Presidential Candidates Part 4

This speech made a deep impression upon the country, but Mr. Douglas was unable to carry any considerable portion of his party in Congress with him. The history of the struggle is well known. The Republicans, a few Democrats, and a like number of Americans, united, were able to force the administration into an abandonment of the original Lecompton bill, and the English bill was subst.i.tuted therefor. This bill was opposed by Mr. Douglas; but inasmuch as it gave the people of Kansas the privilege to reject the Lecompton Const.i.tution, it pa.s.sed by a small majority.

In the summer and autumn of 1858, Mr. Douglas went through a terrible ordeal in Illinois--a campaign, the issue of which was political life or death to him. He triumphed by a small majority--indeed the majority was the other way before the people--which shows that Mr. D. was wise in opposing the Lecompton measure, for if he had supported it, and thus trampled upon his own principle of Popular Sovereignty, he would have lost his election by thousands of votes.

We now come to still later issues--to the discussion between Mr.

Douglas and his southern enemies, in the last session of the thirty-fifth Congress--the present year--upon Congressional intervention in favor of slavery. This great debate took place Feb.

23, 1859, in the Senate, and looked like a preconcerted attack upon Mr. Douglas by some of his southern opponents. We have not the s.p.a.ce for the official report of the debate, and will endeavor faithfully to abridge it. The debate opened on an amendment by Senator Hale to the Appropriation bill before the Senate to repeal the restrictive clause of the Kansas Admission act. This amendment was offered the day previous, and the debate took an unexpected turn upon it.

Mr. Seward, of New York, said Congress had decided that Kansas should come in with the Lecompton Const.i.tution, without reference to population; but, on the other hand, should not come in outside of the Lecompton Const.i.tution unless she had 92,400 population. There was, therefore, a discrimination by the Congress of the United States, as against freedom, in favor of slavery. Oregon, because she was a Democratic State, was admitted without reference to population, and Kansas, because of her different politics, was excluded. He was glad of this occasion to renew his vote. He was glad, also, to hear that so many gentlemen on the other side will give Kansas a fair hearing. It indicates that the time is coming when any State applying for admission will be heard on its merits, apart from all other considerations. He thought it goes to show that if Texas should be divided, or free States, as he thought they would, be formed in Mexico, they will come in as free States.

Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, made a strong southern speech.

He held to the doctrine of State rights; denied the squatter sovereignty of territories; and threatened secession, with banners flying, if the South was deprived of her rights. His address was directed to northern Democrats. He placed his views frankly on record, and desired neither to cheat nor be cheated.

Mr. Douglas felt it inc.u.mbent on him, as a northern Democrat, to make a reply. He admired the frankness, candor, and directness with which Mr. Brown had approached the question. He (Douglas), too, would put his opinions on record in such a manner as will acquit him of a desire to cheat or be cheated. He agreed at the outset with Mr. Brown, and with the decision of the Supreme Court, that slaves are property, and that their owners have a right to carry them into the territories as any other property. Having the right of transit into the territory, the question arises, how far does the power of the territorial legislature extend to slave property? And the reply is, to the same extent, and no further, than to any other description of property. Mr.

Brown has said that slave property needs more protection than any other description. If so, it is the misfortune of the owners of that kind of property. Mr. Douglas's remarks, from the frequent interruptions, a.s.sumed so much the form of question and reply, and running comments on the various issues started, that we can only notice the salient points of the main discussion, which extended throughout many hours, he sustaining the princ.i.p.al part. His general scope was, that he would leave all descriptions of property, slaves included, to the operation of the local law, and would not have Congress interfere in any way therewith. If the people of the territory want slavery there, they will foster and encourage it, and if they do not find it for their advantage, they will do otherwise. So it becomes a question of soil, climate, production, etc. He ill.u.s.trated by saying, that if any discrimination is to be made in any description of property, the owner of stock, or liquors, or any other, might claim it likewise.

