execute all the powers and perform all the duties of
the governor during the vacancy occasioned by the removal,
resignation, or necessary absence of the said governor.
“Approved August 7, 1789.”
All that is to be found in this act which favors the supposition and
frequent assertion that, under the Constitution, the ordinance of 1787 was
ratified and confirmed is to be found in the preamble, and that preamble
so vaguely alludes to it that the idea is refuted by reference to an act
which followed soon afterwards—the act of 1793—from which I will read a
single section:
“Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That when a person held to labor
in any of the United States, or in either of the Territories on the
north-west or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall
escape into any other of the said States or Territories, the person to
whom such service or labor may be due, his agent, or attorney, is
hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor,” etc.
Is it not apparent that, when the Congress legislated in 1793, they
recognized the existence of slavery and protected that kind of property in
the territory north-west of the river Ohio, and is it not conclusive that
they did not intend, by the act of 1789, to confirm, ratify, and give
effect to the ordinance of 1787, which would have excluded it?
This doctrine of protection, then, is not new. It goes back to the
foundation of the Government. It is traceable down through all the early
controversies; and they arose at least as early as 1790. It is found in
the messages of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, and in the legislation of
Congress; and also in the messages of the elder Adams. There was not one
of the first four Presidents of the United States who did not recognize
this obligation of protection, who did not assert this power on the part
of the Federal Government; and not one of them ever attempted to pervert
it to a power to destroy. If division in the Democratic party is to arise
now, because of this doctrine, it is not from the change by those who
assert it, but of those who deny it. It is not from the introduction of a
new feature in the theory of our Government, but from the denial of that
which was recognized in its very beginning.
As I understood the main argument of the Senator, it was based upon the
general postulate that the Democratic Convention of 1848 recognized a new
doctrine, a doctrine which inhibited the General Government from
interfering in any way, either for the protection of property or
otherwise, with the local affairs of a Territory; he held the party
responsible for all the opinions entertained by the candidate in 1848,
because the party had nominated him, and he quoted the record to show what
States, by voting for him, had committed themselves to the doctrine of the
“Nicholson letter.” He even quoted South Carolina, represented by that man
who became famous for a single act, and, as South Carolinians said,
without authority at home to sustain it. But this was cited as pledging
the faith of South Carolina to the doctrine of the “Nicholson letter;”
and, worse than all, the Senator did this, though he knew that the
doctrine of the “Nicholson letter” was the subject of controversy for
years subsequently; that, what was the true construction of that letter,
entered into the canvass in the Southern States; that the construction
which Mr. Cass himself placed upon it at a subsequent period was there
denied; and the Senator might have remembered, if he had chosen to
recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to explain to him, ten
years ago, the fact that I repudiated the doctrine of that letter at the
time it was published, and that the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh
crucified me for the construction which I placed upon it; there were men
mean enough to suspect that the construction I gave to the Nicholson
letter was prompted by the confidence and affection I felt for General
Taylor. At a subsequent period, however, Mr. Cass thoroughly reviewed it.
He uttered, for him, very harsh language against all who had doubted the
true construction of his letter, and he construed it just as I had done
during the canvass of 1848. It remains only to add that I supported Mr.
Cass, not because of the doctrine of the Nicholson letter, but in despite
of it; because I believed a Democratic President, with a Democratic
cabinet and Democratic counselors in the two houses of Congress, and he as
honest a man as I believed Mr. Cass to be, would be a safer reliance than
his opponent, who personally possessed my confidence as much as any man
living, but who was of and must draw his advisers from a party, the tenets
of which I believed to be opposed to the interests of the country as they
were to all my political convictions.
I little thought at that time that my advocacy of Mr. Cass, upon such
grounds as these, or his support by the State of which I am a citizen,
would at any future day be quoted as an indorsement of the opinions
contained in the Nicholson letter, as those opinions were afterwards
defined. But it is not only upon this letter, but equally upon the
resolutions of the convention as constructive of that letter, that he
rested his argument. I will here say to the Senator that if, at any time,
I do him the least injustice, speaking as I do from such notes as I could
take while he progressed, I will thank him to correct me.
But this letter entered into the canvass; there was a doubt about its
construction; there were men who asserted that they had positive authority
for saying that it meant that the people of a Territory could only exclude
slavery when the Territory should form a constitution and be admitted as a
State. This doubt continued to hang over the construction, and it was that
doubt alone which secured Mr. Cass the vote of Mississippi. If the true
construction had been certainly known he would have had no chance to get
it. Our majority went down from thousands to hundreds, as it was. In
Alabama the decrease was greater. It was not that the doctrine was
countenanced, but the doubt as to the true meaning of the letter, and the
constantly reiterated assertion that it only meant the Territories when
they should be admitted as States, enabled him to carry those States.
But if I mistook the Senator there, I think probably I did not on another
point: that he claimed the support of certain Southern men for Mr.
Richardson as Speaker of the House to be by them an acknowledgment of the
doctrine of squatter sovereignty.
I suppose those Southern men who voted for Mr. Richardson voted for him as
I did for Mr. Cass, in despite of his opinions on that question, because
they preferred Mr. Richardson to Mr. Banks, even with squatter
sovereignty. They considered that the latter was carrying an amount of
heresies which greatly exceeded the value of squatter sovereignty. It was
a choice of evils—not an indorsement of his opinions. Neither did they
this year indorse the opinions on that point of Mr. McClernand when they
voted for him. According to the Senator’s argument I could show him that
Illinois was committed to the doctrine of federal protection to property
in the Territories and the remedy of secession as a State right; committed
irrevocably, unmistakably, with no right to plead any ignorance of the
political creed of the individual, or the meaning of his words.
In 1852—I refer to it with pride—Illinois did me the honor to vote
consistently for me for the Vice-Presidency, up to the time of
adjournment; though in 1850, and in 1851, I had done all these acts which
have been spoken of, and the Senator has admitted my consistency, in
opinions which were avowed with at least such perspicuity as left nobody
in doubt as to my opinion. Did Illinois then adopt my theory of protection
in the Territories, or of the right of State secession? No, sir. I hold
them to no such consequences. Some of the old inhabitants of Illinois may
have remembered me when their northern frontier was a wilderness, when
they and I had kind relations in the face of hostile Indians. Some of them
may have remembered me, and, I believe, kindly, as associated with them,
at a later period, on the fields of Mexico. The Senator himself, I know,
remembered kindly his association with me in the halls of Congress. It was
these bonds which gave me the confidence of the State of Illinois. I never
misconstrued it. I never pretended to put them in the attitude of adopting
all my opinions. Never required it, never desired it, save as in so far as
wishing all men would agree with me, confidently believing my position to
be true. At a later period, and when these questions were more important
in the public mind, when public attention has been more directed to them,
when public opinion has been more matured, at the very time when the
Senator claims that his doctrine culminated, the State of Illinois voted
for a gentleman for Vice-President at Cincinnati who held the same
opinions with myself, or, if there was a difference, held them to a
greater extreme—I mean General Quitman.
Mr. Douglas. We made no test on any one.
