“That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; that as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that 'no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,' it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.”
On the motives that dictated the assertion of this doctrine, I have no speculations to offer, for I am not dealing with motives. That it was a new political doctrine, and that it was a new departure in the legislation of Congress on this subject of slavery in Territories cannot be doubted. It rejected entirely the principle on which Congress had acted for many years, for there had been acts of Congress which had given legal existence to slavery in a Territory, and acts of Congress which had prohibited it. It rejected the principle of the Missouri Compromise, which had sanctioned an agreed division of the Territories into those where slavery might not and those where it might be allowed. It rejected all claim of right on the part of the Southern slaveholder to take his slave property into a Territory and have it there recognized as property while the Territorial condition remained. It was a reading of the Constitution diametrically opposed to the Southern reading. The political men who framed this “platform” doubtless considered that the time had come for a direct antagonism between the North and the South on this subject, so that it might be decided by the votes of the people in a Presidential election, whether the Southern claim for recognition of slave property in any Territory of the United States, wherever situated, was to prevail or be rejected. That such antagonism was the consequence and the purpose of this declaration of a new principle of action on this subject will be denied by no one.
It is equally certain that a political party could not come into the field in a contest for the Presidency upon such a declaration, without drawing into the discussion the whole subject of slavery as a domestic institution, or a condition of society, both in States and Territories. The intention was to draw a well defined line between the relations of Congress to slavery in the States and the relations of Congress to slavery in the Territories. Yet in the excitements of a Presidential canvass, the Republican party of necessity gathered into its folds those who had been for years regardless of that distinction, and who assailed slavery in the regions which were under the legislative power of Congress for the purpose of assailing it everywhere. The campaign literature, the speeches, the discussions, which dwelt on “the irrepressible conflict” between slavery and freedom, and which proclaimed the issue to be whether the United States would sooner or later become a slaveholding nation or a free-labor nation—whether the Northern States were to remain free or to become slave States—set forth with great distinctness in the writings and the harangues, could have no other effect than to array the two sections of the Union in a bitter hostility, while in the South there were those who believed, or affected to believe, that the people of the North, if successful in electing a President upon this basis, would put forth all their efforts to destroy slavery everywhere, as an institution incompatible with the continued existence of freedom in the North. All this hazard might, however, have been encountered and parried if the Democratic party had been in a condition to nominate a suitable candidate upon a “platform” fit to be opposed to that of the Republicans, and capable of commending itself alike to Northern and Southern voters. But when this party assembled in convention at Charleston, on the 23d of April, 1860, it was in no condition to do any good to the Union or to itself. If Mr. Buchanan had been a younger man, and had been disposed to be a second time a candidate for the Presidency, he might have united his party upon a basis of action in regard to this dangerous matter of slavery in the Territories, that would have commanded the support of a sufficient number of States, Northern as well as Southern, to have elected him. But he was averse to any longer continuance in public life, and he was well aware how much Mr. Douglas had done which had tended to divide the Northern and the Southern wings of his party. On the 14th of April, 1860, he sent to Charleston the following letter, which put an end to the idea, so far as it may have been entertained, of his being regarded as a candidate for the nomination by the Democratic National Convention.
My Dear Sir:—
I address you not only as a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Charleston Democratic National Convention, but as an old and valued friend. Whilst trusting that no member of that body will propose my name as a candidate for reëlection, yet, lest this might possibly prove to be the case, I require you, then, immediately to inform the Convention, as an act of justice to myself, that in no contingency can I ever again consent to become a candidate for the Presidency. My purpose to this effect was clearly indicated both in accepting the Cincinnati nomination, and afterwards in my inaugural address, and has since been repeated on various occasions, both public and private. In this determination neither my judgment nor my inclination has ever for a moment wavered. Deeply grateful to the great Democratic party of the country, on whose continued ascendancy, as I verily believe, the prosperity and perpetuity of our Confederate Republic depend, and praying Heaven that the Convention may select as their candidate an able, sound and conservative Democrat, in whose support we can all cordially unite.—I remain, very respectfully, your friend,
It is not at all difficult to see what Mr. Buchanan would have recommended if he had been asked to shape the action of his party. It is well known that he held it to be both right and expedient to recognize the claim of Southern emigrants into the Territories to an equal participation in the common domain of the Union, so far as to have their property in slaves admitted during the continuance of the Territorial condition. But he would have qualified this claim of right by the application of the principle of the Missouri Compromise; that is, by admitting it in Territories south of the line of 36° 30´, and by excluding it in Territories north of that line. This had been the former practice of Congress, and there could be no good reason now for not expecting the people of the North to make this concession to the South, excepting that Mr. Douglas had indoctrinated a portion of the Northern Democrats with his panacea of “popular sovereignty,” which was just as unacceptable to the South as the principles of the “Chicago platform.”
