"Anyone who thought that Fillmore lacked spine was now disabused"

I have explained in a number of previously published posts how Millard Fillmore's firm and decisive actions in early August 1850 formed the basis for resolution of the crisis that had been building for four years, ever since David Wilmot had introduced his fateful Proviso in August 1846.  In a nutshell (see the posts linked above for more detail), the newly-installed president made clear to the State of Texas that the federal government would fight if state forces attacked the New Mexico territory.

In his newly-published book America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union, Fergus M. Bordewich points out the guts that this move took:

The following day, August 6 [1850], Fillmore sent his own message to Congress.  [Secretary of State Daniel] Webster may have contributed to it, but to give the president his due, anyone who thought that Fillmore lacked spine was now disabused.  A weak man might well have capitulated to the Texans: Fillmore dug in his well-polished boots.  The president declared unequivocally that New Mexico was federal territory, and that Texas enjoyed no rights or powers beyond her state limits.  "If Texas militia march into any of other States or into any Territory of the United States, there to execute or enforce any law of Texas, they become at that moment trespassers; they are no longer under the protection of any lawful authority, and are to be regarded merely as intruders," he declared.  Should the laws of the United States be opposed or obstructed in any way, it was his duty as commander-in-chief to employ the armed forces as they were needed.

The response to Fillmore's message, especially from northerners in Congress, was highly favorable; from Newport [Rhode Island], Henry Clay sent a telegram offering the president his full support.  The sleekly groomed Fillmore might not be the soldier that hard-edged [Zachary] Taylor had been, but his meaning was equally unmistakable: the United States was ready to go to war.

The president's message shifted the focus from the California issue to Texas-New Mexico.  And the combination of the president's "stick" and the "carrot" represented by the Texas bond bill did the trick:

The real question was: what would [the two Texas senators, Thomas Jefferson Rusk and Sam Houston] do?  Without their support, no compromise would work. . . .  Both . . . knew that federal troops were en route to New Mexico, that the president was firmly committed to resist an invasion, and that without the camouflage of the Omnibus Texas stood no chance of winning congressional recognition for its entire elephantine claim.  Some Texans were also having second thoughts.  "It is unpleasant to impoverish the state and tax our people with insupportable burthens to make war against the U.S. although it is as we all know on our soil," one uneasy constituent wrote to Rusk.

It was over within a matter of days.  On August 9 Rusk and Houston announced their support for the Texas-New Mexico measures.  That day, Stephen Douglas' motion for a third reading of the bill squeaked by, 27 to 24.  "[T]he Texans had tipped the balance."  The final vote on the bill, later that evening, "was decisive, if anticlimactic": 30 votes to 20.

About the illustration at the top, entitled Capability and Availability:

Sharply critical of both the Democratic and Whig choice of presidential candidates in 1852, the artist laments the nomination of two soldiers, Winfield Scott (center) and Franklin Pierce (far right), in preference to several more "capable" statesmen who appear at left. The latter are (left to right): Samuel Houston, John J. Crittenden, Thomas Hart Benton, Millard Fillmore, John Bell, Lewis Cass, Stephen A. Douglas, and Daniel Webster. Most prominent in the group are Fillmore, Cass, and Webster, who also sought the presidential nomination in 1852. Fillmore: "I have sought more anxiously to do what was right; than what would please, and feel no disappointment, at finding that my Conduct has, rendered me an unavailable candidate." Cass: "We have been partizans where we differed in opinions as to the best means of promoting the prosperity and happiness of our native land, but we cast aside, party when we stood Shoulder, to Shoulder, for the Constitution & the Union." Webster: "It is not our fortune to be, or to have been successful Millitary Chieftains. We are nothing but painstaking, hardworking, drudging Civilians, giving our life, and health, and strength, to the maintenance of the Constitution and upholding the liberties of our country." Columbia, draped in stars and stripes and grasping the hands of Scott and Pierce, responds: "I acknowledge your noble services, worth and Constant devotion most Illustrious sons, and that you have the long experience, Sound sense and practical wisdom which fit you to receive the highest honor in my power to bestow, but you are "not Available." " "Availability," in the contemporary lexicon, meant the quality of broad popular appeal. Scott and Pierce were both distinguished in the Mexican War. Scott, holding a liberty staff and Phrygian cap, proclaims: "You see Gentlemen it is "availability" that is required and that is "my" qualification." Pierce holds a shield adorned with stars and stripes, adding, "I am a "Great" man and have done the country "Great" Service! I never knew it before; but it "must be so;" for the Convention has declared it, and the Democracy affirm it." Before his nomination by the Democratic convention of 1852, Pierce was a relatively little known New Hampshire attorney--a fact which Whig publicists tended to exaggerate. Pierce had, after all, served as a two-term congressman and senator from New Hampshire.

"The Top 100 Influential Figures in American History"

Apart from poor Millard, whom I didn't expect to make the new Atlantic list, several others immediately spring to mind as worthy of consideration. In more or less chronological order:

Andrew Jackson may have been the figurehead, but it was Martin Van Buren who invented the Democratic Party and the Second Party System, then abandoned the party he had created to serve as the presidential candidate for the first non-trivial anti-slavery party, the precursor to the Republican Party.

Daniel Webster's stirring oratory focused and inspired among a generation of Americans unionist sentiment that they would rise to defend when the crisis came.

Abolitionists get all the press, but it was David Wilmot who rose in the House in 1846 to move the famous Proviso that set the country on the road to Civil War.

After crafting and pushing through Congress the Compromise legislation of 1850 that averted civil war for ten years, Stephen A. Douglas's decisions to introduce the Kansas-Nebraska Act and later oppose the Lecompton Constitution gave birth to the Republican Party and placed it on the road to victory in 1860, sparking the war he sought to avoid.

Ann Althouse's musings on the list are worth your time.

About the illustration, entitled Marriage of the Free Soil and Liberty Parties (1848):

A comic portrayal of the alliance between Free Soil Democrats and Whigs and the more extremist abolitionist Liberty party interests during the election campaign of 1848. The factions joined to form the Free Soil party and nominated a presidential candidate in a convention at Buffalo in August. That union is lampooned here as the wedding of Free Soil presidential candidate Martin Van Buren (center left) and a ragged black woman (center right). Van Buren ally Benjamin F. Butler presides over the "marriage." Van Buren, reluctant to embrace the aged bride, is shoved forward by antislavery editor Horace Greeley (left), who says, "Go, Matty, and kiss the bride That is an indispensable part of the ceremony." Van Buren's son John (far left, here called "John Van Barnburner") also urges him on, "Walk up, dad. You can hold your breath till the ceremony is over, and after that you can do what you please." Van Buren says, "I find that politics, as well as poverty, make one acquainted with strange bedfellows." In contrast, the woman beckons with open arms, "Come here, my flower. You is a great stranger, and I want to get acquainted wid you." A black man behind her says of Van Buren, "I nebber hab berry good pinion ob the gemman; but if he ax pardon for all he hab done and said agin us, I will shake hands wid de genman." A black woman (further right) remarks, "Mercy on me! How bashful he is!" Butler, with arms raised and book in one hand, intones, "Who giveth this man to be married to this woman?"

