Download 32. The Collapse of Compromise

The Collapse of Compromise
The several causes of the Civil War converged on the Kansas Territory and on the
Senate Chairman of the Territory Committee, Stephen Douglas. In my mind, Douglas
bears more individual responsibility for the onset of war than any other person including
Harriet Beecher Stowe or John Brown, two other candidates often cited. Stephen
Douglas was a diminutive Democratic Senator from Illinois whose size and oratorical
skills earned him the nickname, “The Little Giant.” Prior to giving a speech he fired a
cannon he towed around behind his carriage for the purpose of gaining the attention of
the crowd. As a patriot and expansionist, Douglas embraced Manifest Destiny and said
the United States would help free the world from despotism.
The fault in all this rhetoric is its motive. Douglas envisioned organizing the
Kansas and Nebraska Territories, even though they had been set aside as reserves for
Indians, so that he could mobilize the nation to construct the first transcontinental railroad
through them. The railroad would connect with his home state of Illinois and turn
Chicago into the next phenomenal transportation hub in America.
The people of Illinois would always be so grateful as to elect him perpetually to
the Senate. The people of the United States would be so grateful as to elect him to the
presidency. All of this vision came true except for the presidency part. To accomplish
this vision, Douglas willfully destroyed the Missouri Compromise, a piece of 1820
legislation known in Douglas’s day as the Sacred Compact. When Douglas moved to
present a bill on the Nebraska Territory in order to set in motion his bid for the
presidency, he single-handedly led the destruction of the peace that had existed since the
Compromise of 1850.
The machinations surrounding these events in Congress are the climax of the
collapse of compromise by virtue of sectionalist oratory. Douglas downplayed the
erosion of the Missouri Compromise. William H. Seward, the abolitionist New York
Senator, highlighted the pro-slavery potential to his fellow Northerners. The Democrats
used the repeal of the Missouri Compromise to solidify their party prior to its fatal split
(in 1860). Douglas even got the Democratic President Franklin Pierce to label the
Missouri Compromise inconsistent with the hands-off policies of the Compromise of
1850.
The bill, called the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, received in 1854 unanimous support
from Southerners and enough Northern support to pass both houses of Congress and to
become the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Most Northerners, however, viewed the law as a
violation of the Sacred Compact of their forefathers and as a shameless surrender to slave
power for the personal ambition of one man. Douglas said, “I could travel from Boston
to Chicago [at night] by the light of my own effigy.” The Kansas-Nebraska Act, to be
specific, organized the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase into two territories and
determined that popular sovereignty would decide the slave question there. Before the
Congress could vote that in, they had to vote the Missouri Compromise out, or repeal it.
Ignoring the fact that Northerners had recently broken the spirit of the Sacred
Compact in the Compromise of 1850, several smaller political parties united to form
today’s Republican Party over indignation about the Kansas-Nebraska Act. By 1854,
therefore, the two major parties that make up today’s political system were born. By
1856 the Republicans were strong enough to run Colonel John C. Fremont against James
Buchanan. The hero of the Bear Flag Revolt in the Mexican War would have become
president if he had only won Pennsylvania and Illinois, but Buchanan was from
Pennsylvania, and we know who was from Illinois (cannon fires in the distance). There’s
another man from Illinois, however, who joined the Republican Party—the same tall
lawyer who had tried to slow down Polk and the Mexican War with Spot Resolutions.
Kansas became the focal point of the debate over slavery in the territories, and
most people realized the issue was going to be resolved there by numerical and physical
force. Speaking of force, the Indians of Kansas, some of whom had only recently been
pushed there, were ignored as a settlement boom displaced them again. When America
did notice tribes like the Sioux and the Cheyenne, it was because arrows were sticking
out of settlers’ flesh. Did you know that once you saw a Cheyenne warrior in the prairie,
he could fire thirty arrows at you as he advanced at full gallop from the horizon to where
you were standing?
Back to our story. David Atchison, a Senator from Missouri, told slave holders
that if “we lose Kansas, we lose Missouri. But if we win Kansas, we’ll get slavery to the
Pacific!” The whole South encouraged “Border Ruffians” from Missouri to harass freesoil settlers in neighboring Kansas. The New England Immigrant Aid Society helped one
thousand families settle in Kansas in an attempt to win the race on the popular
sovereignty vote. Some historians say, simply, that the Civil War began here in 1856 in
Kansas.