After some other ill.u.s.trations, he went into discussion of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which, he said, was pa.s.sed by a distinct understanding between northern and southern Democrats, however differing on some points, to give to the territorial legislature the full power, with appeal to the Supreme Court, to test the const.i.tutionality of any law, but not to Congress to repeal it. If the court decides such law to be const.i.tutional, it must stand; if not, it must fall to the ground, without action of Congress. That doctrine of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and territories, has been a fundamental principle of the Democratic platform, and every Democrat is pledged to it by the Cincinnati platform. Here Mr. Douglas, in reply to a question by Mr. Clay (who also made the remark that, according to Mr. Douglas's interpretation, squatter sovereignty is superior to the Const.i.tution), said that the limit of territorial legislation is the organic act and the Const.i.tution. In reply to Mr. Clay's question, "Can a slaveholder take his slave property into the territory?" he would reply, Yes; and hold it as other property. To the question, "Will Congress pa.s.s a law to protect other kinds of property in the territories?" he would answer, No; for the doctrine that Congress is to legislate on property and persons without representation, is the doctrine of the parliament of George III., that brought on the Revolutionary war. We said then it was a violation of the rights of power to a.s.sume to legislate for Englishmen without their consent. Now, was he (Mr. Douglas) to be called on to force this same odious doctrine on the people of the territories without their consent? He answered, No; let them govern themselves. If they make good laws, let them enjoy the blessings; if bad, let them suffer until they are repealed. Referring to the great battles fought and gained in 1854 and 1856, he said he would like to know how many votes Mr. Buchanan would have got in Pennsylvania or Ohio, if he had then understood the doctrine of popular sovereignty as he claims to do now.

Mr. Bigler asked how many votes Mr. Buchanan would have received in 1856, had the senator from Illinois and those who acted with him told the people that the Kansas act was not intended to extend to the territories the sacred right of self-government, but simply to give the people the right to pet.i.tion for redress of grievances--a right not denied to any citizen, white or black?

Mr. Douglas said that there are no colored citizens, and he trusted in G.o.d there never would be. He did not recognize the black brothers.

Mr. Bigler knew that as well as the senator, and should have said inhabitants.

Mr. Douglas resumed. In 1856, he took the same ground as now, and Mr.

Buchanan, when he accepted the nomination, took the same ground. His letter of acceptance to the Cincinnati Convention shows he then understood that the people of the territories should decide whether slavery should or should not exist within their limits. When gentlemen called for Congressional intervention, they step off the Democratic platform. He (Mr. Douglas) a.s.serted that the Democratic creed was non-intervention by Congress, and the right of the people to govern themselves. He would frankly tell gentlemen of the South, that no Democratic candidate can carry one State North but on the principles of the Cincinnati platform, as construed by Mr. Buchanan when he accepted his nomination, and which he (Mr. Douglas) stood here to-day to defend.

Mr. Davis replied to Mr. Douglas elaborately, denying that he (Douglas) rightly interpreted the obligations of the Democratic party.

Mr. Pugh said, Mr. Brown had asked if northern Democrats would vote for Congressional intervention to protect the people against local legislation. He would answer, Never. It is monstrous. It is against the plighted faith both of the South and North. Mr. Pugh discussed the question at length, and said he stood on the platform of his party with the interpretation which he explained.

Mr. Green was sorry that this subject of contention had been brought forward. It was to try and bring discord into the Democratic party, the only party able to override the Republican party. He hoped and believed there was no difference between the North and the South. A government is formed to protect persons and property; and when it ceases to do either, it ceases to perform its one great function. Mr.

Hale's amendment had brought up the question, "What is property?" He (Green) maintained that, under the Const.i.tution and by the decision of the Supreme Court, slaves are property; and he argued the subject in many aspects, concluding by calling on the Democratic party to stand united, and not permit a combination to make use of a mere figment to disorganize them. In the course of his remarks, he quoted from Mr.

Douglas's Springfield speech, to show that he had therein proposed Congressional intervention in Utah. He could not see the consistency of the senator's course, then and now.