The Antecedents of the Freeport Doctrine

In Parties, Slavery, and the Union in Antebellum Georgia, Anthony Gene Carey points out that the "idea that territorial legislatures could exclude slavery by hostile inaction" was circulating in Georgia long before Stephen A. Douglas made it famous at Freeport, Illinois. All of the quotes within the paragraph date to August and September 1856:

Many Democrats considered quibbling over different interpretations of popular sovereignty a futile exercise. "If the majority of the people of a Territory have the right to fix the character of their domestic institutions," the Millidgeville Federal Union asked, "what practical difference will it make either to the North or to the South whether the will of the majority is expressed through a Territorial Legislature or a [state constitutional] convention; will not the results in both cases be the same?" Union Democrat and former congressman Junius Hillyer considered it "a waste of time for us to be splitting hairs, and drawing legal distinctions, for slavery will exist in Kansas just as the legislature of the territory may be in favor of it or opposed to it." To exist anywhere, the Athens Southern Banner declared, the institution of slavery needed "laws to protect it." If the people of a territory opposed slavery, their legislature could easily exclude it by refusing to enact the necessary laws to protect slave property.

About the illustration, entitled Congressional Surgery, Legislative Quackery:

A rare anti-North satire, probably dealing with either the Crittenden Compromise or the Douglas Compromise. Proposed in December 1860 in the form of several constitutional amendments, the former called for restoration of the Missouri Compromise line and prohibition of slavery north of it. Stephen Douglas's compromise, an alternative proposed immediately thereafter, offered two similar amendments but also advocated settlement of the slavery issue by popular sovereignty. "Congressional Surgery" reflects the viewpoint of the lower South, which rejected both compromises. "Doctor North" (Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens) sits with hands folded in a chair at left, a young black crouching beside him. On the doctor's desk rests a wooden leg labeled "Constitutional Amendment." The Doctor says, "Help you! Of Course! We will first, with your assistance, take you off your legs, & then fix you up nicely on these Constitutional Amendments." His patient "South," a tall bearded man with his left arm in a sling, replies, "Can't see it." Behind the desk are several crutches and bookshelves holding a bottle of "Black Draught" and a skull.

The Democratic Convention, Charleston 1861

In a recent comment, James referred to the motivations of southern radicals who broke up the Democratic convention in Charleston in April 1860. Did they divide the party to improve the chances of Abraham Lincoln's election and secession, and if so why?

In response I punted. I did so because I'm not even sure that the radicals intended to achieve the result they did.

The conclusion that radicals intentionally conspired to split the Democratic convention is not open-and-shut. J. Mills Thornton, in his magnificent Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1860, denied that William Lowndes Yancy, at least, was a participant:

Yancy, in short, did not go to Charleston with the purpose of disrupting the American Democracy. He went with the purpose of nudging the party a bit further along the road to an open acceptance of southern equality.

I am, frankly, not convinced that Prof. Thornton is correct. But the conclusion of a man as knowledgeable as Prof. Thornton is not to be taken lightly. In my mind, at least, the jury is still out.

About the illustration, entitled Dancing for Eels in the Charleston Market:

The artistic inspiration for this Vanity Fair cartoon is a well-known lithograph first produced in 1848 by James and Eliphalet Brown to advertise Frank Chan Frau’s popular play "New York As It Is." There are slightly different versions of the lithograph, which is entitled "Jack, A Negro and Dancer for Eels" or simply "Dancing for Eels." The lithograph is based on an earlier folk drawing called "Dancing for Eels, 1820 Catharine Market."

Catharine’s Fish Market was located at the Catharine Street boardwalk by New York Harbor in a working-class area of New York City. The original drawing is based on a time when slaves from New Jersey were sent to Manhattan to sell their masters’ produce at the "Bear Market." (Because New Jersey’s emancipation law was implemented gradually, the state still had some slaves circa 1820.) The slaves were then joined at Catharine Market by free blacks from the city. If they were unable to win money at gambling, the black men would literally dance for the eels or fish sold at Catharine Market. Such a sight was typical of the theatrical nature of street culture in 19th-century New York City.

In this Vanity Fair cartoon Stephen Douglas, the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, assumes the role of the dancing black man. The artist moves the market from Catharine Street to Charleston, South Carolina, the site of the first 1860 Democratic National Convention. As Douglas performs, he is surrounded by major Democratic politicians dressed in various working-class attire. They are (clockwise) President James Buchanan (1), former president Franklin Pierce (2), former Virginia Governor Henry Wise (5), Senator Robert M. T. Hunter (4), and Senator Jefferson Davis (3). Hunter, a challenger to Douglas for the nomination, is depicted as a slave woman with a basket of eels on her head.

Jefferson Davis's Freeport Doctrine

I recently posted, in the form of a quiz, a quote from a speech delivered by Jefferson Davis in Portland, Maine on September 11, 1858 in which the former Secretary of War and then current Senator from Mississippi made a point identical to that expressed by Senator Stephen A. Douglas the prior month in a debate with one Abraham Lincoln in Freeport, Illinois.

Here's Douglas:

The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is, Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution. Mr Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a Slave Territory or a Free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point.

And here's Davis:

If the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to the difficulty of holding it without such protection.

In the case of property in the labor of man, or what is usually called slave property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the case, from taking slave property into a territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction.

So much for the oft repeated fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community.

William W. Freehling describes the aftermath. Not unexpectedly, Davis's remarks generated anger and suspicion in his home state. In November 1858, Davis appeared before the Mississippi legislature to explain himself and to execute a “guarded retreat.”

“The difference between us is . . . wide,” [Davis explained] for I only conceded that “all property requires protection,” or it cannot be “held.” Douglas sees no governmental obligation to protect. But I know that a hostile community's power to free a slave generates not “a right to destroy but an obligation to protect.”