Terrorism certainly erupted. Pro-slavery forces sacked a settlement of “freesoilers” at Lawrence, Kansas. In retaliation, John Brown conducted the Pottawatomie
Creek Massacre. Brown, a fanatic who believed himself to be God’s Agent of Abolition,
along with his four sons and two others attacked five pro-slavery men and boys and
hacked them to pieces with broadswords.
When this news arrived in Washington, DC, the Senate went wild. Senators came
armed to the Senate Chamber. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts rose amidst the tension
and delivered a highly provocative and sexually suggestive speech where he lambasted
the South, pro-slavery Kansans, and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Preston Brooks,
Butler’s cousin, savagely beat Sumner so severely with his cane that it took Sumner three
years to recover. The South, when it heard of the Brooks-Sumner Affair, sent Brooks
more canes to replace the one he had broken.
The Union was threatened because both Pierce and Buchanan recognized the proslavery Kansas government when the majority of Kansans were opposed for the same
reasons that California and Oregon were. The fraudulent Kansas territorial government
had been set up with the help of 1,700 Missourians who crossed the border to vote
illegally. When pro-slavery crowds barred access to the polls, free-soilers abstained. The
Lecompton Constitution claimed that the popular sovereignty vote permitted slavery. In
the process of ratification, though, the electorate voted against it 10 to 1. Kansas became
a free state in 1861 after having joined the long list of causes of the Civil War and after
the loss of three hundred lives before Ft. Sumter was ever fired upon.
Protestant Christian denominations split as the 1850s stumbled on.
Denominations with the word “Southern” in them took that name and split off from their
Northern brethren in order to keep their slaves. The Whig party was gone, of course, and
the Democratic Party split North/South. There were no Southern Republicans. The
presidents of the ante-bellum period, however, had been mostly Southerners. This fact
resulted in the Supreme Court being packed with Southern Democrats as the third branch
of American government took the stage.
The first chance for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the slavery issue was the
case, Dred Scott v. Sanford. Furthermore, this case became the test case of the
constitutionality of the federal government’s controlling of slavery’s spread. Dred Scott
was a Missouri slave whose Army-surgeon master had taken him on their travels to both
a free state (Illinois) and to a free territory (Wisconsin). In 1857, abolitionists put Scott
up to suing his master for his freedom on the grounds that the moment they had entered
either free zone, he should have been released. The case drew national publicity.
Seven of the nine justices on the Supreme Court voted against Dred Scott. Roger
B. Taney, the Chief Justice, wrote the majority opinion with four major conclusions: 1)
Slavery was justified due to Negro inferiority—slaves had “no rights that a white man
was bound to respect;” 2) not even free blacks were citizens of the USA and therefore
Scott could not sue in the federal court system; 3) the Missouri Compromise had been
unconstitutional because it threatened the private property of citizens; and 4) popular
sovereignty was also unconstitutional because it, too, could discriminate. Despite this
last blow to the Southern and Democratic agenda, the South was jubilant at the decision
of the Supreme Court as was James Buchanan. The Supreme Court had just declared the
platform of the Republican Party unconstitutional!
Abraham Lincoln became the champion of the Republican Party. Years earlier as
a young man he would sit staring into the fire for hours, thinking. When asked what he
was thinking about, he would respond with something like, “Why, the dissolution of the
Union,” or “The legalization of slavery again everywhere.” When people looked
confused, he would ask, “Don’t you ever think of these things?” Remember, Lincoln was
neither an abolitionist nor one who thought the white and black races were equal. He did
think the South would rid itself of slavery if not permitted to spread it. Therefore, he
believed in the Republican Party’s platform and became a Republican when his Whig
party collapsed.
Lincoln was brought to national attention in 1858 in the Illinois Senate race
because he ran against Stephen Douglas. The country watched this race because it was
thought Douglas would win the presidency in 1860. The tall Republican and the short
Democrat squared off in debates across Illinois known to history as the Lincoln-Douglas
debates. The history of this clash reveals a great deal about the candidates but also about
America then and now. Crowds gathered to hear Douglas’s oratory and Lincoln’s
country wit and listened for seven hours on end. Does that tell you what television has
done to our attention span?
Lincoln was launched into national prominence for his homespun wisdom and
wit. Douglas once stated that he had seen Lincoln selling liquor at the State Fair.
Lincoln responded, “Well, yes, Judge Douglas—I was selling liquor, but you were
buying.” When a reporter questioned Lincoln about the charge of being two-faced,
Lincoln merely replied, “Son, do you think if the Good Lord gave me two faces that I’d
be wearing this one?” When asked about his being estranged from his wife’s family, he
said, “God only needs one “d” in his name, the Todds needed two.”