Mr. Davis. Then, how did the South become responsible for the doctrine of
General Cass, by consenting to his nomination in 1848, and supporting his
election? But at a later period, down to the present session, what is the
position in which the Senator places his friends—those sterling
Democrats, uncompromising Anti-Know-Nothings; men who give no quarter to
the American party, and yet who voted this year for Mr. Smith, of North
Carolina, to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. Is the Senator
answered? Does he not see that there is no justice in assuming a vote for
an individual to be the entire adoption of his opinions?
He cited, in this connection, a resolution of 1848, as having been framed
to cover the doctrines of the Nicholson letter; and he claimed thus to
have shown that the convention not only understood it, but adopted it, and
made it the party creed, and that we were bound to it from that period
forward. He even had that resolution of 1848 read, in order that there
should be, at no future time, any question as to the principle which the
party then avowed; that it should be fixed as a starting point in all the
future progress of Democracy. I was surprised at the importance the
Senator attached to that resolution of 1848, because it was not new; it
was not framed to meet the opinions of the Nicholson letter, but came down
from a period as remote as 1840; was copied into the platform of 1844, and
again into that of 1848, being the expression which the condition of the
country in 1840 had induced—a declaration of opinion growing out of the
agitation in the two houses of Congress at that day, and the fearful
strides which antislavery was making, and which Mr. Calhoun had labored to
check by the declaration of constitutional truths, as set forth in his
Senate resolutions of 1837-’8.
That there may be no mistake on this point, and particularly as the
Senator attached special importance to it, I will turn to the platform of
1840, and read from it, so that it shall be found to be—
Mr. Douglas. It is conceded.
Mr. Davis. The Senator concedes the fact, that the resolution of 1848 was
a copy of that of 1840, and with the concession falls his argument. The
platforms of 1840 and 1844 were re-affirmed in 1848; and, consequently,
the resolution of ’48 being identical with that of ’40, was not a
construction of the letter written in 1847.
True to its instincts and to its practices, the Democratic party, from
time to time, continued to add to their “platform” whatever was needful
for action by the Government in the condition of the country. Thus, in
1844, they re-asserted the platform of 1840; and they added thereto,
because of a question then pending, that—
“The re-annexation of Texas, at the earliest practicable period, is a
great American measure, which the convention recommend to the cordial
support of the Democracy of the Union.”
In 1848 they re-adopted the resolutions of 1844; and were not a little
laughed at for keeping up the question of Texas after it had been annexed.
In 1852 a new question had arisen; the measures of 1850 had presented,
with great force to the public mind, the necessity for some expression of
opinion upon the disturbing questions which the measures of 1850 had been
designed to quiet. Therefore, in 1852, the party, true to its obligation
to announce its principles, and to meet issues as they arise, said:
“Resolved, That the foregoing proposition (referring to the
resolution of 1848) covers, and was intended to embrace, the whole
subject of slavery agitation in Congress; and, therefore, the
Democratic party in the Union, standing on this national platform,
will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the act known as
the compromise measure, settled by the last Congress, the act for
reclaiming fugitives from labor included; which act, being designed to
carry out an express provision of the Constitution, can not, with
fidelity thereto, be repealed, or so changed as to destroy or impair
its efficacy.
“Resolved, That the Democratic party will restrain all attempts at
renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slave
question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made.”
This was the addition made in 1852, and it was made because of the
agitation which then prevailed through the country against the fugitive
slave act, and it was because the fugitive slave act, and that alone, was
assailed, that the Democratic convention met the issue on that measure
specifically, and for the same reason it received the approbation of the
Southern States. Had this been considered as the indorsement of the slave
trade bill for the District of Columbia, it would not have received their
approval. The agitation was in relation to recovering fugitive slaves, and
the Democratic party boldly and truly met the living issue, and declared
its position upon it.
In 1856 other questions had arisen. It was necessary to meet them. The
convention did meet them, and met them in a manner which was satisfactory,
because it was believed to be full. I will not weary the Senate by reading
the resolutions of 1856; they are familiar to every body. I only quote a
portion of them:
“The American Democracy recognize and adopt the principles contained
in the organic laws establishing the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the ‘slavery
question’ upon which the great national idea of the people of this
whole country can repose in its determined conservatism of the
Union—non-interference by Congress with slavery in State and
Territory, or in the District of Columbia.
“That, by the uniform application of this Democratic principle to the
organization of Territories, and to the admission of new States, with
or without domestic slavery, as they may elect, the equal rights of
all States will be preserved intact, the original compacts of the
Constitution maintained inviolate, and the perpetuity and expansion of
this Union insured to its utmost capacity of embracing, in peace and
harmony, every future American State that may be constituted or
annexed with a republican form of government.”
Pray, what can this mean? Squatter sovereignty? Incapacity of the Federal
Government to enact any law for the protection of slave property anywhere?
Could that be in the face of a struggle that we were constantly carrying
on against the opponents of the fugitive slave law? Could that be, in the
face of the fact that a majority had trodden down our constitutional
rights in the District of Columbia, by legislating in relation to that
particular character of property, and that they had failed to redeem a
promise they had sacredly made to pass a law for the protection of slave
property, so as to punish any one who should seduce, or entice, or abduct
it from an owner in this District?
With all these things fresh in mind, what did they mean? They meant that
Congress should not decide the question, whether that institution should
exist within a Territory or not. They did not mean to withdraw from the
inhabitants of the District of Columbia that protection to which they were
entitled, and which is almost annually given by legislation; and yet
States and Territories and the District of Columbia are all grouped
together, as the points upon which this idea rests, and to which it is
directed. It meant that Congress was not to legislate to interfere with
the rights of property anywhere; not to attempt to decide what should be
the institutions maintained anywhere; but surely not to disclaim the right
to protect property, whether on sea or on land, wherever the Federal
Government had jurisdiction and power. But some stress has been laid upon
the resolution, which says that this principle should be applied to
“The organization of the Territories, and to the admission of new
States, with or without domestic slavery, as they may elect.”
What does “may elect” mean? Does it refer to organization of the
Territory? Who may elect? Congress organizes the Territories. Did it mean
that the Territories were to elect? It does not say so. What does it say?
“That by the uniform application of this Democratic principle to the
organization of Territories, and to the admission of new States, with
or without domestic slavery, as they may elect.”
And here it met a question which had disturbed the peace of the country,
and well-nigh destroyed the Union—the right of a State holding slaves to
be admitted into the Union. It was declared here that the State so
admitted should elect whether it would or would not have slaves. There is
nothing in that which logically applies to the organization of a
Territory. But if this be in doubt, let us come to the last resolution,
which says:
“We recognize the right of the people of all the Territories,
including Kansas and Nebraska, acting through the legally and
fairly-expressed will of a majority of actual residents—”
Does it stop there? No—
“and whenever the number of their inhabitants justifies it, to form a
constitution, with or without domestic slavery, and be admitted into
the Union upon terms of perfect equality with the other States.”
If there had been any doubt before as to what “may elect” referred to,
this resolution certainly removed it. It is clear they meant, that when a
Territory had a sufficient number of inhabitants, and came to form a
constitution, then it might decide the question as it pleased. From that
doctrine, I know no Democrat who now dissents.