Mr. Douglas denied that he had proposed Congressional intervention to regulate the internal affairs of Utah. The intervention he proposed was alone on the ground of rebellion--not on account of their domestic affairs, but as aliens and rebels.

Mr. Green, in speaking of how territorial legislation could destroy the rights of slave property, said he had before him a copy of the bill pa.s.sed by the Kansas Legislature to abolish slavery.

Mr. Douglas remarked that several speeches had been made very pointedly at him, making him out no better than an Abolitionist, for leaving the territories to carry out their own affairs. It does well to attack one man for his opinion; but when was the most aggravated act ever committed, that he did not say it was committed, in manumitting your slaves and confiscating your property? The gentleman who spoke thus, says: "It is not yet time." There is no better time than the present, to introduce a bill to repeal that act of the Kansas Legislature. Senators say that he (Douglas) may go out. No; he stands on the platform, and it is for those who jump off, to go out.

The chair called the Senate to order, threatening to clear the galleries, unless it was maintained.

Mr. Green said he had received information of the bill by telegraph; but could not legislate on such information.

Mr. Douglas would take it for granted that Mr. Green meant that he received authentic information, and would introduce a bill to repeal the act. The South, he said, had reluctantly acquiesced in the movement with the Democrats of the North to settle the question. He went at some length into a discussion and approval of the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. He did not agree with Senator Douglas's views as to the power of the people of a territory, and did not believe that the Nebraska-Kansas bill gave them independent power. The senator from Virginia then gave his ideas as to the people of the territories, and the people of the States. The right of property is recognized in the former, but the inhabitants of a territory are unknown to the Const.i.tution. Congress cannot divest itself of its power over the property of the territories, but it can grant them nothing. South of the Potomac River, to the confines of Mexico, there is not one dissentient voice. The South would be recreant to itself; if it would give one vote for its rights to be taken from the Const.i.tution, and remitted to the pleasure of the people temporarily in the territories.

Mr. Davis took an animated part in the debate against Mr. Douglas, who in the Kansas-Nebraska act, had made a great error, and drawn the Senate into a great error.

Mr. Douglas resumed, saying it won't do to read him out, because they had fallen from the faith. There is no middle ground. It is either intervention or non-intervention.

Mr. Gwin said, if the senator from Illinois had given the same interpretation to the Kansas-Nebraska bill when it was before the Senate, he (Gwin) would not have voted for it, and believed those around him would not. When the senator proposed to speak for the Democracy of the free States, he had no right to speak for California, which thought otherwise.

Mr. Broderick contradicted Mr. Gwin's statement of the views of California. He considered the views of his State were those expressed by Mr. Douglas.

Mr. Gwin replied that he was sent here to do his duty in representing the Democracy of California, and he knew they indorse the action of the Administration, and do not at all indorse the interpretation given by the senator from Illinois.

Mr. Douglas (to Mr. Gwin.) I do say the records show a very general concurrence in the views I then expressed.

Mr. Iverson raised the question of order, that Mr. Douglas had spoken many times. He and Mr. Davis had occupied the floor four or five hours. The point of order was sustained.

Mr. Hunter said it was with reluctance that he occupied the time at the late period of the evening, but the turn the debate had taken rendered an explanation necessary, in justice to himself. He differed with the senator from Illinois, both in the history of the Kansas-Nebraska act, and what was intended by it. When the proposition was made to pa.s.s that, he maintained, as he has always done since he has had a place on that floor, that the South had a right to protection for their slave property in the territories.

