Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 8

Thus panoplied they made a desperate contest for the possession of Kansas. They had found that all the crops grown in Missouri by slave labor could be as profitably cultivated in Kansas. Securing Kansas, they would gain more than the mere material advantage of an enlarged field for slave labor. New Mexico at that time included all of Arizona; Utah included all of Nevada; Kansas, as organized, absorbed a large part of what is now Colorado, stretched along the eastern and northern boundary of New Mexico, and, crossing the Rocky Mountains, reached the confines of Utah. If Kansas could be made a slave State it would control New Mexico and Utah, and the South could again be placed in a position of political equality if not of command. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had shown them for the first time that they could absolutely consolidate the Southern vote in Congress in defense of slavery, regardless of differences on all other issues. But this power was of no avail, unless they could regain their equality in the Senate which had been lost by what they considered the mishap of California's admission. While Clay and Benton were in the Senate with their old reverence for the Union and their desire for the ultimate extinction of slavery, California could neither be kept out nor divided on the line of 36 30'. But the new South, the South of Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens, of Robert Toombs and Judah P. Benjamin, of James M. Mason and John C. Breckinridge, had made new advances, was inspired by new ambitions, and was determined upon the consolidation of sectional power. The one supreme need was another slave State. If this could be acquired they felt a.s.sured that so long as the Union should exist no free State could be admitted without the corresponding admission of another slave State. They would perhaps have been disappointed. Possibly they did not give sufficient heed to the influences which were steadily working against slavery in such States as Delaware and Maryland, threatening desertion in the rear, while the defenders of slavery were battling at the front. They argued, however, and not unnaturally, that prejudice can hold a long contest with principle, and that in the general uprising of the South the tendency of all their old allies would be to remain firm. They reckoned that States with few slaves would continue to stand for Southern inst.i.tutions as stubbornly as States with many slaves. In all the States of the South emanc.i.p.ation had been made difficult, and free negroes were tolerated, if at all, with great reluctance and with constant protest.

The struggle for Kansas was therefore to be maintained and possession secured at all hazards. Although, as the Southern leaders realized, the free States had flanked them by the admission of California with an anti-slavery const.i.tution, the Southern acquisition of Kansas would pierce the very centre of the army of freedom, and would enable the South thenceforth to dictate terms to the North.

Instead of the line of 36 30', upon which they had so frequently offered to compromise, as a permanent continental division, they would have carried the northern boundary of slave territory to the 40th parallel of lat.i.tude and even beyond. They slave States in pursuing this policy were directed by men who had other designs than those which lay on the surface. Since the struggle of 1850 the dissolution of the Union had been in the minds of many Southern leaders, and, as the older cla.s.s of statesmen pa.s.sed away, this design grew and strengthened until it became a fixed policy. They felt that when the time came to strike, it was of the first importance that they should have support and popular strength beyond the Mississippi. California, they were confident, could be carried in their interest, if they could but plant supporting colonies between the Missouri and the Sierras. The Democratic party was dominant in the State, and the Democracy was of the type personated by William M. Gwin. Both her senators voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and stood by the extremists of the South as steadily as if California bordered on the Gulf of Mexico. Dissolution of the Union on the scale thus projected would, as the authors of the scheme persuaded themselves, be certain of success. From the Mississippi to the Missouri they would carry the new confederacy to the southern line of Iowa. From the Missouri to the line of Utah they would have the 40th degree of lat.i.tude; from Utah westward they would have the 42d parallel, leaving the line of Oregon as the southern boundary of the United States on the Pacific.

THE SOUTHERN STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS.