Accordingly, when the Democratic Convention assembled at Charleston, it soon found itself in an inextricable confusion of opinions as to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial legislature, and as to the authority and duties of Congress, under the Constitution of the United States, over slavery in the Territories. While it was in the power of this Democratic Convention to antagonize the Republican party with a platform, simple, reasonable and just to all sections, on which the votes of all sections could be asked, it became divided into a Northern and a Southern faction, and wholly lost the opportunity of appealing to a national spirit of harmony and good-will. The Northern faction, inspired by Mr. Douglas, insisted on the adoption of his principle of “popular sovereignty,” which ignored the Southern claim of a property right protected by the Constitution. The Southern faction insisted on the recognition of that right, in a way that ignored the governing authority of both Congress and Territorial legislature.
Without some compromise, there could be no common platform and no common candidate. After many ineffectual attempts to agree upon a platform, and after some secessions of Southern delegates, fifty ballotings for a candidate were carried on until the 3d of May. The highest number of votes received at any time by Mr. Douglas was 152½, 202 being necessary to a nomination. The other votes were scattered among different Northern and Southern men. The convention then adjourned, to meet at Baltimore on the 18th of June, with a recommendation that the party in the several States fill up all vacancies in their respective delegations.[60] The result was that when assembled at Baltimore, a dispute about the delegations entitled to seats ended in a disruption of the convention into two bodies, the one distinctly Northern, the other distinctly Southern. The Northern Democratic Convention nominated Mr. Douglas as its candidate, of course upon his platform of “popular sovereignty.” The Southern Democratic Convention nominated Mr. Breckinridge as its candidate, upon a platform of coequal rights of all the States in all the Territories. Thus perished every hope of uniting the Democratic party upon a political basis that would antagonize the Republican platform in a sensible manner, and afford a reasonable chance of preventing a sectional political triumph of the North over the South, or of the free over the slave States.[61]
Mr. Buchanan, after the two factions of the Democratic party had made their nominations, pursued the course which became him as an outgoing President. As a citizen, he had to choose between Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Douglas. The former represented more nearly the political principles of Mr. Buchanan than any other candidate whom he could support, and it was to Mr. Breckinridge that he gave all the support which it was proper for him to give to any one. But his views of the whole situation are apparent in the following letter, written in July, 1860:—
Dear Sir:—
I have received yours of the 3d inst., and although I do not write letters on the subject to which it refers, I have determined to address you a few lines.
The equality of the States in the Territories is a truly Democratic doctrine which must eventually prevail. This is all for which I have ever contended. The Supreme Court of the United States,—a coördinate branch of the Government, to which the decision of this question constitutionally belongs, have affirmed this equality, and have placed property in slaves upon the same footing with all other property. Without self-degradation, the Southern States cannot abandon this equality, and hence they are now all in a flame. Non-intervention on the part of Congress with slavery in the Territories, unless accompanied by non-intervention on the part of the Territorial legislatures, amounts to nothing more in effect than to transfer the Wilmot Proviso from Congress to these legislatures. Whilst the South cannot surrender their rights as coequal States in the confederacy, what injury can it possibly do to the Northern States to yield this great Democratic principle? If they should not do this, then we will have the Democratic party divided, South and North, just as the Methodist Church has been divided, and another link binding the Union together will be broken. No person can fairly contend that either assemblage at Baltimore, at the time the nominations were made, was a Democratic National Convention; hence every Democrat is free to choose between the two candidates. These are, in brief, my sentiments. I regret that they so widely differ from your own. You have taken your own course, which you had a perfect right to do, and you will, I know, extend a similar privilege to myself.
The sole part that was taken by President Buchanan, in any public manner, in the election of 1860, was in a speech which he made from the portico of the White House, on the evening of July 9th, when a great crowd assembled in front of the mansion and called him out. In the course of his remarks, he said:
I have ever been the friend of regular nominations. I have never struck a political ticket in my life. Now, was there anything done at Baltimore to bind the political conscience of any sound Democrat, or to prevent him from supporting Breckinridge or Lane? [“No! no!”] I was contemporary with the abandonment of the old Congressional convention or caucus. This occurred a long time ago; very few, if any, of you remember it. Under the old Congressional convention system, no person was admitted to a seat except the Democratic members of the Senate and House of Representatives. This rule rendered it absolutely certain that the nominee, whoever he might be, would be sustained at the election by the Democratic States of the Union. By this means it was rendered impossible that those States which could not give an electoral vote for the candidate when nominated, should control the nomination and dictate to the Democratic States who should be their nominee.
This system was abandoned—whether wisely or not, I shall express no opinion. The National Convention was substituted in its stead. All the States, whether Democratic or not, were equally to send delegates to this convention according to the number of their Senators and Representatives in Congress.