Davis did not explain what form the “obligation to protect” should take until eight months later. In a speech to the Democratic state convention in July 1859, he laid out a surprisingly moderate position. Protection of slavery in the territories did not require Congressional enactment of a slave code unless legal remedies failed:

Davis there declared that courts could prevent a hostile community from robbing a slaveholder. Thus our “right to protection does not necessarily involve the enactment of additional laws.” Maybe someday, if courts fail a slaveholder, we may need congressional protection. We must now claim our right to national protective laws in that possible future contingency. But as for Northern Democrats' fear that we now demand a national slave code, “you know it to be utterly unfounded and . . . absurd.”

Consistent with his stated approach, on February 2, 1860 Senator Davis submitted to the Senate a series of seven resolutions concerning slavery and slavery in the territories. As modified by Davis on March 1, 1860, the key resolutions provided that a slave code was not necessary at present, although it might be in the future:

4. 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.

5. Resolved, That if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary and executive authority do not possess means to insure adequate protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, and if the territorial government shall fail or refuse to provide the necessary remedies for that purpose it will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency.

The Senate passed Davis's resolutions on May 25, 1860. The vote in favor of the key 5th Resolution was a surprisingly lopsided 35 to 2.

Isn't the advertisement at the top of the post, which was printed in Washington, DC in 1860, wonderful? Apart from the fact that it refers to Jefferson Davis, it's irrelevant to the subject matter of the post, but I couldn't resist.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act Makes the News!

One of my favorite political commentators, Michael Barone, compares the odious Obamacare legislation to the Kansas-Nebraska Act:

It's time to blow the whistle on two erroneous statements that opponents and proponents of the health care legislation being jammed through Congress have been making. Republicans have been saying that never before has Congress passed such an unpopular bill with such important ramifications by such a narrow majority. Barack Obama has been saying that passage of the bill will mean that the health care issue will be settled once and for all.

The Republicans and Obama are both wrong. But perhaps they can be forgiven because the precedent for Congress passing an unpopular bill is an old one, and the issue it addressed has long been settled, though not by the legislation in question.

That legislation was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Its lead sponsor was Stephen A. Douglas, at 41 in his eighth year as senator from Illinois, the most dynamic leader of a Democratic Party that had won the previous presidential election by 254 electoral votes to 42.

ADDENDUM: Scott Johnson at Powerline points out that the Claremont Review of Books had made available Harry Jaffa's essay entitled Lincoln in Peoria in light of Barone's column.

"Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil"

Having posted several quibbles concerning minor inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Jonathan H. Earle’s Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854, I thought I should make sure that the record is clear: this is an eye-opening book.

The growth of the anti-slavery (or more properly anti-slavery extension) movement in the north in the decades before the Civil War is generally thought of as a Whiggish phenomenon. Whiggish types, absorbing via the Second Great Awakening the evangelical morality that also gave rise to the temperance campaign, increasingly came to regard slavery as a sin and moral blot on the body of the Republic. Yes, there may have been a few oddball Democrats who saw the light and ultimately tagged along, but for the most part northern Democrats seemed to be amoral at best: Lewis Cass inventing popular sovereignty, Franklin Pierce, Stephen Douglas and James Buchanan generally toadying to the south and the southern wing of their party.

Professor Earle sets out to correct this misimpression. In fact, a number of Democrats led the way in identifying slavery and the slave power as enemies. One of the delights of the book lies in meeting and getting to know previously unknown or indistinct political figures: Thomas Morris of Ohio and Preston King of New York (both of whom I have discussed before); John P. Hale, who unexpectedly precipitated a dramatic political realignment in New Hampshire, previously the “South Carolina of the North”; Marcus Morton of Massachusetts; and even David Wilmot, otherwise a vague figure who in most narratives mysteriously appears out of nowhere, only to disappear again into the mist.

More importantly, Professor Earle explores why there seems to have been a correlation between radical, hard-money, anti-Bank Democrats and opposition to the expansion of slavery. One key, he argues, was the tendency of radical democrats to perceive conspiratorial coalitions of interests that threatened to dominate yeoman farmers and urban proletariat: manufacturers who clamored for high tariffs, monopolistic corporations that shielded capitalists from ordinary rules of individual liability, and most famously the Monster Bank.

With a little squinting, Professor Earle suggests, slaveholders could look a lot like an aristocratic special interest. In an earlier post, I quoted from an 1839 speech by Senator Thomas Morris (Dem – Ohio), in which he not only drew the parallel but argued that the Bank Power and the Slave Power had joined forces:

But all will not do; these two powers must now be united; an amalgamation of the black power of the South with the white power of the North must take place, as either, separately, cannot succeed in the destruction of the liberty of speech and the press and the right of petition. Let me tell gentlemen that both united will never succeed. As I said on a former day, God forbid that they should ever rule this country. I have seen this billing and cooing between these different interests for some time past; I informed my private friends . . . that these powers were forming a union to overthrow the present [Van Buren] Administration . . ..

* * *

[T]he assertion has gone forth that we have twelve hundred millions of slave property at the South; and can any man so close his understanding here as not plainly to perceive tht the power of this vast amount of property at the South is now uniting itself to the banking power of the North, in order to govern the destinies of this country? Six hundred millions of banking capital is to be brought into this coalition, and the slave power and the bank power are thus to unite in order to break down the present Administration. There can be no mistake, as I believe, in this matter. The aristocracy of the North, who, by the power of a corrupt banking system, and the aristocracy of the South, by the power of the slave system, both fattening upon the labor of others, are now about to unite in order to make the reign of each perpetual. Is there an independent American to be found who will become the recreant slave to such an unholy combination? Is this another compromise to barter the liberties of the country for personal aggrandizement? “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

Almost ten years later, Pennsylvania Democrat David Wilmot spoke in similar terms:

“The gallant and true men who fought the battle of popular rights against privilege and monopoly – who aided in crushing the monster bank, and wresting from the grasp of eastern capital the hard earnings of labor, will never fight the battles of slavery propagandism” [Wilmot declared]. Again investing the rhetoric of antislavery with an older brand derived from the pen of William Leggett, Wilmot insisted that since southern capital had “a thousand millions of dollars invested in slaves,” the current struggle, like the bank war in the 1830s, was best viewed as one between “capital and labor.”

But what seems to given urgency to the threat presented by the Slave Power was the concept of Free Soil, which Professor Earle asserts is the crucial and overlooked component of the “free soil, free labor, free men” trilogy. Free Soil was not, Professor Earle argues, simply a “synonym for [the] more developed concept of free labor, an ideology . . . closely linked with the rise of capitalism in the North. . . . [M]any Free Soilers . . . came from remote rural areas or radical labor backgrounds and felt nothing but contempt for Whiggish free-labor views.”