I have thus, because of the assertion that this was a new idea attempted
to be interjected into the Democratic creed, gone over some portion of its
history. Important by its connection with the existing agitation, and last
in the series, is an act with the ushering in of which the Senator is more
familiar than myself, and on which he made remarks, to which, it is
probable, some of those who acted with him, will reply. I wish merely to
say, in relation to the Kansas-Nebraska act, that there are expressions in
it which seem to me not of doubtful meaning, such as, “in all cases
involving title to slaves, or involving the question of personal freedom,”
there should be a trial before the courts, and without reference to the
amount involved, an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Territory, and from
thence to the Supreme Court of the United States. If there was no right of
property there; if we had no right to recognize it there; if some
sovereign was to determine whether it existed or not, why did we say that
the Supreme Court of the United States, in the last resort, should decide
the question? If it was an admitted thing, by that bill, that the
Territorial Legislature should decide it, why did we provide for taking
the case to the Supreme Court? If it had been believed then, as it is
asserted now, that a Territory possessed all the power of a State; that
the inhabitants of a Territory could meet in convention and decide the
question as the people of a State might do, there was nothing to be
carried to the Supreme Court. You can not appeal from the decision of a
constitutional convention of a State to the Supreme Court of the United
States, to decide whether slave property shall be prohibited or admitted
within the limits of a State; and if they rest on the same footing, what
is the meaning of that clause of the bill?
But this organic law further provides, just as the resolution of the
convention had done, that when a legal majority of the residents of either
Territory formed a constitution, then, at their will, they might recognize
or exclude slavery, and come into the Union as co-equal States. This fixes
the period, defines the time at which the territorial inhabitants may
perform this act, and clearly forbids the idea that it was intended, by
those who enacted the law, to acknowledge that power to be existent in the
inhabitants of a Territory during their territorial condition. If I am
mistaken in this; if there was a contemporaneous construction of it
differing from this, the Senators who sit around me and who were then
members of the body, will not fail to remember it.
The Senator asserts that, in relation to this point, those who acted with
him have changed, and claims for himself to have been consistent. If this
be so, it proves nothing as to the present, and only individual opinions
as to the past. I do not regard consistency as a very high virtue;
neither, it appears, does he; for he told us that if it could be shown to
him that he was in error on any point, he would change his opinion. How
could that be? Who would undertake to show the Senator that he was in
error? Who would undertake to measure the altitude of the Colossus who
bestrides the world, and announces for, and of, and by himself, “We, the
Democracy,” as though, in his person, all that remained of the party was
now concentrated! Other men are permitted to change, because other men may
be mistaken; and if they are honest, when convicted of their error, they
must change, but how can one expect to convince the Senator, who, where
all is change, stands changeless still?
In the course of his reply to me—if indeed it may be called such; it
seemed to be rather a review of every thing except what I had said—he set
me the bad example of going into the canvass in my own State. It is the
first, I trust it will be the last time, I shall follow his example; and
now only to the extent of the occasion, where criticism was invited by
unusual publicity. In the canvass which the Senator had with his opponent,
Mr. Lincoln, and the debates of which have been published in a book, we
find much which, if it be consistent with his course as I had known it,
only proves to me how little able I was to understand his meaning in
former times.
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill having agreed the right for which I contend to be
the subject of judicial decision; it having specially provided the mode
and facilitated the process by which that right should be brought to the
courts and finally decided; not allowing any check to be interposed
because of amount, that bill having continued the provision which had been
introduced into the New Mexico Bill, how are we to understand the
Senator’s declarations, that, let the Supreme Court decide as they may,
the inhabitants of a Territory may lawfully admit or exclude slavery as
they please? What a hollow promise was given to us in the provision
referring this vexed question to judicial decision, in order that we might
reach a point on which we might peacefully rest, if the inhabitants of the
Territories for which Congress had legislated could still decide the
question and set aside any decision of the Supreme Court, and do this
lawfully. I ask, was it not to give us a stone, when he promised us bread;
to incorporate a provision in the organic act securing the right of appeal
to the courts, if, as now stated, those courts were known to be powerless
to grant a remedy?
Here there is a very broad distinction to be drawn between the power of
the inhabitants of a Territory, or of any local community, lawfully to do
a thing, and forcibly to do it. If the Senator had said, that whatever
might be the decision of the Supreme Court, whatever might be the laws of
Congress, whatever might be the laws of the Territories, in the face of an
infuriated mob, such as he described on another occasion, it would be
impossible for a man to hold a slave against their will, he would but have
avowed the truism that in our country the law waits upon public opinion.
But he says that they can do it lawfully. If his position had been such as
I have just stated, it would have struck me as the opinion I had always
supposed him to entertain. More than that, it would have struck me as the
opinion which no one could gainsay; which, at any time, I would have been
ready to admit. Nothing is more clear than that no law could prevail in
our country, where force, as a governmental mean, is almost unknown,
against a pervading sentiment in the community. Every body admits that;
and it was in that view of the case that this question has been so often
declared to be a mere abstraction. It is an abstraction so far as any one
would expect in security to hold against the fixed purpose and
all-pervading will of the community, whether territorial or other, a
species of property, ambulatory, liable, because it has mind enough to go,
to be enticed away whenever freed from physical restraint, and which would
be nearly valueless if so restrained. It may be an abstraction as a
practical question of pecuniary advantage, but it is not the less dear to
those who assert the constitutional right. It would constitute a very good
reason why no one should ever say there was an attempt to force slavery on
an unwilling people, but no reason why the right should not be recognized
by the Federal Government as one belonging to the equal privileges and
immunities of every citizen of the United States.
But the main point of the Senator’s argument—and it deserved to be so,
because it is the main question now in the public mind—was, what is the
meaning of non-intervention? He defined it to be synonymous with squatter
sovereignty, or with popular sovereignty....
The Senator and myself do not seem to be getting any nearer together;
because the very thing which he describes constitutes the only case in
which I would admit the necessity, and, consequently, the propriety of the
people acting without authority. If men were cast upon a desert island,
the sovereignty of which was unknown, over which no jurisdiction was
exercised, they would find themselves necessitated to establish rules
which should subsist between themselves; and so the people of California,
when the Congress failed to give them a government; when it refused to
enact a territorial law; when, paralyzed by the power of contending
factions, it left the immigrants to work their own unhappy way; they had a
right—a right growing out of the necessity of the case—to make rules for
the government of their local affairs. But this was not sovereignty. It
was the exercise, between man and man, of a social function necessary to
preserve peace in the absence of any controlling power—essential to
conserve the relations of person and property. The sovereignty, if it
existed in any organization or government of the world, remained there
still; and whenever that sovereignty extended itself over them, whether
shipwrecked mariners, or adventurous Americans—whether cast off by the
sea, or whether finding their weary way across the desert plains which
lie west of the Mississippi—whenever the hand of the Government holding
sovereign jurisdiction was laid upon them, they became subject; their
sovereign control of their own affairs ceased. In our case, the directing
hand of the Government is laid upon them at the moment of the enactment of
an organic law. Therefore, the very point at which the Senator begins his
sovereignty, is the point at which the necessity, and, in my view, the
claim ceases.