This policy was not absolute but alternative. If the slave-holders could maintain their supremacy in the Union, they would prefer to remain. If they were to be outvoted and, as they thought, outraged by free-State majorities, then they would break up the government and form a confederacy of their own. To make such a confederacy effective, they must not take from the Union a relatively small section, but must divide it from ocean to ocean. They could not acquire a majority of the total population, but they aimed to secure by far the larger share of the vast domain comprised in the United States. The design was audacious, but from the stand-point of the men who were committed to it, it was not illogical. Their entire industrial system was founded upon an inst.i.tution which was bitterly opposed in the free States. They could see no way, and they no longer desired to see a way, by which they might rid themselves of the servile labor which was at once their strength and their weakness. To abandon the inst.i.tution was to sacrifice four thousand millions of property specially protected by law. It was for the existing generation of the governing cla.s.s in the South to vote themselves into bankruptcy and penury. Far beyond this, it was in their judgment to blight their land with ignorance and indolence, to be followed by crime and anarchy. Their point of view was so radically different from that held by a large number of Northern people that it left no common ground for action,--scarcely, indeed, an opportunity for reasoning together. In the South they saw and felt their danger, and they determined at all hazards to defend themselves against policies which involved the total destruction of their social and industrial fabric. They were not mere malcontents.

They were not pretenders. They did not aim at small things. They had ability and they had courage. They had determined upon mastery within the Union, or a Continental Empire outside of it.

While the South had thus resolved to acquire control of the large Territory of Kansas, the North had equally resolved to save it to freedom. The strife that ensued upon the fertile plains beyond the Missouri might almost be regarded as the opening battle of the civil war. The proximity of a slave State gave to the South an obvious advantage at the beginning of the contest. Many of the Northern emigrants were from New England, and the distance they were compelled to travel exceeded two thousand miles. There were no railroads across Iowa, none across Missouri. But despite all impediments and all discouragements, the free-State emigrants, stimulated by anti-slavery societies organized for the purpose, far outnumbered those from the slave States. Had the vexed question in the Territory been left to actual settlers it would have been at once decided adversely to slavery. But the neighboring inhabitants of Missouri, as the first election approached, invaded the Territory in large numbers, and, with boisterous disturbance and threats of violence, seized the polls, fraudulently elected a pro-slavery Legislature, and chose one of their leaders named Whitfield as delegate to Congress. Over six thousand votes were polled, of which some eight hundred only were cast by actual settlers. There were about three thousand legal voters in the Territory. The total population was somewhat in excess of eight thousand, and there were between two and three hundred slaves. The governor of the Territory, Andrew H. Reeder, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, tried faithfully and earnestly to arrest the progress of fraud and violence; but he was removed by President Pierce, and Wilson Shannon of Ohio was sent out in his stead. The free-State settlers, defrauded at the regular election, organized an independent movement and chose Governor Reeder their delegate to Congress to contest the seat of Whitfield. These events, rapidly following each other, caused great indignation throughout the country, in the midst of which the Thirty-fourth Congress a.s.sembled in December, 1855. After a prolonged struggle, Nathaniel P. Banks was chosen Speaker over William Aiken. It was a significant circ.u.mstance, noted at the time, that the successful candidate came from Ma.s.sachusetts, and the defeated one from South Carolina. It was a still more ominous fact that Banks was chosen by votes wholly from the free States, and that every vote from the slave States was given to Mr. Aiken, except that of Mr. Cullen of Delaware, and that of Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, who declined to vote for either candidate. It was the first instance in the history of the government in which a candidate for Speaker had been chosen without support from both sections. It was a distinctive victory of the free States over the consolidated power of the slave States. It marked an epoch.

CANVa.s.s FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

The year 1856 opened with this critical, this unprecedented condition of affairs. In all cla.s.ses there was deep excitement. With thoughtful men, both North and South, there was serious solicitude.

The country approached the strife of another Presidential election with the consciences of men thoroughly aroused, with their pa.s.sions profoundly stirred. Three parties were coming into the field, and it seemed impossible that any candidate could secure the approval of a majority of the voters in the Union. In the Democratic ranks there was angry contention. President Pierce, who had risked every thing for the South, and had received unmeasured obloquy in the North, was naturally anxious that his administration should be approved by his own party. With all the patronage at his command, he vigorously sought a renomination. But the party desired victory, and they feared a contest which involved an approval of the President's recreancy to solemn pledges voluntarily given. He had been inaugurated with the applause and confidence of a nation. He was sustained in the end by a helpless faction of a disorganized party.