All joking aside, Lincoln said Douglas’s position as the champion of popular
sovereignty revealed that the Senator was morally indifferent to slavery. Douglas said
Lincoln was a radical who would destroy the Union. Lincoln said if he were elected he
would rather be assassinated than to see one star removed from the flag. Lincoln’s
national reputation became one of a fixed purpose while respecting the United States
Constitution and equal rights (not equality). But Lincoln lost the election for the Senate
in 1858, one of his many political and personal failures.
Then, the world caved in. John Brown led twenty men into the South pulling a
wagon with at least 1,000 rifles purchased by Northern sympathizers. On October 16,
1859, the terrorists seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in order to get
more weapons with which to arm the slaves who would rise up to join John Brown’s
Raid, as it was called. Interestingly, Robert E. Lee commanded the force of soldiers sent
to put down this insurrection. Several of Brown’s men, including some of his own sons,
were killed, and Brown was mortally wounded. Before he could die of his wounds,
however, he was tried for treason. He was portrayed in a painting on the way to the
gallows stooping over to kiss a black infant held up to him by a slave mother. Whether
this happened or not, I don’t know, but he did put a note in one of his guard’s hands that
read, “I, John Brown, am now convinced that the guilty stains of this land can’t be
washed away but by blood.”
John Brown became a martyr to the “armchair” abolitionists. The South thought
he was Satanic. While Lincoln and others denounced Brown’s actions, the South said,
“Brown’s invasion was condemned in the North only because it failed.” As the Election
of 1860 neared, the South pushed to revive the African slave trade. The United States
Constitution was caught in the middle of sectionalism’s deadly dilemma. The South and
the Democrats said the Constitution protected the rights of property owners even in the
territories and pushed for a federal slave code. The Republicans of the North said the
Constitution mandated that the USA had a duty to prevent the spread of an institution
based on human bondage. This tension is the epitome of the phrase, “irreconcilable
difference”. All President Buchanan could do was to propose an amendment to the
Constitution that would once and for all legalize slavery.
Four men ran for the presidency in 1860 which launched the first nationwide
speaking campaigns. Stephen Douglas ran for the Northern Democrats on a platform of
popular sovereignty. He lost and died within the year. The Southern Democrats ran John
C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, a pro-slavery candidate who also lost and went on to be a
General for the Confederate Army. John Bell of Tennessee pronounced all the other
candidates crazy and founded the Constitutional Union Party which won the two states,
interestingly, that saw the most fighting of any during the Civil War—Tennessee and
Virginia—but he lost, too.
Abraham Lincoln ran for the Republicans but was not even on the ballot in ten
Southern states. He won with less than 40% of the popular vote and humbly began to
push for the Republican Platform which included the Homestead Act, protective tariffs,
the transcontinental railroad, and blocking the spread of slavery (not abolition). This last
plank of the Platform caused Lincoln to speak against the last-ditch effort to stave off war
known as the Crittenden Compromise. John Crittenden proposed that an “un-amendable
amendment to the Constitution” should draw the 36˚ 30΄ line to the sea. Lincoln didn’t
like it because it would permit slavery to spread even into Southern California. A sad
taste of what was to come is the fact that John Crittenden’s two sons both fought in the
Civil War as generals, one for the Union and one for the Confederacy.
The South made it known that if their Northern brethren were going to elect a
“baboon” like Lincoln to the presidency, they wanted nothing more to do with the
country. South Carolina was the first to secede on December 20, 1860. The lame-duck
President Buchanan did nothing to stop them, so Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Texas all left the Union by February 1, 1861. They denied that Lincoln
was not abolitionist and said the North was populous enough to impose abolition on the
South because of majority rule. Lincoln actually proposed that the federal government
should buy all of the slaves of the South at market value, an idea that caused his Cabinet
and Congress to doubt his sanity. America later discovered that Lincoln’s compensation
strategy would have been much cheaper than the cost of the Civil War.
On a literary note, another book came out the same year as Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Herman Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick, despite what your English teacher might tell
you, is not about whaling. Instead, Ishmael’s journey is the story of America’s Tower of
Babel. In Captain Ahab we see that if a man or a crew or a nation sets out to pursue the
impossible with no restraints, it will mean the destruction of everything that man or crew
or country holds dear, including his or their or its own life. What, or who is the white
whale? All I know is that when Melville told his friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, about
Moby Dick, he said, “I have written a wicked book.”