The term originally referred to land reform: “the free distribution of the public lands to poor settlers, in the form of inalienable homesteads.” Although containing slavery was an incidental benefit, the scheme also enhanced democracy (more of those Jeffersonian yeoman farmers), reduced unemployment and raised wages, and attacked privileged land monopolists and speculators.

In time, however, “the Free Soil ideology [evolved] from a program for land reform to a bulwark against slavery expansion.” It was precisely the elusiveness of the phrase that made Free Soil so politically potent:

During the 1840s and 1850s, homesteads became unalterably fused with the issue of slavery expansion . . .. This link underscored Free Soil’s rhetorical elusiveness and ambiguity. The potent term was appropriated by a host of other groups, movements, and political parties, including the Free Soil Party and, later, the Republicans. No matter who appropriated it, however, Free Soil always potentially implied the double meaning . . .: land free of charge and at the same time free of slavery. Free Soil managed to speak directly to the anxieties of poor or vulnerable northern whites, creating a new source of support for limiting slavery’s expansion.

The radical Democratic critique of slavery was thus very different from the moral and religious foundations of abolitionism and abolition-based political organizations such as the Liberty Party. The emphasis on Free Soil and the Slave Power also focused the political debate squarely on the territories.

The genius of the Free Soil and Republican parties was to incorporate the double meaning of Free Soil – and its radical Democratic message – into their platforms. By doing so they were able to broaden their base to include large numbers of Democrats who became convinced that their former party had become “a tool of the slaveholding oligarchy.” These Democrats, moreover, often came from hardscrabble rural districts that had consistently resisted the lure of the Whigs -- areas such as New York's "Passed-Over District" and the Wilmot District of Pennsylvania. It is no accident that in 1862 the Republican Party produced the Homestead Act as well as the Emancipation Proclamation.

Quibbles and all, Professor Earle's book is excellent. Highly recommended.

About the illustration:

An election-year satire favoring Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren in the 1848 presidential contest. A long-legged John Van Buren carries his father piggyback through Salt River, heading toward the White House on the far shore. "Matty" says, "Thanks to your long legs, John, I believe that I shall pass over this Jordan dry shod." The younger Van Buren assures his father, "Hold on Dad & I'll put you through." Meanwhile, abolitionist editor Horace Greeley and candidates Taylor and Clay are having a more difficult time fording the river. Clay is immersed head first, leaving only his legs visible. Taylor is neck-deep in the water. Greeley yells to Kentucky Whig leader Cassius M. Clay, seated on the near bank, "Help, Cassius, or I Sink." Clay replies, "Can't come there, Horace, I risked my life in Mexico, & I don't like to do it again." (Cassius Clay was a hero of the recent Mexican War).

Some Thoughts on the Compromise of 1850

I was struck by this observation by Jonathan H. Earle:

Without the lifeblood of constant agitation to nourish its ranks, the Free Soil movement languished in the years between the compromise [of 1850] and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

* * *

When the 1852 votes were counted, the Free Democrats were pummeled in every quarter, even where they had done well four years before. With the exhausted David Wilmot in retirement, voters in Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District voted overwhelmingly for [Franklin] Pierce . . .

* * *

For fourteen months after the 1852 election, Free Soil -- as a movement, an ideology, and a party -- was practically moribund. Then on January 4, 1854, the diminutive Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill . . ..

The quote highlights the fact that, in many ways, the Compromise of 1850 was a striking success. 150 years later, a combination of hindsight and the tendency of events to get telescoped together makes it appear that the Compromise was doomed from the start. The history of the late 1840s and 1850s is often portrayed as a series of waves cresting ever higher as the flood tide of discord rushes in and eventually envelops the country (or, as David M. Potter has put it, "a kind of a vortex, whirling the country in ever narrower circles and more rapid revolutions into the pit of war"). But the men who crafted the Compromise did not, and could not, know that.

Even so great an historian as Professor Potter, who repeatedly emphasizes the contingency of history, sometimes falls into the trap. While admitting that "[a]ntislavery men were profoundly discouraged" after the Compromise, and that "outward appearances all indicated that the national yearning for harmony would banish the slavery issue from politics," he also refers to "the futility of the Compromise" and "the shibboleth of 'finality' as a slogan."

Professor Potter contends "that the sectional rapprochement" during the post-Compromise years "did not rest on broad or deep foundations." But if that is so, it only emphasizes the remarkable job done by those who constructed the Compromise. For ten crucial years the Compromise withstood a series of unforeseen and unforeseeable blows -- from Bloody Kansas and Lecompton to the caning of Sumner and Dred Scott -- that would have felled a less sturdy structure.

About the illustration:

A crudely drawn satire bitterly attacking Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Pierce and appealing to the "Freemen of America." The print, possibly executed by a free black, criticizes the Democrats' platform, as established by the Baltimore Convention, which in the interest of preserving the Union endorsed the Compromise of 1850. More specifically the artist condemns Pierce's pledge to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, included in the compromise as a submission to southern slaveholding interests. In the center Pierce prostrates himself before a "Slave holder & Peace Maker," a bearded man in wide-brimmed hat and striped trousers holding a cat-o-nine-tails and manacles. The upper half of Pierce is over the Mason Dixon line, his face in the dirt on the "Baltimore Platform." The slaveholder says: "Save the Union, / And with the "meanest" Yankee grease / Smear the hinges of your knees / And in "silence" pray for peace." Pierce, dubbed "one of the Southern "dirt" eaters "Saving" the Union," replies, "I accept this cheerfully." The Democratic platform is labeled "Southern pine" and is inscribed with reference to the compromise, "Fugitive Slave Law and nigger catching, and resist agitation on the Slavery question &c." On it lie a skull and crossbones, manacles, and a serpent. At far left is "the Devil come up to attend his revival," who commends, "Well done my faithful servants!" On the right is the infamous Hungarian general Julius von Haynau, who carries a whip and wears a "Barclay's Brewery" pitcher on his head. (Haynau was assaulted by Barclay employees while in England.) The Hungarian extends his hand toward the slaveholder, saying, "I feel quite at home in this company give me your hand my good fellow." Further to the right are Lewis Cass and Stephen A. Douglas, disappointed aspirants for the 1852 Democratic nomination. Cass says, "We are down Douglass, "Pierce" has bid lower than either of us." Douglas: "There is nothing impossible for a New Hampshire "Hunker" [i.e., conservative] Democrat to do in that line." On the ground nearby are the words, "the "slave&1ocratic miscalled the Democratic party, how they obey the "crack" of the slaveholder's whip!"