The distinguished secretary of State suffered with the President.

Mr. Marcy had personally disapproved the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but he made no opposition, and the people held him equally if not doubly guilty. It was said at the time that New- York friends urged him to save his high reputation by resigning his seat in the cabinet. But he remained, in the delusive hope that he should receive credit for the evil he might prevent. He was pertinently reminded that the evil he might prevent would never be known, whereas the evil to which he consented would be read of all men. New York had hopelessly revolted from Democratic control, and Mr. Marcy's name was not presented as a Presidential candidate, though he was at that time the ablest statesman of the Democratic party. Mr. Douglas was also unavailable. He had gained great popularity in the South by his course in repealing the Missouri Compromise, but he had been visited with signal condemnation in the North. His own State, always Democratic, which had stood firmly for the party even in the overthrow of 1840, had now failed to sustain him,--had, indeed, pointedly rebuked him by choosing an opposition Legislature and sending Lyman Trumbull, then an anti- slavery Republican, as his colleague in the Senate. General Ca.s.s was seventy-four years old, and he was under the same condemnation with Pierce and Marcy and Douglas. He had voted to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and Michigan, which had never before faltered in his support, now turned against him and embittered his declining years by an expression of popular disapproval, which could not have been more emphatic.

The candidates urged for the nomination were all from the North.

By a tacit but general understanding, the South repressed the ambition of its leaders and refused to present any one of the prominent statesmen from that section. Southern men designed to put the North to a test, and they wished to give Northern Democrats every possible advantage in waging a waging a warfare in which the fruits of victory were to be wholly enjoyed by the South. If they had wished it, they could have nominated a Southern candidate who was at that moment far stronger than any other man in the Democratic party. General Sam Houston had a personal history as romantic as that of an ancient crusader. He was a native of Virginia, a representative in Congress from Tennessee, and Governor of that State before he was thirty-five. He was the intimate and trusted friend of Jackson. Having resigned his governors.h.i.+p on account of domestic trouble, he fled from civilized life, joined the Indians of the Western plains, roved with them for years, adopted their habits, and was made chief of a tribe. Returning to a.s.sociation with white men, he emigrated to Texas and led the revolt against Mexico, fought battles and was victorious, organized a new republic and was made its President. Then he turned to his native land, bearing in his hand the gift of a great dominion. Once more under the Union flag, he sat in the Capitol as a senator of the United States from Texas. At threescore years he was still in the full vigor of life. Always a member of the Democratic party he was a devoted adherent of the Union, and his love for it had but increased in exile. He stood by Mr. Clay against the Southern Democrats in the angry contest of 1850, declaring that "if the Union must be dismembered" he "prayed G.o.d that its ruins might be the monument of his own grave." He "desired no epitaph to tell that he survived it." Against the madness of repealing the Missouri Compromise he entered a protest and a warning. He notified his Southern friends that the dissolution of the Union might be involved in the dangerous step. He alone, of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, voted against the mischievous measure. When three thousand clergymen of New England sent their remonstrance against the repeal, they were fiercely attacked and denounced by Douglas and by senators from the South. Houston vindicated their right to speak and did battle for them with a warmth and zeal which specially commended him to Northern sympathy. All these facts combined--his romantic history, his unflinching steadiness of purpose, his unswerving devotion to the Union--would have made him an irresistibly strong candidate had he been presented. But the very sources of his strength were the sources of his weakness. His nomination would have been a rebuke to every man who had voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and, rather than submit to that, the Southern Democrats, and Northern Democrats like Pierce and Douglas and Ca.s.s, would accept defeat. Victory with Houston would be their condemnation.

But in rejecting him they lost in large degree the opportunity to recover the strength and popularity and power of the Democratic party which had all been forfeited by the maladministration of Pierce.