But suppose that a territorial legislature, acting under an organic law,
not defining their municipal powers further than has been general in such
laws, should pass a law to exclude slave property, would the Senator vote
to repeal it?
Mr. Douglas. I will answer. I would not, because the Democratic party is
pledged to non-intervention; because, furthermore, whether such an act is
constitutional or not is a judicial question. If it is unconstitutional,
the court will so decide, and it will be null and void without repeal. If
it is constitutional, the people have a right to pass it. If
unconstitutional, it is void, and the court will ascertain the fact; and
we pledged our honors to abide the decision....
Mr. Davis. If it will not embarrass the Senator, I would ask him if, as
Chief Executive of the United States, he would sign a bill to protect
slave property in State, Territory, or District of Columbia—an act of
Congress?
Mr. Douglas. It will be time enough for me, or any other man, to say what
bills he will sign, when he is in a position to exercise the power.
Mr. Davis. The Senator has a right to make me that answer. I was only
leading on to a fair understanding of the Senator and myself about
non-intervention....
I think it now appears that, in the minds of the gentlemen,
non-intervention is a shadowy, unsubstantial doctrine, which has its
application according to the circumstances of the case. It ceased to
apply when it was necessary to annul an act in Kansas in relation to the
political rights of the inhabitants. It had no application when it was
necessary to declare that the old French laws should not be revived in the
Territory of Kansas after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; but it
rose an insurmountable barrier when we proposed to sweep away the Mexican
decrees, usages, or laws, and leave the Constitution and laws of the
United States unfettered in their operation in the Territory acquired from
Mexico. It thus seems to have a constantly varying application, and, as I
have not yet reached a good definition, one which quite satisfies me, I
must take it as I find it in the Senator’s speech, in which he says
Alabama asserted the doctrine of non-intervention in 1856. The Alabama
resolutions of 1856 asserted the right to protection, and the duty of the
Federal Government to give it. So, if he stands upon the resolutions of
Alabama in 1856, non-intervention is very good doctrine, and exactly
agrees with what I believe—no assumption, by the Federal Government, of
any powers over the municipal territorial governments which is not
necessary; that the hand of Federal power shall be laid as lightly as
possible upon any territorial community; that its laws shall be limited to
the necessities of each case; that it shall leave the inhabitants as
unfettered in the determination of their local legislation as the rights
of the people of the States will permit, and the duty of the General
Government will allow. But when non-intervention is pressed to the point
of depriving the arm of the Federal Government of its one great function
of protection, then it is the doctrine which we denounce—which we call
squatter sovereignty; the renunciation by Congress, and the turning over
to the inhabitants a sovereignty which, rightfully, it does not belong to
the one to grant or the other to claim, and, further and worse, thus to
divest the Federal Government of a duty which the Constitution requires it
to perform.
To show that this view is not new—that it does not rest singly on the
resolutions of Alabama, I will refer to a subject, the action upon which
has already been quoted in this debate—the Oregon Bill. During the
discussion of the Oregon Bill, I offered in the Senate, June 23, 1848, an
amendment which I will read:
“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.”
Upon this, I will cite the authority of Mr. Calhoun, in his speech on the
Oregon Bill, June 27, 1848:
“The twelfth section of this bill is intended to assert and maintain
this demand of the non-slaveholding States, while it remains a
Territory, not openly or directly, but indirectly, by extending the
provisions of the bill for the establishment of the Iowa Territory to
this, and by ratifying the acts of the informal and self-constituted
government of Oregon, which, among others, contains one prohibiting
the introduction of slavery. It thus, in reality, adopts what is
called the Wilmot proviso, not only for Oregon, but, as the Bill now
stands, for New Mexico and California. The amendment, on the contrary,
moved by the Senator from Mississippi, near me [Mr. Davis], is
intended to assert and maintain the position of the slave-holding
States. It leaves the Territory free and open to all the citizens of
the United States, and would overrule, if adopted, the act of the
self-constituted Territory of Oregon, and the twelfth section, as far
as it relates to the subject under consideration. We have thus fairly
presented the grounds taken by the non-slave-holding and the
slave-holding States, or as I shall call them, for the sake of
brevity, the Northern and Southern States, in their whole extent, for
discussion.”—Appendix to Congressional Globe, Thirtieth Congress,
first Session, p. 868.
I will quote also one of the speeches which he made near the close of his
life, at a time when he was so far wasted by disease that it was necessary
for him to ask the Senator from Virginia, who sits before me [Mr. Mason],
to read the speech which his tameless spirit impelled him to compose, but
which he was physically unable to deliver; and once again he came to the
Senate chamber, when standing yet more nearly on the confines of death; he
rose, his heart failing in its functions, his voice faltered, but his will
was so strong that he could not realize that the icy hand was upon him,
and he erroneously thought he was oppressed by the weight of his overcoat.
True to his devotion to the principles he had always advocated, clinging,
to the last hour of his life, to the duty to maintain the rights of his
constituents, still he was here, and his honored, though feeble, voice was
raised for the maintenance of the great principle to which his life had
been devoted. From the speech I read as follows:
“The plan of the administration can not save the Union, because it can
have no effect whatever towards satisfying the States composing the
Southern section of the Union, that they can, consistently with safety
and honor, remain in the Union. It is, in fact, but a modification of
the Wilmot proviso. It proposes to effect the same object—to exclude
the South from all territory acquired by the Mexican treaty. It is
well known that the South is united against the Wilmot proviso, and
has committed itself, by solemn resolutions, to resist should it be
adopted. Its opposition is not to the name, but that which it
proposes to effect. That, the Southern States hold to be
unconstitutional, unjust, inconsistent with their equality as members
of the common Union, and calculated to destroy irretrievably the
equilibrium between the two sections. These objections equally apply
to what, for brevity, I will call the executive proviso. There is no
difference between it and the Wilmot, except in the mode of effecting
the object; and in that respect, I must say that the latter is much
the least objectionable. It goes to its object openly, boldly, and
distinctly. It claims for Congress unlimited power over the
Territories, and proposes to assert it over the territories acquired
from Mexico by a positive prohibition of slavery. Not so the executive
proviso. It takes an indirect course, and, in order to elude the
Wilmot proviso, and thereby avoid encountering the united and
determined resistance of the South, it denies, by implication, the
authority of Congress to legislate for the Territories, and claims
the right as belonging exclusively to the inhabitants of the
Territories. But to effect the object of excluding the South, it takes
care, in the meantime, to let in immigrants freely from the Northern
States, and all other quarters, except from the South, which it takes
special care to exclude by holding up to them the danger of having
their slaves liberated under the Mexican laws. The necessary
consequence is to exclude the South from the Territories, just as
effectually as would the Wilmot proviso. The only difference, in this
respect, is, that what one proposes to effect directly and openly, the
other proposes to effect indirectly and covertly.