Mr. Hunter read from his speech of that date, showing the views he then expressed. The case stood thus: southern men on one side maintained they had right, under the Const.i.tution, to protection to their slave property; northern men thought the contrary, and there was no chance of agreement between them, as the act was very carefully framed, neither affirming nor disaffirming the power of the territory to abolish slavery, but reserving the question of right, and agreeing to refer to the judiciary any points arising out of it. It was in itself a compromise, in which neither party conceded their opinions or their rights. They were but placed in abeyance until a case affecting them might arise. No southern man with whom he acted ever considered he was conferring on the Territorial Legislature the absolute right to deal with this subject. They agreed to this settlement as a consequence, acting together upon points wherein they agreed, and expressing no opinion upon points where the differences were irreconcilable. By this they secured the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, upon which the Democrats were agreed, by confining the act to the general purpose to be accomplished. Justice to himself and the distinguished senator from South Carolina, now no more, with whom he had acted and consulted on the matter, required the explanation. Mr.

Hunter then drew the attention of the Senate to the time consumed in the debate, and urged a vote upon the amendment.

Mr. Stuart, after some general remarks on the subject under discussion, asked, why should the Democratic party be racked and torn by the thought of the contingences which may not happen? If the Democratic party in a body, if its able and efficient members throughout the country, stand faithfully together, their flag will remain in the ascendant, and the party will rise out of all the difficulties which now beset it.

Mr. Bigler was opposed to Congress extending slavery in the territories, and against Congressional intervention with slavery, and would stand by the Baltimore and Cincinnati platforms of the Democratic party. He believed the best interests of the country were in the hope of the Democracy.

Mr. Douglas is a powerful debater, quick, ready at repartee, strong in his logic, and possessing that animal courage which is so necessary to the successful debater. Few men equal him in senatorial debate for rough power. There are many who surpa.s.s him in silvery eloquence, who excel him in winning, courteous debate, but no one in the present Senate who has quite his _force_ and overwhelming courage. In the debate, which we have abbreviated, Mr. Douglas was for hours--from noon till nine o'clock in the evening--obliged to defend himself against a half-dozen able and eloquent senators. His manner, his voice, were at times like that of a wounded lion--deep, strong and melancholy; but he fought to the last without a moment's thought of quailing.

Mr. Douglas has no sympathy with the anti-slavery sentiment of the free States, but plants himself upon his principle, and puts slavery and freedom upon the same footing. If the people want slavery, let them have it. If they want freedom--no interference in favor of slavery. This we understand to be his position, though some of his southern friends claim that he admits that the Supreme Court is bound to give slavery an existence _in all the territories_. In his New Orleans speech of last winter, Mr. Douglas is reported to have said:

"Whenever a territory has a climate, soil and production, making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will pa.s.s a slave code, and give it encouragement. Whenever the climate, soil and production preclude the possibility of slavery being profitable, they will not permit it. You come right back to the principle of dollars and cents. I do not care where the migration in the southern country comes from; if old Joshua R.

Giddings should raise a colony in Ohio, and settle down in Louisiana, he would be the strongest advocate for slavery in the whole South; he would find, when he got there, his opinion would be very much modified; he would find on those sugar plantations that it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile.

"He would say that, between the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of the negro. But, between the negro and the white man, he would go for the white man. The Almighty has drawn the line on this continent, on one side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor; on the other, by white labor. That line did not run on thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, for thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes runs over mountains and through valleys. But this slave line meanders in the sugar-fields and plantations of the South--[the remainder of the sentence was lost by the confusion around the reporter.] And the people living in their different localities and in the territories must determine for themselves whether their 'middle bed' is best adapted to slavery or free labor.

"Hence, under the Const.i.tution, there is no power to prevent a southern man going there with his slaves, more than a northern man."

Mr. Douglas is a man of very short stature, but of large body, and a frame and const.i.tution capable of great endurance. He lives in Was.h.i.+ngton half the year, where he has a handsome residence, and the other half in Illinois among his const.i.tuents, where he has a country mansion. The mother of Mr. Douglas, who was so faithful to him and whom he has never ceased to love and reverence, still lives, and has witnessed his rise from the cabinet-maker's shop to the senatorial chair.

SALMON P. CHASE.