NOMINATION OF JAMES BUCHANAN.

With Houston impracticable, other Southern candidates purposely withheld, and all the Northern candidates in Congress or of the administration disabled, the necessity of the situation pointed to one man. The Democratic managers in whose hands the power lay were not long in descrying him. Mr. Buchanan had gone to England as minister directly after the inauguration of Pierce. He had been absent from the country during all the troubles and the blunders of the Democracy, and never before was an _alibi_ so potential in acquitting a man of actual or imputed guilt. He had been a candidate for the Presidency ever since 1844, but had not shown much strength.

He was originally a Federalist. He was somewhat cold in temperament and austere in manners, but of upright character and blameless life. He lacked the affability of Ca.s.s, the gracious heartiness of Pierce, the bluff cordiality of Douglas. But he was a man of ability, and had held high rank as a senator and as secretary of State. Above all he had never given a vote offensive to the South.

Indeed, his Virginia friend, Henry A. Wise, boasted that his record was as spotless as that of Calhoun.

Buchanan's hour had come. He was a necessity to the South, a necessity to his party; and against the combined force of all the ambitious men who sought the place, he was nominated. But he had a severe struggle. President Pierce and Senator Douglas each made a persistent effort. On the first ballot Buchanan received 135 votes, Pierce 122, Douglas 33. Through sixteen ballots the contest was stubbornly maintained, Buchanan gaining steadily but slowly.

Pierce was at last withdrawn, and the convention gave Buchanan 168, Douglas 121. No further resistance was made, and, amid acclamation and rejoicing, Buchanan was declared to be the unanimous choice of the convention. Major John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, a young man of popularity and promise, was nominated for the Vice- Presidency.

Before the nomination of Buchanan and Breckinridge another Presidential ticket had been placed in the field. The pro-slavery section of the American party and the ghastly remnant of the Whigs had presented Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency, and had a.s.sociated with him Andrew Jackson Donelson of Tennessee as candidate for the Vice-Presidency.

On the engrossing question of the day Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Fillmore did not represent antagonistic ideas, and between them there could be no contest to arouse enthusiasm or even to enlist interest in the North. The movement for Fillmore afforded a convenient shelter for that large cla.s.s of men who had not yet made up their minds as to the real issue of slavery extension or slavery prohibition.

The Republican party had meanwhile been organizing and consolidating.

During the years 1854 and 1855 it had acquired control of the governments in a majority of the free States, and it promptly called a national convention to meet in Philadelphia in June, 1856. The Democracy saw at once that a new and dangerous opponent was in the field,--an opponent that stood upon principle and shunned expediency, that brought to its standard a great host of young men, and that won to its service a very large proportion of the talent, the courage, and the eloquence of the North. The convention met for a purpose and it spoke boldly. It accepted the issue as presented by the men of the South, and it offered no compromise. In its ranks were all shades of anti-slavery opinion,--the patient Abolitionist, the Free-Soiler of the Buffalo platform, the Democrats who had supported the Wilmot Proviso, the Whigs who had followed Seward.

NOMINATION OF JOHN C. FReMONT.

There was no strife about candidates. Mr. Seward was the recognized head of the party, but he did not desire the nomination. He agreed with his faithful mentor, Thurlow Weed, that his time had not come, and that his sphere of duty was still in the Senate. Salmon P.

Chase was Governor of Ohio, waiting re-election to the Senate, and, like Seward, not anxious for a nomination where election was regarded as improbable if not impossible. The more conservative and timid section of the party advocated the nomination of Judge McLean of the Supreme Court, who for many years had enjoyed a shadowy mention for the Presidency in Whig journals of a certain type. But Judge McLean was old and the Republican party was young. He belonged to the past, the party was looking to the future. It demanded a more energetic and attractive candidate, and John C. Fremont was chosen on the first ballot. He was forty-three years of age, with a creditable record in the Regular Army, and wide fame as a scientific explorer in the Western mountain ranges, then the _terra incognita_ of the continent. He was a native of South Carolina, and had married the brilliant and accomplished daughter of Colonel Benton.