"The same interest still desires its further extension"

When we last visited with Senator Preston King, he was mid-way through his January 5, 1847 speech providing “a personal explanation” of his bill that in effect re-introduced the Wilmot Proviso, which had died in the Senate at the end of the previous term of Congress in August 1846. Let us now pick up where we left off.

The “brave and patriotic generation who achieved our independence and established the republic,” King maintained, “did not hesitate” to pass “the ordinance of July, 1787, by which slavery . . . was forever prohibited” in the old Northwest Territory. And it was that one Act that had allowed “young men with their axes” to create “powerful Commonwealths” there “within the memory of a single generation, free, populous and flourishing.” Would Americans abandon this heritage and this lesson, and allow free territory to be converted into lands dominated by combinations of wealthy slaveholders and degraded by slave labor?

Shall we hesitate to do the same thing for territory where slavery does not now exist? I trust not. The man who has wealth or credit, to purchase a plantation, and becomes the owner of slaves, may settle and reside without social degradation in a country where slavery exists. Not so with the laboring white man. He cannot go without social degradation, and he therefore will not go. He is excluded quite as effectually as he could be by law. The mere presence of slavery, wherever it exists, degrades the condition, the respectability, the character of labor. A false and mischievous public opinion regarding the condition and respectability of labor is produced by its presence; and false and recreant to his race and to his constituency would be any Representative of free white labor upon a condition of social equality with the labor of the black slave; equally false would he be who, upon any pretence, should, by inaction and evasion of the question, produce the same degrading result.

For the most part, despite his withering attack on the institution of slavery, King restrained himself from directly attacking southerner legislators. This, however, did slip out (emphasis added):

This principle [in the proposed bill] excludes slavery from any territory which may hereafter be added to this country. This principle I deem to be of vital importance, and should be very much gratified if it could receive the unanimous assent and approbation of Congress. This, however, I do not expect. The same interest which pertinaciously insisted upon extending slavery over Texas, still desires, I apprehend, its further extension.

King then addressed the contention that “the people themselves” should decide whether to permit slavery – in effect, the Popular Sovereignty doctrine later developed by Lewis Cass and Stephen Douglas. King branded the idea as “unsound and false.” Unless forbidden by statute, slavery would inevitably spread:

If left alone, slaves more or less will be carried to the new territory, and if the country while it remains a territory should be settled by a population holding slaves, the new, and additional question of abolition is presented, and in order to get a free State slavery must first be abolished. This embarrassment in a new community, without means to indemnify its owners, would be an obstacle almost insurmountable, and the new State would be very far from being free to choose between becoming a free State or a slave State.

King briefly and unconvincingly tried to argue that the converse was not true: establishment of territory as free did not of exclude the possibility that a slave state might result; it simply permitted the people of the territory to make the decision “unembarrassed by any pecuniary interests or questions of vested right.” However, he soon dropped this evasion, maintaining that it “must be obvious to all” “that the character of the population in the Territory will determine the character of the State, when that Territory shall be erected into a State.”

If the Territory has a slave population of one one-fourth or one-fifth of the whole number, it will be a slave State. If a free population while a Territory, it will be a free State. Exclude slavery from all territory not within the limits of a State, and I am willing the Territory shall determine for itself, when it becomes a State, what shall be its character.

King concluded by urging Congress “to make this free principle a law” to avoid planting slavery upon free territory:

I desire the adoption of the free principle, because I believe it to be just to the free States, just to the white men who fight our battles, and who constitute the strength of the country in peace or war; because I believe it to be consistent with the principles of our Government, and because I believe it will tend to improve the condition and character of labor in the whole country. And who will deny that, in a republic, it should be one of the chief objects of Government to elevate and dignify the condition and character of labor?

About the illustration:

A mock triumphal procession ridiculing "Loco Foco" or radical Democratic support of candidates James K. Polk and George M. Dallas. The Loco Focos are portrayed as ragged Irishmen, carrying the two candidates on a rail. Polk, holding tight to the rail, remarks, "It appears to me, friend Dallas that there is a wonderful democratic simplicity in the honors which are paid us!" Dallas, holding tight to Polk, replies, "It is true, friend Polk, that, on this occasion we shall find no difficulty in bearing our blushing honors meekly." One of the rail bearers exclaims, "Glory to those whom the people delight to honor!!!" The procession is led by a man in knee-breeches holding a weathervane with a tiny figure of incumbent President John Tyler on its tip. The man complains, "Bedad, I can't carry you [i.e., Tyler] if you turn with every flaw of wind." Two blacks, playing fife and drums, bring up the rear.

The Head of Preston Brooks's Cane

I’ve really enjoyed looking around the website devoted to Isaac Bassett and his unpublished recollections concerning his sixty-four years of service in the Senate (1831-1895). Here’s another account that grabbed my attention.

Although the Senate was not in session when Rep. Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner, Bassett was in the Senate chamber when Brooks entered on May 22, 1856. As a result, Bassett was an eyewitness to ensuing events:

I witness[ed] the attack on Senator Sumner by Mr. Brooks of South Carolina in 1856. Sumner was sitting in his seat, addressing the speech to his constituents when Mr. Brooks approached him from the front aisle (this was on the 22 of May) and said, “I have come over from the House to chastise you for the remarks that you made. I have read your speech, it is a libel on South Carolina and against my relative Senator Butler.” At the same time raising his cane, and struck him three time [sic] on the head. Mr. Sumner arose from his seat and made an effort to take hold of Mr. Brooks, but the last blow brought him to the floor. It was all done in a minute. As soon as he fell Senator Cass, myself and Arthur Gorman and several lifted him up, and we led him out to the Reception Room of the Senate. I got towels and a basin of water. Washed his head. He walked back down to the front door of the Capitol, got a hack, and went to his lodgings. In the meantime, Brooks and his friends, Mr. Edmundson of Virginia and Mr. Keitt of South Carolina, returned to the House. The cane that Mr. Brooks used was broken in small pieces. I have a piece now in my possession. It was a gutta percha cane an inch thick, the cane broke into fragments. It was the speech that Mr. Sumner delivered on the 19 and 20 of May that caused Mr. Brooks to cane him.

Mr. St. John, one of the employees of the Senate, was picking up the loose paper from the floor and picked up the head of Mr. Brooks’ cane. Mr. Douglas then being in the Senate asked him for it. He gave it to him. What Mr. Douglas done with it I never knew.

All of which raises the question: What did Senator Douglas do with the head of Preston Brooks’s cane?