“But the executive proviso is more objectionable than the Wilmot in
another and more important particular. The latter, to effect its
object, inflicts a dangerous wound upon the Constitution, by depriving
the Southern States, as joint partners and owners of the Territories,
of their rights in them; but it inflicts no greater wound than is
absolutely necessary to effect its object. The former, on the
contrary, while it inflicts the same wound, inflicts others equally
great, and, if possible, greater, as I shall next proceed to explain.
“In claiming the right for the inhabitants, instead of Congress, to
legislate for the Territories, the executive proviso assumes that the
sovereignty over the Territories is vested in the former, or, to
express it in the language used in a resolution offered by one of the
Senators from Texas [General Houston, now absent], they ‘have the same
inherent right of self-government as the people in the States.’ The
assumption is utterly unfounded, unconstitutional, without example,
and contrary to the entire practice of the Government, from its
commencement to the present time, as I shall proceed to
show.”—Calhoun’s Works, vol. 4, p. 562.
Mr. Davis. I find that I must abridge, by abstaining from the reading of
extracts. When this question arose in 1820, Nathaniel Macon, by many
considered the wisest man of his day, held the proposed interference to be
unauthorized and innovative. In arguing against the Missouri Compromise,
as it was called—the attempt by Congress to prescribe where slaves might
or might not be held—the exercise, by the Federal Government north of a
certain point, of usurped power by an act of inhibition, Mr. Macon said
our true policy was that which had thus far guided the country in safety:
the policy of non-intervention. By non-intervention he meant the absence
of hostile legislation, not the absence of governmental protection. Our
doctrine on this point is not new, but that of our opponents is so.
The Senator from Illinois assumes that the congressional acts of 1850
meant no legislation in relation to slave property; while, in the face of
that declaration, stand the laws enacted in that year, and the promise of
another, which has not been enacted—laws directed to the question of
slavery and slave property; one even declaring, in certain contingencies,
as a penalty on the owner, the emancipation of his slave in the District
of Columbia. If no action upon the question was the prevailing opinion,
what does the legislation mean? Was it non-action in the District of
Columbia? Be it remembered, the resolution of the Cincinnati platform
says, “Non-interference, by Congress, with slavery in State and Territory,
or in the District of Columbia.” They are all upon the same footing.
Again, he said that the Badger amendment was a declaration of no
protection to slave property. The Badger amendment declares that the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise shall not revive the laws or usages
which preëxisted that compromise; and the history of the times, so far as
I understand it, is, that it intended to assure those gentlemen who feared
that the laws of France would be revived in the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska, by the repeal of the act of 1820, and that they would be held
responsible for having, by congressional act, established slavery. The
Southern men did not desire Congress to establish slavery. It has been our
uniform declaration that we denied the power of the Federal Government
either to establish or prohibit it; that we claimed for it protection as
property recognized by the Constitution, and we claimed the right for it,
as property, to go, and to receive federal protection wherever the
jurisdiction of the United States is exclusive. We claim that the
Constitution of the United States, in recognizing this property, making it
the basis of representation, put it, not upon the footing which it holds
between foreign nations, but upon the basis of the compact or union of the
States; that, under the delegated grant to regulate commerce between the
States, it did not belong to a State; therefore, without breach of
contract, they can not, by any regulation, prohibit transit, and the
compact provided that they should not change the character of master and
slave in the case of a fugitive. Could Congress surrender, for the States
and their citizens, the claim and protection for those or other
constitutional rights, against invasion by a State? If not, surely it can
not be done in the case of a Territory, a possession of the States. The
word “protecting,” in that amendment, referred to laws which
preëxisted—laws which it was not designed, by the Democrats, to revive
when they declared the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and, therefore,
I think, did not affect the question of constitutional right and of
federal power and duty.
In all these territorial bills we have the language “subject to the
Constitution;” that is to say, that the inhabitants are to manage their
local affairs in their own way, subject to the Constitution; which, I
suppose, might be rendered thus: “In their own way, provided their own way
shall be somebody else’s way;” for “subject to the Constitution” means, in
accordance with an instrument with which the territorial inhabitants had
nothing to do; with the construction of which they were not concerned; in
the adoption of which they had no part, and in relation to which it has
sometimes been questioned whether they had any responsibility. My own
views, as the Senator is aware from previous discussions, (and it is
needless to repeat,) are that the Constitution is co-extensive with the
United States; that the designation includes the Territories, that they
are necessarily subject to the Constitution. But if they be subject to
the Constitution, and subject to the organic act, that is the language
used; that organic act being the law of Congress, that Constitution being
the compact of the States—the territorial inhabitants having no lot or
part in one or the other, save as they are imposed upon them—where is
their claim to sovereignty? Where is their right to do as they please? The
States have a compact, and the agent of the States gives to the
Territories a species of constitution in the organic act, which endures
and binds them until they throw off what the Senator on another occasion
termed the minority condition, and assume the majority condition as a
State. The remark to which I refer was on the bill to admit Iowa and
Florida into the Union. The Senator then said:
“The father may bind the son during his minority, but the moment that
he (the son) attains his majority, his fetters are severed, and he is
free to regulate his own conduct. So, sir, with the Territories; they
are subject to the jurisdiction and control of Congress during
infancy, their minority; but when they attain their majority, and
obtain admission into the Union, they are free from all restraints and
restrictions, except such as the Constitution of the United States
imposes upon each and all of the States.”
This was the doctrine of territorial sovereignty—perhaps that is the
phrase—at that period. At a later period, in March, 1856, the Senator
said:
“The sovereignty of a Territory remains in abeyance, suspended in the
United States in trust for the people, until they shall be admitted
into the Union as a State. In the meantime, they are admitted to enjoy
and exercise all the rights and privileges of self-government, in
subordination to the Constitution of the United States, and in
obedience to the organic law passed by Congress in pursuance of that
instrument.”
If it be admitted—and I believe there is no issue between the Senator and
myself on that point—that the Congress of the United States have no
right to pass a law excluding slaves from a Territory, or determining in
the Territory the relation of master and slave, of parent and child, of
guardian and ward; that they have no right anywhere to decide what is
property, but are only bound to protect such rights as preëxisted the
formation of the Union—to perform such functions as are intrusted to them
as the agent of the States—then how can Congress, thus fettered, confer
upon a corporation of its creation—upon a territorial legislature, by an
organic act, a power to determine what shall be property within the limits
of such Territory?
But, again, if it were admitted that the territorial inhabitants did
possess this sovereignty: that they had the right to do as they pleased on
all subjects, then would arise the question, if they were authorized,
through their representatives, thus to act, whence came the opposition to
what was called the Lecompton Constitution? How did Congress, under this
state of facts, get the right to inquire whether those representatives in
that case really expressed the will of the people. Still more; how did
Congress get the right to decide that those representatives must submit
their action to a popular vote in a manner not prescribed by the people of
the Territory, however eminently it may have been advisable, convenient,
and proper in the judgment of the Congress of the United States? What
revisory function had we, if they, through their representatives, had full
power to act on all such subjects whatsoever?