Always a member of the Democratic party, he was so closely identified with the early settlement of California that he was elected one of her first senators. To the tinge of romance in his history were added the attractions of a winning address and an auspicious name.

The movement in his behalf had been quietly and effectively organized for several months preceding the convention. It had been essentially aided if not indeed originated by the elder Francis P. Blair, who had the skill derived from long experience in political management.

Mr. Blair was a devoted friend of Benton, had been intimate with Jackson, and intensely hostile to Calhoun. As editor of the _Globe_, he had exercised wide influence during the Presidential terms of Jackson and Van Buren, but when Polk was inaugurated he was supplanted in administration confidence by Thomas Ritchie of the State-rights'

school, who was brought from Virginia to found another paper. Mr.

Blair was a firm Union man, and, though he had never formally withdrawn from the Democratic party, he was now ready to leave it because of the Disunion tendencies of its Southern leaders. He was a valuable friend to Fremont, and gave to him the full advantage of his experience and his sagacity.

William L. Dayton of New Jersey, who had served with distinction in the Senate, was selected for the Vice-Presidency. His princ.i.p.al compet.i.tor in the only ballot which was taken was Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. This was the first time that Mr. Lincoln was conspicuously named outside of his own State. He had been a member of the Thirtieth Congress, 1847-9, but being a modest man he had so little forced himself into notice that when his name was proposed for Vice-President, inquiries as to who he was were heard from all parts of the convention.

The principles enunciated by the Democratic and Republican parties on the slavery question formed the only subject for discussion during the canva.s.s in the free States. From the beginning no doubt was expressed that Mr. Buchanan would find the South practically consolidated in his favor. Electoral tickets for Fremont were not presented in the slave States, and Fillmore's support in that section was weakened by his obvious inability to carry any of the free States. The canva.s.s, therefore, rapidly narrowed to a contest between Buchanan and Fremont in the North. The Republican Convention had declared it to be "both the right and imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism,-- polygamy and slavery." The Democratic Convention had presented a very elaborate and exhaustive series of resolutions touching the slavery question. They indorsed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and recognized the "right of the people of all the territories to form a const.i.tution with or without domestic slavery."

The resolution was artfully constructed. Read in one way it gave to the people of the Territories the right to determine the question for themselves. It thus upheld the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"

which Mr. Douglas had announced as the very spirit of the Act organizing Kansas and Nebraska. A closer a.n.a.lysis of the Democratic declaration, however, showed that this "popular sovereignty" was not to be exercised until the people of the Territory were sufficiently numerous to form a State const.i.tution and apply for admission to the Union, and that meanwhile in all the Territories the slave- holder had the right to settle and to be protected in the possession of his peculiar species of property. In fine, the Republicans declared in plain terms that slavery should by positive law of the nation be excluded from the Territories. The Democrats flatly opposed the doctrine of Congressional prohibition, but left a margin for doubt as to the true construction of the Const.i.tution, and of the Act repealing the Missouri Compromise, thus enabling their partisans to present one issue in the North, and another in the South.

The Democratic candidate in his letter of acceptance did not seek to resolve the mystery of the platform, but left the question just as he found it in the resolutions of the convention. The result was that Northern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the belief, so energetically urged by Mr. Douglas, that the people of the Territories had the right to determine the slavery question for themselves at any time. The Southern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the full faith that slavery was to be protected in the Territories until a State government should be formed and admission to the Union secured.

The Democratic doctrine of the North and the Democratic doctrine of the South were, therefore, in logic and in fact, irreconcilably hostile. By the one, slavery could never enter a Territory unless the inhabitants thereof desired and approved it. By the other slavery had a foot-hold in the Territories under the Const.i.tution of the United States, and could not be dislodged or disturbed by the inhabitants of a Territory even though ninety-nine out of every hundred were opposed to it. In the Territorial Legislatures laws might be pa.s.sed to protect slavery but not to exclude it. From such contradictory constructions in the same party, conflicts were certain to arise.