About the illustration:

A dramatic portrayal, clearly biased toward the northern point of view, of an incident in Congress which inflamed sectional passions in 1856. The artist recreates the May 22 attack and severe beating of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina. Brooks's actions were provoked by Sumner's insulting public remarks against his cousin, Senator Andrew Pickens Butler, and against Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, delivered in the Senate two days earlier. The print shows an enraged Brooks (right) standing over the seated Sumner in the Senate chamber, about to land on him a heavy blow of his cane. The unsuspecting Sumner sits writing at his desk. At left is another group. Brooks's fellow South Carolinian Representative Lawrence M. Keitt stands in the center, raising his own cane menacingly to stay possible intervention by the other legislators present. Clearly no help for Sumner is forthcoming. Behind Keitt's back, concealed in his left hand, Keitt holds a pistol. In the foreground are Georgia senator Robert Toombs (far left) and Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas (hands in pockets) looking vindicated by the event. Behind them elderly Kentucky senator John J. Crittenden is restrained by a fifth, unidentified man. Above the scene is a quote from Henry Ward Beecher's May 31 speech at a Sumner rally in New York, where he proclaimed, "The symbol of the North is the pen; the symbol of the South is the bludgeon." David Tatham attributes the print to the Bufford shop, and suggests that the Library's copy of the print, the only known example, may have been a trial impression, and that the print may not actually have been released. The attribution to [Winslow] Homer was first made by Milton Kaplan.

Kansas-Nebraska 5: Douglas Casts the Die

Stephen A. Douglas planned to formally introduce the territory bill and begin debate on Monday January 23. But before he did so, he needed to get President Pierce on board.

To accomplish this, he arranged for a horde of senior legislators to descend on the weak-willed president on Sunday January 22, when he was alone. I have previously described aspects of this meeting in another post. For present purposes, the important point is that Douglas and his cohorts got the president write out, in his own hand, a statement that the Missouri Compromise “was superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures and is hereby declared inoperative and void.”

Douglas was now armed with the president’s endorsement. On Monday January 23, 1854, Douglas reported the bill in a dramatically revised form. Those of you who have been wondering when Kansas would make its appearance need wonder no longer. The new version proposed to create two new territories (Kansas and Nebraska) rather than one; the southern boundary of Kansas territory was shifted north from 36° 30’ to the thirty-seventh parallel, so as to avoid dividing lands of the Cherokee nation.

For our purposes, however, the key changes were those relating to the Missouri Compromise. You will recall that Douglas’s original January 4, 1854 bill included a Section 14 that provided that the Constitution and all laws of the United States would have the same force and effect in the Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States. The Missouri Compromise was not excepted.

Sections 14 (applicable to Nebraska) and 34 (applicable to Kansas) of the new bill now carved out Section 8 of the Missouri Compromise, using language similar to the text that Douglas had the president write out by hand the day before:

Sec. 14. And be it further enacted, . . . That the Constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory of Nebraska [“Kansas” in Section 34] as elsewhere within the United States, except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which was superseded by the principles of the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the Compromise Measures, and is hereby declared inoperative.

In addition, the new bill omitted the now-unnecessary Section 21 of the original bill (the “clerical error” section).

It is worth noting how gingerly Section 14 treated the 1820 Compromise. Rep. Phillips’s proposed language had declared the Compromise “inoperative, void and of no force and effect.” The statement that Douglas had Pierce write out declared the Compromise "inoperative and void." Douglas's January 23 amendment proposed to declare Section 8 “superseded” and “inoperative.” Silly as it seems, it's as if Douglas thought that fewer people would be offended if he used tender wording, even though it was a distinction without a difference. Nonetheless, however gentle the wording, it was clear that Douglas was proposing, in effect, to repeal Section 8. The die was cast.

Kansas-Nebraska 4: "It will raise a hell of a storm"

The last post on the topic ended with a question (or two). Why was the addition of Section 21 to Douglas’s Nebraska bill – which granted to the territorial legislature the power to legislate in favor of slavery – not sufficient? Why did it ultimately prove necessary expressly to repeal Section 8 of the Missouri Compromise?

The answer requires us to take a practical look at the expected situation on the ground. Section 21 permitted the territorial legislature to legalize slavery. But unless and until the territorial legislature did so, Section 8 made slavery illegal in the territory. So long as Section 8 remained in force, it was expected (reasonably so, I think) that slaveholders would not move there. And if slaveholders did not move to the territory, they would not qualify as residents able to vote for pro-slavery legislators. As David Potter has explained:

[U]nless the Act of 1820 were repealed outright, it would still exclude slaves until the territorial government arrived at a decision to let them in -- which such a government could never be expected to do if no slave interest had been permitted to establish itself in the first place.

Put differently, so long as non-slavery was the preexisting default condition, slavery had no chance of establishing itself in the territory. For slavery to have any chance, it had to be clear from the outset that slavery was not illegal in the territory.

Perceptive southerners recognized this, and they acted on it. The first to make a move was Archibald Dixon, a Whig senator from Kentucky. On Monday January 16, 1854, Senator Dixon announced his intention to offer an amendment that would, in effect, repeal the offending Section 8:

Mr. DIXON stated to the Senate, that when a bill to establish a territorial government in the Territory of Nebraska should come up for consideration, he should offer the following amendment:

Sec. 22. And be it further enacted, That so much of the 8th section of an act approved March 6, 1820, entitled “An act to authorize the people of the Missouri Territory to form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, and to prohibit slavery in certain territories,” as declares ”That in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the state, contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited,” shall not be so construed as to apply to the Territory contemplated by this act, or in any other Territory of the United States; but that the citizens of the several States or Territories shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories of the United States, or of the States to be formed therefrom, as if the said act, entitled as aforesaid, and approved as aforesaid, had never been passed.

Senator Dixon’s proposed amendment gave rise to a fairly well-known story, which I’ll tell anyway. Douglas apparently immediately approached Dixon to object to his amendment. Perhaps Douglas was struggling to avoid any specific mention of the Missouri Compromise in his bill. There is also some suggestion that Douglas interpreted the closing clause of the amendment (“the citizens . . . shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves”) as affirmatively requiring or mandating slavery within the territory.

At all events, two days later (Wednesday January 18, 1854) the two senators went for a carriage ride so that they could discuss the matter confidentially and without interruption. Dixon explained why he believed explicit repeal was necessary. Forty-fout years later, Susan Bullitt Dixon, Senator Dixon's widow, published an account that appears to be the source for what supposedly transpired next during that ride. (Unfortunately, the book is not freely available on Google Books. It has been reprinted recently and may still be in copyright. This 1899 New York Times book review is amusing and appalling.) However, David Potter provides a vivid summary:

Douglas showed that he was reluctant to accept Dixon’s plan, but he responded to Dixon’s logic, and after considerable discussion he at last exclaimed impulsively, “By God, Sir, you are right. I will incorporate it in my bill, though I know it will raise a hell of a storm.”