I have necessarily, in answering the Senator, gone somewhat into the
argumentum ad hominem. Though it is not entirely exhausted, I think
enough has been said to show the Senate in what the difference between us
consists. If it be necessary further to illustrate it, I might ask how did
he propose to annul the organic act for Utah, if the recognition by the
Congress of a sufficient number of inhabitants to justify the organization
of a territorial government transferred the sovereignty to the
inhabitants of the Territory? If sovereignty passed by the recognition of
the fact, how did he propose, by congressional act, to annul the
territorial existence of Utah?
It is this confusion of ideas, it is this confounding of terms, this
changing of language, this applying of new meanings to words, out of
which, I think, a large portion of the dispute arises. For instance, it is
claimed that President Pierce, in using the phrase “existing and incipient
States,” meant to include all Territories, and thus that he had bound me
to a doctrine which precluded my strictures on what I termed squatter
sovereignty. This all arises from the misuse of language. An incipient
State, according to my idea, is the territorial condition at the moment it
changes into that of a State. It is when the people assemble in convention
to form a constitution as a State, that they are in the condition of an
incipient State. Various names were applied to the Territories at an
earlier period. Sometimes they were called “new States,” because they were
expected to be States; sometimes they were called “States in embryo,” and
it requires a determination of the language that is employed before it is
possible to arrive at any conclusion as to the differences of
understanding between gentlemen. Therefore, it was, and, I think, very
properly, (but not, as the Senator supposed, to catechise him,) that I
asked him what he meant by non-intervention, before I commenced these
remarks.
In the same line of errors was the confusion which resulted in his
assuming that the evils I described as growing out of his doctrine on the
plains of Kansas, were a denunciation, on my part, of the bill called the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill. At the time that bill passed, I did not foresee all
the evils which have resulted from the doctrine based upon it, but which I
do not think the bill sustains. I am not willing now to turn on those who
were in a position which compelled them to act, made them responsible, and
to divest myself of any responsibility which belongs to any opinion I
entertained. I will not seek to judge after the fact and hold the measure
up against those who had to judge before. Therefore I will frankly avow
that I should have sustained that bill if I had been in the Senate; but I
did not foresee or apprehend such evils as immediately grew up on the
plains of Kansas. I looked then, as our fathers had looked before, to the
settlement of the question of what institutions should exist there, as one
to be determined by soil and climate, and by the pleasure of those who
should voluntarily go into the country. Such, however, was not the case.
The form of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill invited to a controversy—not
foreseen. I was not charging the Senator with any responsibility for it,
but the variation of its terms invited contending parties to meet on the
plains of Kansas, and had well-nigh eventuated in civil war. The great
respect which even the most lawless of those adventurers in Kansas had for
the name and the laws of the United States, served, by the timely
interposition of the Federal force and laws, to restrain the excited
masses and prevented violence from assuming larger proportions than
combats between squads of adventurers.
This brings me in the line of rejoinder, to the meaning of the phrase,
“the people of a Territory, like those of a State, should decide for
themselves,” etc., the language quoted against the President in the
remarks of the Senator. This, it was announced, was squatter sovereignty
in its broadest sense; and it was added, that the present Executive was
elected to the high office he holds on that construction of the platform.
Now, I do not know how it is that the Senator has the power to decide why
the people voted for a candidate. I rather suppose, among the many
millions who did vote, there must have been a variety of reasons, and that
it is not in the power of any one man to declare what determined the
result. But waiving that, is it squatter sovereignty in its broadest
sense? Is it a declaration that the inhabitants of a Territory can
exercise all the powers of a State? It says that, “like the people of a
State,” they may decide for themselves. Then how do the people of a State
decide the question of what shall be property within the State? Every one
knows that it is by calling a convention, and that the people, represented
in convention, and forming a constitution their fundamental law, do this.
Every one knows that, under the constitutions and bills of rights which
prevail in the republican States of this Union, no legislature is invested
with that power. If this be the mode which is prescribed in the
States—the modes which the States must pursue—I ask you, in the name of
common sense, can the language of the President be construed to mean that
a territorial legislature may do what it is admitted the legislature of a
State can not; or that the inhabitants of a Territory can assemble a
convention, and form a fundamental law overriding the organic act, to
which the Senator has already acknowledged they stand subject until they
be admitted as a State?
We of the South, I know, are arraigned, and many believe justly, for
starting a new question which distracts the Democratic party. I have
endeavored, therefore, to show that it is not new. I have also asserted,
what I think is clear, that if it were new, but yet a constitutional
right, it is not only our province, but our duty to assert it—to assert
it whenever or wherever that right is controverted. It is asserted now
with more force than at a former period, for the simple reason that it is
now denied, to an extent which has never been known before. We do not
seek, in the cant language of the day, to force slavery on an unwilling
people. We know full well there is no power to do it; and our limited
observation has not yet made us acquainted with the man who was likely to
have a slave forced upon him, or who could get one without paying a very
high price for him. He must first have the will, and, secondly, he must
put money in his purse to enable him to get one. They are too valuable
among those by whom they are now owned, to be forced upon any body. Not
admitting the correctness of the doctrine which the Senator promulgated
in his magazine article in relation to a local character of slave
property, I recognise the laws of nature, and that immigration will follow
in the lines where any species of labor may be most profitably employed;
all, therefore, we have asked—fulfillment of the original compact of our
fathers—was that there should be no discrimination; that all property
should be equally protected; that we should be permitted to go into every
portion of the United States save where some sovereign power has said
slaves shall not be held, and to take with us our slave property in like
manner as we would take any other; no more than that. For that, our
Government has contended on the high seas against foreign powers. That has
entered into our negotiations, and has been recognized by every government
against whom a claim has been asserted. Where our property was captured on
the land during the period of an invasion, Great Britain, by treaty,
restored it, or paid for it. Wherever it has suffered loss on the high
seas, down to a very recent period, we have received indemnity; and where
we have not, it was only because the power and duty of the Federal
Government was sacrificed to this miserable strife in relation to
property, with the existence of which, those making the interference had
no municipal connection, or moral responsibility.
I do not admit that sovereignty necessarily exists in the Federal
Government or in a territorial government. I deny the Senator’s
proposition, which is broadly laid down, of the necessity which must exist
for it in the one place or the other. I hold that sovereignty exists only
in a State, or in the United States in their associated capacity, to whom
sovereignty may be transferred, but that their agent is incapable of
receiving it, and, still more, of transferring it to territorial
inhabitants.
I was sorry for some of the remarks which he thought it necessary to make,
as to the position of the South on this question, and for his assertion
that the resolutions of the convention of 1848 put the pro-slavery men
and the Abolitionists on the same ground. I think it was altogether
unjust. I did not think it quite belonged to him to make it. I was aware
that his opponent, in that canvass to which I referred, had made a
prophecy that he was, sooner or later, to land in the ranks of the
Republicans. Even if I had believed it, I would not have chosen—and it is
due to candor to say I do not believe——....