MR. BUCHANAN ELECTED PRESIDENT.

The Democrats of the North sought, not unsuccessfully, to avoid the slavery question altogether. They urged other considerations upon popular attention. Mr. Buchanan was presented as a National candidate, supported by troops of friends in every State of the Union. Fremont was denounced as a sectional candidate, whose election by Northern votes on an anti-slavery platform would dissolve the Union. This incessant cry exerted a wide influence in the North and was especially powerful in commercial circles. But in spite of it, Fremont gained rapidly in the free States. The condition of affairs in Kansas imparted to his supporters a desperate energy, based on principle and roused to anger. An elaborate and exciting speech on the "Crime against Kansas," by Senator Sumner, was followed by an a.s.sault from Preston S. Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, which seriously injured Mr. Sumner, and sensibly increased the exasperation of the North. When a resolution of the House to expel Brooks was under consideration, he boasted that "a blow struck by him then would be followed by a revolution."

This but added fuel to a Northern flame already burning to white- heat. Votes by tens of thousands declared that they did not desire a Union which was held together by the forbearance or permission of any man or body of men, and they welcomed a test of any character that should determine the supremacy of the Const.i.tution and the strength of the government.

The canva.s.s grew in animation and earnestness to the end, the Republicans gaining strength before the people of the North every day. But Buchanan's election was not a surprise. Indeed, it had been generally expected. He received the electoral votes of every Southern State except Maryland, which p.r.o.nounced for Fillmore. In the North, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California voted for Buchanan. The other eleven free States, beginning with Maine and ending with Iowa, declared for Fremont. The popular vote was for Buchanan 1,838,169, Fremont 1,341,264, Fillmore 874,534.

With the people, therefore, Mr. Buchanan was in a minority, the combined opposition outnumbering his vote by nearly four hundred thousand.

The Republicans, far from being discouraged, felt and acted as men who had won the battle. Indeed, the moral triumph was theirs, and they believed that the actual victory at the polls was only postponed.

The Democrats were mortified and astounded by the large popular vote against them. The loss of New York and Ohio, the narrow escape from defeat in Pennsylvania, the rebuke of Michigan to their veteran leader General Ca.s.s, intensified by the choice of Chandler as his successor in the Senate, the absolute consolidation of New England against them, all tended to humiliate and discourage the party.

They had lost ten States which General Pierce had carried in 1852, and they had a watchful, determined foe in the field, eager for another trial of strength. The issue was made, the lines of battles were drawn. Freedom or slavery in the Territories was to be fought to the end, without flinching, and without compromise.

Mr. Buchanan came to the Presidency under very different auspices from those which had attended the inauguration of President Pierce.

The intervening four years had written important chapters in the history of the slavery contest. In 1853 there was no organized opposition that could command even a respectable minority in a single State. In 1857 a party distinctly and unequivocally pledged to resist the extension of slavery into free territory had control of eleven free States and was hotly contesting the possession of the others. The distinct and avowed marshalling of a solid North against a solid South had begun, and the result of the Presidential election of 1856 settled nothing except that a mightier struggle was in the future.

DECISION IN THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT.

After Buchanan's inauguration events developed rapidly. The Democrats had carried the House, and therefore had control of every department of the government. The effort to force slavery upon Kansas was resumed with increased zeal. Strafford's policy of "thorough" was not more resolute or more absolute than that now adopted by the Southern leaders with a new lease of power confirmed to them by the result of the election. The Supreme Court came to their aid, and, not long after the new administration was installed, delivered their famous decision in the Dred Scott case. This case involved the freedom of a single family that had been held as slaves, but it gave occasion to the Court for an exhaustive treatment of the political question which was engrossing public attention.