Meanwhile an Alabama Congressman, Philip Phillips, a Democrat on the House Territories Committee, arrived at the same conclusion that Dixon had. Phillips met with Douglas to explain his concerns. At Douglas’s request, Phillips drafted a proposed amendment for Douglas’s consideration:

That the people of the Territory through their Territorial legislature may legislate upon the subject of slavery in any manner they may think proper not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, and all laws or parts of laws inconsistent with this authority or right shall, from and after the passage of this act, become inoperative, void and of no force and effect.

Robert Johannsen’s comment that Rep. Phillips’s proposed amendment “was less strongly worded” than Senator Dixon’s is an understatement. Indeed, it is surprising that the so-called F Street Mess, a quartet of powerful southern Senators who lived in the same house in Washington (David R. Atchison of Missouri; James M. Mason and Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia; and Andrew Butler of South Carolina), found it acceptable. While it is certainly possible to conclude that it declared Section 8 void, it is also possible to read the language as voiding Section 8 only to the extent that it barred the legislature from "legislat[ing] upon the subject of slavery." I would have wanted clearer language if I had been in their shoes.

Kansas-Nebraska 3: The "Clerical Error"

Senator Stephen Douglas’s Nebraska bill, as originally introduced on January 4, 1854, contained twenty sections. As we have seen, it did not mention, much less repeal, Section 8 of the Missouri Compromise. It was ambiguous on the point whether the territorial legislature could enact laws legalizing slavery.

On January 10, 1854, the bill was reprinted with an additional section that had supposedly been omitted from the original draft because of a “clerical error.” The new section – Section 21 – provided:

And be it further enacted, That, in order to avoid all misconstruction, it is hereby declared to be the true intent and meaning of this act, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, to carry into practical operation the following propositions and principles, established by the Compromise measures of one thousand eight hundred and fifty, to wit:

First. That all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein, through their appropriate representatives.

Second. That “all cases involving title to slaves” and “questions of personal freedom” are referred to the adjudication of the local tribunals, with the right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Third. That the provisions of the constitution and laws of the United States, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into faithful execution in all the “organized Territories” the same as in the States.

Historians have tended to be suspicious of the assertion that Section 21 was originally omitted due to clerical error. However, the degree of suspicion has varied somewhat. Robert Johannsen observed, somewhat obscurely, that

[t]he new section was clearly not a part of the original bill, but whether it was indeed a “clerical error” or whether it was added as an afterthought it is not possible to determine.

David Potter more clearly rejects the “clerical error” claim:

On the manuscript of the bill, the additional section was added separately, which suggests that the “omission” in the first printing may have been more than a “clerical error.”

In large part, the historians’ views of the “clerical error” issue turn on their understanding of the original bill, without the additional Section 21. As I have previously discussed, Johannsen believes that the original bill granted the territorial legislature the power to legislate in favor of slavery. Therefore, Section 21 added only “emphasis:”

Douglas contended that the copyist had inadvertently omitted the section from the version that was submitted to the Senate. In any case, it did not alter the nature of the bill, although some later commentators have argued (unpersuasively) that the added section gave the bill “an entirely new meaning.” Section twenty-one merely repeated the points made in Douglas’ report and recapitulated provisions that were already in the bill. In doing so it gave them added emphasis.

David Potter, on the other hand, believes that the original bill did not grant the territorial legislature power to legalize slavery. He therefore regards the new section as a dramatic difference. Citing evidence that Senator David R. Atchison of Missouri and others “applied strong, and perhaps even harsh, pressure on this point,” Potter sees the new section as Douglas’s “curious way” of "meeting the objection.”

However one views these issues, it does seem clear that Section 21 did the trick. Whether or not the original bill gave the territorial legislature power to legalize slavery, Section 21 did. The legislature was plainly authorized to address “all questions pertaining to slavery.”

Why was that not enough? Why did it ultimately prove necessary expressly to repeal Section 8? It is to this issue we turn next.

Kansas-Nebraska 2: Ambiguities and Uncertainties in the Original Bill

It is fascinating to see that, to this day, it is not clear what the effect of Senator Douglas's original Nebraska bill would have been. In particular, would it have permitted the territorial legislature, when seated, to pass a law legalizing slavery and enacting a slave code?

On the one hand, Section 6 suggested an affirmative answer, for it granted the territorial legislature the power to legislate concerning “all rightful subjects of legislation consistent with the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act.” Legislation concerning slavery was not excepted.

On the other hand, the original bill did not even mention, much less declare void, Section 8 of the Missouri Compromise. Arguably, Section 8 remained good law. As a “law[] of the United States which [was] not locally inapplicable,” Section 8 would “have the same force and effect within the said Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States.” In that case, slavery remained “forever prohibited” in the territory, and the territorial legislature did not have the power to declare otherwise.

The contrasting arguments are nicely reflected in the divergent views of two historians who have discussed the original bill. Robert Johannsen holds the view that the original bill permitted the territorial legislature to legalize slavery (emphasis added):

Douglas’ [original] bill established popular sovereignty in the proposed territory, while skirting the problem of the Missouri Compromise. The territorial legislature presumably would have the power to legislate with regard to slavery, and the people of the territory would be free to enter the Union “with or without slavery.” The Missouri Compromise was neither repealed nor abrogated; it was simply ignored. Like Mexican law in the southwest, the Missouri Compromise would remain in effect in Nebraska until superseded by territorial legislation . . ..

David Potter, on the other hand, is of the view that the original bill did not authorize the territorial legislature to legalize slavery. He endorses as “quite correct[]” the criticism leveled by southerners at the time

that the Act of 1820 still applied; the [original] bill only allowed the people of a territory to adopt a proslavery constitution when they were admitted to statehood; while they were a territory, the Act of 1820 would still remain in force. In short, Douglas’s [original] bill would create a situation under which, at the time of admission for statehood, slaveholders might vote for a proslavery constitution, but also under which no such slaveholders could establish themselves in the territory prior to this vote.

Both Johannsen and Potter agree that, whatever Douglas’s intent, he was clearly trying to get away with the minimum and to avoid open repeal. Johannsen refers with approval William Seward’s comment that “Douglas had gone ‘as far as the Democrats dare, toward abolishing that provision of the Missouri Compromise which devoted [the area] . . . to freedom.’”