Mr. Davis. Well, it is unimportant. I feel myself constrained, because I
promised to do it, to refer to some portion of the joint record of the
Senator and myself in 1850, or, as I have consumed so much time, I would
avoid it. In that same magazine article, to which I have referred, the
Senator took occasion to refer to some part which I had taken in the
legislation of 1850; and I must say he presented me unfairly. He put me in
the attitude of one who was seeking to discriminate, and left himself in
the position of one who was willing to give equal protection to all kinds
of property. In that magazine article the Senator represents Mr. Davis, of
Mississippi, as having endeavored to discriminate in favor of slave
property, and Mr. Chase, of Ohio, as having made a like attempt against
it; and he leaves himself, by his argument, in the attitude of one who
concurred with Mr. Clay in opposition to both propositions.
I offered an amendment to the compromise bill of 1850, which was to strike
out the words “in respect to,” and insert “and introduce or exclude,” and
after the word “slavery” to insert the following:
“Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to
prevent said territorial legislature passing such laws as may be
necessary for the protection of the rights of property of any kind
which may have been or may be hereafter, conformably to the
Constitution and laws of the United States, held in, or introduced
into, said Territory.”
Mr. Chase’s amendment is in these words:
“Provided further, That nothing herein contained shall be construed
as authorizing or permitting the introduction of slavery, or the
holding of persons as property within said Territory.”
Whilst the quotation in the magazine article left me in the position
already stated, the debates which had occurred between us necessarily
informed the Senator that it was not my position, for I brought him in
that debate to acknowledge it.
On that occasion, I argued for my amendment as an obligation of the
Government to remove obstructions; to give the fair operation to
constitutional right; and so far from the Senator having stood with Mr.
Clay against all these propositions, the fact appears, on page 1134 of the
Globe, that, upon the vote on Chase’s amendment, Douglas voted for it,
and Davis and Clay voted against it; that upon the vote on Davis’
amendment, Clay and Davis voted for it, and Douglas voted against it.
Mr. Douglas. The Senator should add, that that vote was given under the
very instructions to which he referred the other day, and which are well
known to the Senate, and are on the table.
Mr. Davis. I was aware that the Senator had voted for Mr. Seward’s
amendment, the “Wilmot proviso,” under these instructions, but I receive
his explanation. Mr. Berrien offered an amendment to change the provision,
which said there should be no legislation in respect to slavery, so as to
make it read, “there shall be no legislation establishing or prohibiting
African slavery.” Mr. Clay voted for that; so did Mr. Davis. Mr. Douglas
voted against it. Mr. Hale offered an amendment to Mr. Berrien’s
amendment, to add the word “allowing.” Here Mr. Douglas voted for Mr.
Hale’s amendment, and against Davis and Clay. Then a proposition was made
to continue the Mexican laws against slavery until repealed by Congress. I
think I proved—at least I did to my own satisfaction—that there was no
such Mexican law; that it was a decree, and that the legislation which
occurred under it had never been executed. But that proposition by Mr.
Baldwin, which was to continue the Mexican laws in force, was brought to
a vote, and again Mr. Douglas voted for it, and Mr. Davis and Mr. Clay
voted against it. When another proposition was brought forward to amend by
“removing the obstructions of Mexican laws and usages to any right of
person or property by the citizens of the United States in the Territories
aforesaid,” I do not find the Senator’s name among those who voted,
though, by reference to the Appendix, I learned he was present immediately
afterwards, by his speaking to another amendment.
Thus we find the Senator differing from me on this question, as was
stated; but we do not find him concurring with Mr. Clay, as was stated;
and we do not find the proposition which I introduced, and which was
mentioned in the magazine article, receiving the joint opposition of
himself and Mr. Clay; and yet his remarks in the Senate the other day went
upon the same theory, that Mr. Clay and himself had been coöperating. Now,
the fact of the case is, that they agreed in supporting the final passage
of the bill, and I was against it. I was one of the few Southern men who
resisted, in all its stages, what was called the compromise, or omnibus
bill. I have consumed the time of the Senate by this reference, made as
brief as I could, on account of the remarks the Senator had made.
Coupled with this arraignment of myself, at a time when he says he had
leisure to discuss the question with the Attorney-General, but when there
was nothing in my position certainly to provoke the revision of my course
in Congress, is his like review of it in the Senate. As I understood his
remarks, for I did not find them in the Congressional Globe the next
morning, he vaunted his own consistency and admitted mine, but claimed his
to be inside and mine outside of the Democratic organization. Is it so?
Will our votes on test questions sustain it? The list of yeas and nays
would, on the points referred to, exhibit quite the reverse. And it
strikes me that, on the recent demonstrations we have had, when the
Democratic administration was, as it were, put on its trial in relation
to its policy in Kansas, the Senator’s associations, rather than mine,
were outside of the Democratic organization. How is it, on the pending
question—the declaration of great principles of political creed—the
Senator’s position is outside of the Senate’s Democracy, and mine in it,
so that I do not see with what justice he attempts that discrimination
between him and me? That the difference exists, that it involves a
division greater or less in Democratic ranks, is a personal regret, and I
think a public misfortune. It gives me, therefore, no pleasure to dwell
upon it, and it is now dismissed.
Mr. President, after having for forty years been engaged in bitter
controversy over a question relating to common property of the States, we
have reached the point where the issue is presented in a form in which it
becomes us to meet it according to existing facts; where it has ceased to
be a question to be decided on the footing of authority, and by reference
to history. We have decided that too long had this question been
disturbing the peace and endangering the Union, and it was resolved to
provide for its settlement by treating it as a judicial question. Now,
will it be said, after Congress provided for the adjustment of this
question by the courts, and after the courts had a case brought before
them, and expressed an opinion covering the controversy, that no
additional latitude is to be given to the application of the decision of
the court, though Congress had referred it specially to them; that it is
to be treated simply and technically as a question of meum et tuum, such
as might have arisen if there had been no such legislation by Congress?
Surely it does not become those who have pointed us to that provision as
the peace-offering, as the means for final adjustment, now to say that it
meant nothing more than that the courts would go on hereafter, as
heretofore, to try questions of property.
The courts have decided the question so far as they could decide any
political question. A case arose in relation to property in a slave held
within a Territory where a law of Congress declared that such property
should not be held. The whole case was before them; every thing, except
the mere technical point that the law was not enacted by a territorial
legislature. Why, then, if we are to abide by the decision of the Supreme
Court in any future case, do they maintain this controversy on the mere
technical point which now divides, disturbs, distracts, destroys the
efficiency and the power of the Democratic party? To the Senator, I know,
as a question of property, it is a matter of no consequence. I should do
him injustice if I left any one to infer that I treated his argument as
one made by a man prejudiced against the character of property involved in
the question. That is not his position; but I assert that he is pursuing
an ignis fatuus—not a light caught from the Constitution—but a vapor
which has arisen from the corrupting cess-pools of sectional strife, of
faction, and individual rivalry. Measured by any standard of common sense,
its magnitude would be too small to disturb the adjustment of the balance
of our country. There can be no appeal to humanity made upon this basis.