Salmon Porland Chase was born in Cornish, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Jan. 13th, 1808. He was seven years old when his father removed to the town of Keene, where he attended the village school. In 1817 his father died, and two years later the boy, then only twelve years old, went to Worthington, Ohio. His uncle, Philander Chase, was then Bishop of Ohio, and he superintended the education of his nephew. Shortly after this, he entered Cincinnati College, of which inst.i.tution his uncle became president. He soon was promoted to the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s. After a year's residence in Cincinnati, he returned to New Hamps.h.i.+re and his mother's house; and, in 1824, entered the junior cla.s.s of Dartmouth College. He graduated in 1826. The following winter Mr. Chase went to the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, and opened a cla.s.sical school for boys. Among his pupils were the sons of Henry Clay, William Niel, and other distinguished men. Many of the citizens of Was.h.i.+ngton at this day well remember Mr. Chase's efforts as a teacher among them, and at that time learned to esteem and respect the man who has since risen to so high a position as a politician and statesman. He closed his school in 1829, and soon was admitted to the bar, having studied law under Mr. Niel while teaching his school, manifesting by his industry and courage that he was possessed of the qualities which must certainly in the end bring him position and reputation.

In 1830, Mr. Chase left Was.h.i.+ngton for Cincinnati, where he has always since resided, save when serving his State in an official capacity, and pursued his profession. He was poor, unknown, and before he could hope to attract the attention of the public, must earn his bread and endure months, if not years, of serious toil and drudgery. During these early years in his professional career, he prepared an edition of Statutes of Ohio, and a preliminary sketch of the history the State. The work made three large volumes, and at once became an authority in the courts. The authors.h.i.+p of this volume was a happy idea, for it not only brought him a moderate pecuniary reward directly, but it also gave him the ear of the people, and practice at once flowed in upon him.

In 1834, Mr. Chase became solicitor of the Bank of the United States in Cincinnati, and other corporations. In 1837, he first gave public utterance to his views upon the slavery question in its legal aspects.

The article in Appleton's Encylopdia upon Mr. Chase, which on many points is our authority in this sketch, gives the subjoined history of Mr. Chase's early legal arguments in reference to slavery:

"In 1837, Mr. Chase acted as counsel for a colored woman claimed as a fugitive slave and in an elaborate argument, afterward published, controverted the authority of Congress to impose any duties or confer any powers in fugitive slave cases on state magistrates, a position in which he has since been sustained by the U.S. Supreme Court; and maintained that the law of 1793, relative to fugitives from service, was void, because unwarranted by the Const.i.tution of the United States. The same year, in an argument before the Supreme Court of Ohio, in defence of James G. Birney, prosecuted under a State law for harboring a negro slave, Mr. Chase a.s.serted the doctrine that slavery is local, and independent on state law for existence and continuance, and insisted that the person alleged to have been harbored, having been brought within the territorial limits of Ohio by the individual claiming her as master, was thenceforth, in fact and by right, free.

In 1838, in a newspaper review of a report of the judiciary committee of the senate of Ohio against the granting of trial by jury to alleged slaves, Mr. Chase took the same ground as in his legal arguments. In 1846, he was a.s.sociated with the Hon. W. H. Seward as defendant's counsel in the case of Van Zandt, before the Supreme Court of the United States. The case excited much interest, and in a speech which attracted marked attention, Mr. Chase argued more elaborately the principles which he advanced in former cases, maintaining that under the ordinance of 1787 no fugitives from service could be reclaimed from Ohio, unless there had been an escape from one of the original States; that it was the clear understanding of the framers of the Const.i.tution, and of the people who adopted it, that slavery was to be left exclusively to the disposal of the several States, without sanction or support from the National Government; and that the clause of the Const.i.tution relative to persons held to service was one of compact between the States, and conferred no power of legislation on Congress, having been transferred from the ordinance of 1787, in which it conferred no power on the Confederation, and was never understood to confer any. He was subsequently engaged for the defence in the case of Driskell _vs._ Parish, before the U.S. Circuit Court at Columbus, and re-argued the same positions."