Potter sums up the point wonderfully, as follows (emphasis added):

The bill of January 4 said nothing about the Missouri Compromise or about the status of slavery in the territory. Whether Douglas intended it to be silent repeal of the Act of 1820, as many historians [but not Potter?] have assumed, or a subtle device to placate the southerners by making them think he had abandoned the Act of 1820 without actually abandoning it, as has been contended, is not entirely clear. It is, on the other hand, quite clear that he was offering the least concession which, he hoped, might win southern support.

Kansas-Nebraska 1: The Original Bill

If you're reading this blog, you probably know that the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. You may also know that the driving force behind Kansas-Nebraska, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, did not initially propose to repeal the 1820 Compromise explicitly. Although most standard histories go through the stages of the bill, I thought I’d provide some detail, with references to source documents. Here goes.

To begin at the beginning. In 1820, Congress enacted, and President Monroe signed, An Act to authorize the people of the Missouri territory to form a constitution and state government, and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, and to prohibit slavery in certain territories, better known as the Missouri Compromise.

The Missouri Compromise (among other things), prohibited slavery north of 36° 30’ north latitude within the area of the Louisiana Purchase, with the exception of that portion of the Purchase that would become the State of Missouri (the southern boundary of which was 36° 30’). The Section of the Missouri Compromise Act that set forth the ban was Section 8, which did so in the following language:

SEC. 8. And be it further enacted. That in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the state, contemplated by this act [i.e., the State of Missouri], slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labour or service is lawfully claimed, in any state or territory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labour or service as aforesaid.

Thirty-four years later, on January 4, 1854, Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill to create a formal territory out of the portion of the Louisiana Purchase that remained unorganized. The bill that he introduced was actually an amendment to a bill introduced in December 1853 by Senator Augustus Caesar Dodge of Iowa (what a great name!). The version of the bill that Senator Douglas substituted on January 4, 1854, entitled “A Bill to Organize the Territory of Nebraska,” may be viewed (with one significant caveat, discussed later) here. As you will see, the text of Senator Dodge’s original bill has been bracketed – that is deleted – and replaced by Senator Douglas’s new text, in italics, which begins here.

Senator Douglas’s original bill (which, for convenience, I will refer to as the “original bill,” even though it wasn’t) erected a single territory – the Territory of Nebraska. For our purposes, it contains three important provisions.

First, Section 6 of the original bill provided:

Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the legislative power of the Territory shall extend to all rightful subjects of legislation consistent with the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act . . . .

Section 6 then carved out certain exceptions to this general rule, but none of them related to slavery or the Missouri Compromise.

Second, Section 14 of Senator Douglas’s original bill provided:

Sec. 14. And be it further enacted, . . . That the constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States.

Finally, the very first section of the original bill stated that the state or states that would ultimately be created from the territory would be admitted even if they were slave states:

[W]hen admitted as a state or states, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.

In short, Senator Douglas's initial version of the bill did not even mention Section 8 of the Missouri Compromise, much less repeal it. On the other hand, it suggested that the territorial legislature could enact virtually any legislation it chose with respect to slavery, and it expressly authorized the admission of slave states.

In the next post, we will consider what all this meant, and why it proved insufficient.

And where, by the way, is Kansas in all this?

A Territory With a Strange Name

Some histories create the impression that it is a mystery why Stephen Douglas was so determined to make territories out Kansas and Nebraska that he was willing to sacrifice the Missouri Compromise.

It isn’t. As Robert W. Johannsen explains, Douglas had been an ardent proponent of expansion, and a violent Anglophobe, throughout his Congressional career. He vehemently championed expansion wherever the opportunity presented itself: into Texas, Oregon (to 54° 40’), California, the southwest and Cuba.

As early as January 1845, Douglas had advocated the erection of territorial government in the area west of the Missouri River in order to facilitate the settlement of Oregon. In a speech in the House of Representative on January 31, 1845, Douglas urged territorial government for Oregon, which would settle the border dispute with the conniving British once and for all. In order to make Oregon easily and safely accessible,

[a] territorial government should be erected in Nebraska, that vast empty space stretching westward from the Missouri River; military posts should be established along the trails for the protection of the emigrants; and, finally, surveys of the western country should be authorized for the construction of a Pacific railroad. The American people, Douglas admonished, must shoulder the obligations of expansion, to “make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself.”

Douglas’s proposal went nowhere in 1845. Legislators had never heard of Nebraska (John Quincy Adams referred to a proposed territory “with a strange name”) and weren’t even sure where it was.

What is surprising is not that Douglas reintroduced legislation on the issue nine years later; it's that it took him that long to do it.

Stephen Douglas Misses A Chance

Reading (as I am) about Stephen Douglas, I feel wistful. It’s such a shame that he didn’t take up leadership of the free soil wing of the Democratic party.

He had the opportunity, too. In 1845 and early 1846, the rabidly expansionist Douglas was a leader of the 54-40 or fight forces. At one point, he announced that a renewal of the offer to settle the US-Canadian boundary at 49 degrees

would be nothing less than “a treasonable proposition.” . . . “[I]f ever [the offer] was commended again . . ., in violation of the pledges given by the Democratic party to the American people, sooner let his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth than he would defend that party which should yield one inch of Oregon."

At the same time, Douglas championed an internal improvements bill that focused on fresh-water rivers and harbors. Douglas adamantly denied that the bill improperly violated strictures against federal funding of local projects.

President James K. Polk undercut – demolished is more like it – both initiatives. First, Polk wound up negotiating and recommending a treaty with Great Britain by which the boundary was set at 49 degrees. Then Polk vetoed the rivers and harbors bill.

Remarkably – and unfortunately – Douglas turned his cheek on both humiliations. Douglas remained an intimate confidant of the president. When the Wilmot Proviso came before the House later in 1846, Douglas “was one of only four northern Democrats to oppose” it. What a shame.

It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if Douglas had joined the Wilmot Proviso Democrats in August 1846. If he had not helped fashion the Compromise of 1850, would there have been Civil War in 1850? If he had not driven the catastrophic Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, would there have been no Civil War at all? And if Stephen Douglas had morphed into a Republican by 1858, where would that have left Abe?

Buchanan and Douglas

Here is a scene I would love to have witnessed as a fly on the wall. It is the evening of December 3, 1857. Senator Stephen A. Douglas appeared at the White House to try to convince President James Buchanan not to back the Lecompton Constitution. The conversation became an angry confrontation:

Buchanan:

Mr. Douglas, I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed. Beware the fate of Tallmadge and Rives [two politicians who had crossed Andrew Jackson].

Douglas:

Mr. President, I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead.

Over the next five months, the Democratic party tore itself apart.