The conclusion of the best legal minds of the country was that the opinion of the Court went far beyond the real question at issue, and that many of its most important points were to be regarded as _obiter dicta_. The Court declared that the Act of Congress prohibiting slavery in the Territories north of 36 30' was unconst.i.tutional and void. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was therefore approved by the highest judicial tribunal. Not only was the repeal approved, its re-enactment was forbidden. No matter how large a majority might be returned to Congress in favor of again setting up the old landmark which had stood in peace and in honor for thirty-four years, with the sanction of all departments of the government, the Supreme Court had issued an edict that it could not be done. The Court had declared that slavery was as much ent.i.tled to protection on the national domain as any other species of property, and that it was unconst.i.tutional for Congress to decree freedom for a Territory of the United States. The pro-slavery interest had apparently won a great triumph. They naturally claimed that the whole question was settled in their favor. But in fact the decision of the Court had only rendered the contest more intense and more bitter. It was received throughout the North with scorn and indignation. It entered at once into the political discussions of the people, and remained there until, with all other issues on the slavery question, it was remanded to the arbitrament of war.

Five of the judges--an absolute majority of the court--were Southern men, and had always been partisan Democrats of the State-rights'

school. People at once remembered that every other cla.s.s of lawyers in the South had for thirty years been rigidly excluded from the bench. John J. Crittenden had been nominated and rejected by a Democratic Senate. George E. Badger of North Carolina had shared the same fate. They were followers of Clay, and not to be trusted by the new South in any exigency where the interests of slavery and the perpetuity of the Union should come in conflict. Instead, therefore, of strengthening the Democratic party, the whole effect of the Dred Scott decision was to develop a more determined type of anti-slavery agitation. This tendency was promoted by the lucid and exhaustive opinion of Benjamin R. Curtis, one of the two dissenting judges. Judge Curtis was not a Republican. He had been a Whig of the most conservative type, appointed to the bench by President Fillmore through the influence of Mr. Webster and the advice of Rufus Choate. In legal learning, and in dignity and purity of character, he was unsurpa.s.sed. His opinion became, therefore, of inestimable value to the cause of freedom. It represented the well-settled conclusion of the most learned jurists, was in harmony with the enlightened conscience of the North, and gave a powerful rallying-cry to the opponents of slavery. It upheld with unanswerable arguments the absolute right of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the Union. Every judge delivered his views separately, but the dissenting opinion of Judge McLean, as well as of the six who sustained the views of the Chief Justice, arrested but a small share of public attention. The argument for the South had been made by the venerable and learned Chief Justice. The argument for the North had been made by Justice Curtis. Perhaps in the whole history of judicial decisions no two opinions were ever so widely read by the ma.s.s of people outside the legal profession.

DECISION IN THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT.

It was popularly believed that the whole case was made up in order to afford an opportunity for the political opinions delivered by the Court. This was an extreme view not justified by the facts.

But in the judgment of many conservative men there was a delay in rendering the decision which had its origin in motives that should not have influenced a judicial tribunal. The purport and scope of the decision were undoubtedly known to President Pierce before the end of his term, and Mr. Buchanan imprudently announced in his Inaugural address that "the point of time when the people of a Territory can decide the question of slavery for themselves" will "be speedily and finally settled by the Supreme Court, before whom it is now pending." How Mr. Buchanan could know, or how he was ent.i.tled to know, that a question not directly or necessarily involved in a case pending before the Supreme Court "would be speedily and finally settled" became a subject of popular inquiry.

Anti-slavery speakers and anti-slavery papers indulged in severe criticism both of Mr. Buchanan and the Court, declaring that the independence of the co-ordinate branches of the government was dangerously invaded when the Executive was privately advised of a judicial decision in advance of its delivery by the Court. William Pitt Fessenden, who always spoke with precision and never with pa.s.sion, a.s.serted in the Senate that the Court, after hearing the argument, had reserved its judgment until the Presidential election was decided. He avowed his belief that Mr. Buchanan would have been defeated if the decision had not been withheld, and that in the event of Fremont's election "we should never have heard of a doctrine so utterly at variance with all truth, so utterly dest.i.tute of all legal logic, so founded on error, and so unsupported by any thing resembling argument."