Least of all could it be made to one who, like the Senator and myself, has
seen this species of property in its sparse condition on the north-western
frontier, and seen it go out without disturbing the tranquillity of the
community, as it had previously existed without injury to any one, if not
to the benefit of the individual who held it. He has no apprehension, he
can have none, that it is to retard the political prosperity of the future
States—now the Territories. He can have no apprehension that in that
country, to which they never would be carried except for domestic
purposes, they could ever so accumulate as to constitute a great political
element. He knows, and every man who has had experience and judgment must
admit, that the few who may be so carried there have nothing to fear but
the climate, and that living in that close connection which belongs to one
or half a dozen of them in a family, the kindest relations which it is
possible to exist between master and dependent, exist between these
domestics and their owners.
There is a relation belonging to this species of property, unlike that of
the apprentice or the hired man, which awakens whatever there is of
kindness or of nobility of soul in the heart of him who owns it; this can
only be alienated, obscured, or destroyed by collecting this species of
property into such masses that the owner is not personally acquainted with
the individuals who compose it. In the relation, however, which can exist
in the north-western Territories, the mere domestic connection of one,
two, or, at most, half a dozen servants in a family, associating with the
children as they grow up, attending upon age as it declines, there can be
nothing against which either philanthropy or humanity can make an appeal.
Not even the emancipationist could raise his voice, for this is the high
road and the open gate to the condition in which the masters would, from
interest, in a few years, desire the emancipation of every one who may
thus be taken to the north-western frontier.
Mr. President, I briefly and reluctantly referred, because the subject had
been introduced, to the attitude of Mississippi on a former occasion. I
will now as briefly say, that in 1851, and in 1860, Mississippi was, and
is, ready to make every concession which it becomes her to make to the
welfare and the safety of the Union. If, on a former occasion, she hoped
too much from fraternity, the responsibility for her disappointment rests
upon those who fail to fulfill her expectations. She still clings to the
Government as our fathers formed it. She is ready to-day and to-morrow, as
in her past, and though brief, yet brilliant history, to maintain that
Government in all its power, and to vindicate its honor with all the means
she possesses. I say brilliant history; for it was in the very morning of
her existence that her sons, on the plains of New Orleans, were announced,
in general orders to have been the admiration of one army and the wonder
of the other. That we had a division in relation to the measures enacted
in 1850, is true; that the Southern rights men became the minority in the
election which resulted, is true; but no figure of speech could warrant
the Senator in speaking of them as subdued; as coming to him or any body
else for quarter. I deemed it offensive when it was uttered, and the scorn
with which I repelled it at the instant, time has only softened to
contempt. Our flag was never borne from the field. We had carried it in
the face of defeat, with a knowledge that defeat awaited it; but scarcely
had the smoke of the battle passed away which proclaimed another victor,
before the general voice admitted that the field again was ours; I have
not seen a sagacious, reflecting man, who was cognizant of the events as
they transpired at the time, who does not say that, within two weeks after
the election, our party was in a majority; and the next election which
occurred showed that we possessed the State beyond controversy. How we
have wielded that power it is not for me to say. I trust others may see
forbearance in our conduct—that, with a determination to insist upon our
constitutional rights, then and now, there is an unwavering desire to
maintain the Government, and to uphold the Democratic party.
We believe now, as we have asserted on former occasions, that the best
hope for the perpetuity of our institutions depends upon the coöperation,
the harmony, the zealous action of the Democratic party. We cling to that
party from conviction, that its principles and its aims are those of truth
and the country, as we cling to the Union for the fulfillment of the
purposes for which it was formed. Whenever we shall be taught that the
Democratic party is recreant to its principles; whenever we shall learn
that it can not be relied upon to maintain the great measures which
constitute its vitality, I, for one, shall be ready to leave it. And so,
when we declare our tenacious adherence to the Union, it is the Union of
the Constitution. If the compact between the States is to be trampled into
the dust; if anarchy is to be substituted for the usurpation and
consolidation which threatened the Government at an earlier period; if the
Union is to become powerless for the purposes for which it was
established, and we are vainly to appeal to it for protection, then, sir,
conscious of the rectitude of our course, the justice of our cause,
self-reliant, yet humbly, confidingly trusting in the arm that guided and
protected our fathers, we look beyond the confines of the Union for the
maintenance of our rights. A habitual reverence and cherished affection
for the Government will bind us to it longer than our interests would
suggest or require; but he is a poor student of the world’s history who
does not understand that communities at last must yield to the dictates of
their interests. That the affection, the mutual desire for the mutual
good, which existed among our fathers, may be weakened in succeeding
generations by the denial of right, and hostile demonstration, until the
equality guaranteed, but not secured within the Union, may be sought for
without it, must be evident to even a careless observer of our race. It is
time to be up and doing. There is yet time to remove the causes of
dissension and alienation which are now distracting, and have for years
past divided the country.
If the Senator correctly described me as having, at a former period,
against my own preferences and opinions, acquiesced in the decision of my
party; if when I had youth, when physical vigor gave promise of many days,
and the future was painted in the colors of hope, I could thus surrender
my own convictions, my own prejudices, and coöperate with my political
friends, according to their views, as to the best method of promoting the
public good; now, when the years of my future can not be many, and
experience has sobered the hopeful tints of youth’s gilding; when,
approaching the evening of life, the shadows are reversed, and the mind
turns retrospectively, it is not to be supposed that I would abandon
lightly, or idly put on trial, the party to which I have steadily adhered.
It is rather to be assumed that conservatism, which belongs to the
timidity or caution of increasing years, would lead me to cling to—to be
supported by, rather than to cast off, the organization with which I have
been so long connected. If I am driven to consider the necessity of
separating myself from those old and dear relations, of discarding the
accustomed support, under circumstances such as I have described, might
not my friends who differ from me pause and inquire whether there is not
something involved in it which calls for their careful revision?
I desire no divided flag for the Democratic party, seek not to depreciate
the power of the Senator, or take from him any thing of that confidence he
feels in the large army which follows his standard. I prefer that his
banner should lie in its silken folds to feed the moth; but if it
unrestrainedly rustles, impatient to be unfurled, we who have not invited
the conflict, shrink not from the trial; we will plant our flag on every
hill and plain; it shall overlook the Atlantic and welcome the sun as he
rises from its dancing waters; it shall wave its adieu as he sinks to
repose in the quiet Pacific.
Our principles are national; they belong to every State of the Union; and
though elections may be lost by their assertion, they constitute the only
foundation on which we can maintain power, on which we can again rise to
the dignity the Democracy once possessed. Does not the Senator from
Illinois see in the sectional character of the vote he received, that his
opinions are not acceptable to every portion of the country? Is not the
fact that the resolutions adopted by seventeen States, on which the
greatest reliance must be placed for Democratic support, are in opposition
to the dogma to which he still clings, a warning that if he persists and
succeeds in forcing his theory upon the Democratic party, its days are
numbered? We ask only for the Constitution. We ask of the Democracy only
from time to time to declare, as current exigencies may indicate, what the
Constitution was intended to secure and provide. Our flag bears no new
device. Upon its folds our principles are written in living light; all
proclaiming the constitutional Union, justice, equality, and fraternity of
our ocean-bound domain, for a limitless future.