Mr. Lincoln, whose singular powers were beginning to be appreciated, severely attacked the decision in a public speech in Illinois, not merely for its doctrine, but for the mode in which the decision had been brought about, and the obvious political intent of the judges. He showed how the Kansas-Nebraska Act left the people of the Territories perfectly free to settle the slavery question for themselves, "subject only to the Const.i.tution of the United States!"

That qualification he said was "the exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to come in and declare the perfect freedom to be no freedom at all." He then gave a humorous ill.u.s.tration by asking in homely but telling phrase, "if we saw a lot of framed timbers gotten out at different times and places by different workmen,--Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James,--and if we saw these timbers joined together and exactly make the frame of a house, with tenons and mortises all fitting, what is the conclusion? We find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan before the first blow was struck."

This quaint mode of arraigning the two President, the Chief Justice and Senator Douglas, was extraordinarily effective with the ma.s.ses.

In a single paragraph, humorously expressed, he had framed an indictment against four men upon which he lived to secure a conviction before the jury of the American people.

The decision was rendered especially odious throughout the North by the use of certain unfortunate expressions which in the heat of the hour were somewhat distorted by the anti-slavery press, and made to appear unwarrantably offensive. But there was no misrepresentation and no misunderstanding of the essential position of the Court on the political question. It was unmistakably held that owners.h.i.+p in slaves was as much ent.i.tled to protection under the Const.i.tution in the Territories of the United States as any other species of property, and that Congress possessed no power over the subject except the power to legislate in aid of slavery.

The decision was at war with the practice and traditions of the government from its foundation, and set aside the matured convictions of two generations of conservative statesmen from the South as well as from the North. It proved injurious to the Court, which thenceforward was a.s.sailed most bitterly in the North and defended with intemperate zeal in the South. Personally upright and honorable as the judges were individually known to be, there was a conviction in the minds of a majority of Northern people, that on all issues affecting the inst.i.tution of slavery they were unable to deliver a just judgment; that an Abolitionist was, in their sight, the chief of sinners, deserving to be suppressed by law; that the anti- slavery agitation was conducted, according to their belief, by two cla.s.ses,--fanatics and knaves,--both of whom should be promptly dealt with; the fanatics in strait-jackets and the knaves at the cart's tail.

Chief Justice Taney, who delivered the opinion which proved so obnoxious throughout the North, was not only a man of great attainments, but was singularly pure and upright in his life and conversation. Had his personal character been less exalted, or his legal learning less eminent, there would have been less surprise and less indignation. But the same qualities which rendered his judgment of apparent value to the South, called out intense hostility in the North. The lapse of years, however, cools the pa.s.sions and tempers the judgment. It has brought many anti-slavery men to see that an unmerited share of the obloquy properly attaching to the decision has been visited on the Chief Justice, and that it was unfair to place him under such condemnation, while two a.s.sociate Justices in the North, Grier and Nelson, joined in the decision without incurring special censure, and lived in honor and veneration to the end of their judicial careers. While, therefore, time has in no degree abated Northern hostility to the Dred Scott decision, it has thrown a more generous light upon the character and action of the eminent Chief Justice who p.r.o.nounced it. More allowance is made for the excitement and for what he believed to be the exigency of the hour, for the sentiments in which he had been educated, for the force of a.s.sociation, and for his genuine belief that he was doing a valuable work towards the preservation of the Union. His views were held by millions of people around him, and he was swept along by a current which with so many had proved irresistible.

Coming to the Bench from Jackson's Cabinet, fresh from the angry controversies of that partisan era, he had proved a most acceptable and impartial judge, earning renown and escaping censure until he dealt directly with the question of slavery. Whatever harm he may have done in that decision was speedily overruled by war, and the country can now contemplate a venerable jurist, in robes that were never soiled by corruption, leading a long life of labor and sacrifice, and achieving a fame in his profession second only to that of Marshall.