A difficulty at once arose which never could have arisen under the Congressional convention system. If a bare majority of the National Convention thus composed could nominate a candidate, he might be nominated mainly by the anti-Democratic States against the will of a large majority of the Democratic States. Thus the nominating power would be separated from the electing power, which could not fail to be destructive to the strength and harmony of the Democratic party.
To obviate this serious difficulty in the organization of a National Convention, and at the same time to leave all the States their full vote, the two-thirds rule was adopted. It was believed that under this rule no candidate could ever be nominated without embracing within the two-thirds the votes of a decided majority of the Democratic States. This was the substitute adopted to retain, at least in a great degree, the power to the Democratic States which they would have lost by abandoning the Congressional convention system. This rule was a main pillar in the edifice of national conventions. Remove it and the whole must become a ruin. This sustaining pillar was broken to pieces at Baltimore by the convention which nominated Mr. Douglas. After this the body was no longer a national convention; and no Democrat, however devoted to regular nominations, was bound to give the nominee his support; he was left free to act according to the dictates of his own judgment and conscience. And here, in passing, I may observe that the wisdom of the two-thirds rule is justified by the events passing around us. Had it been faithfully observed, no candidate could have been nominated against the will and wishes of almost every certain Democratic State in the Union, against nearly all the Democratic Senators, and more than three-fourths of the Democratic Representatives in Congress. [Cheers.]
I purposely avoid entering upon any discussion respecting the exclusion from the convention of regularly elected delegates from different Democratic States. If the convention which nominated Mr. Douglas was not a regular Democratic convention, it must be confessed that Breckinridge is in the same condition in that respect. The convention that nominated him, although it was composed of nearly all the certain Democratic States, did not contain the two-thirds; and therefore every Democrat is at perfect liberty to vote as he thinks proper, without running counter to any regular nomination of the party. [Applause and cries of “three cheers for Breckinridge and Lane.”] Holding this position, I shall present some of the reasons why I prefer Mr. Breckinridge to Mr. Douglas. This I shall do without attempting to interfere with any individual Democrat or any State Democratic organization holding different opinions from myself. The main object of all good Democrats, whether belonging to the one or the other wing of our unfortunate division, is to defeat the election of the Republican candidates; and I shall never oppose any honest and honorable course calculated to accomplish this object.
To return to the point from which I have digressed, I am in favor of Mr. Breckinridge, because he sanctions and sustains the perfect equality of all the States within their common Territories, and the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, establishing this equality. The sovereign States of this Union are one vast partnership. The Territories were acquired by the common blood and common treasure of them all. Each State, and each citizen of each State, has the same right in the Territories as any other State and the citizens of any other State possess. Now what is sought for at present is, that a portion of these States should turn around to their sister States and say, “We are holier than you are, and while we will take our property to the Territories and have it protected there, you shall not place your property in the same position.” That is precisely what is contended for. What the Democratic party maintain, and what is the true principle of Democracy is, that all shall enjoy the same rights, and that all shall be subject to the same duties. Property—this Government was framed for the protection of life, liberty, and property. They are the objects for the protection of which all enlightened governments were established. But it is sought now to place the property of the citizen, under what is called the principle of squatter sovereignty, in the power of the Territorial legislature to confiscate it at their will and pleasure. That is the principle sought to be established at present; and there seems to be an entire mistake and misunderstanding among a portion of the public upon this subject. When was property ever submitted to the will of the majority? [“Never.”] If you hold property as an individual, you hold it independent of Congress or of the State legislature, or of the Territorial legislature—it is yours, and your Constitution was made to protect your private property against the assaults of legislative power. [Cheers.] Well, now, any set of principles which will deprive you of your property, is against the very essence of republican government, and to that extent makes you a slave; for the man who has power over your property to confiscate it, has power over your means of subsistence; and yet it is contended, that although the Constitution of the United States confers no such power—although no State legislature has any such power, yet a Territorial legislature, in the remote extremities of the country, can confiscate your property!
[A Voice. “They can't do it; they ain't going to do it.”]
There is but one mode, and one alone, to abolish slavery in the Territories. That mode is pointed out in the Cincinnati platform, which has been as much misrepresented as anything I have ever known. That platform declares that a majority of the actual residents in a Territory, whenever their number is sufficient to entitle them to admission as a State, possess the power to “form a constitution with or without domestic slavery, to be admitted into the Union upon terms of perfect equality with the other States.” If there be squatter sovereignty in this resolution, I have never been able to perceive it. If there be any reference in it to a Territorial legislature, it has entirely escaped my notice. It presents the clear principle that, at the time the people form their constitution, they shall then decide whether they will have slavery or not. And yet it has been stated over and over again that, in accepting the nomination under that platform, I endorsed the doctrine of squatter sovereignty. I suppose you have all heard this repeated a thousand times.
[A Voice. “We all knew it was a lie!”]
Well, I am glad you did.
How beautifully this plain principle of constitutional law corresponds with the best interests of the people! Under it, emigrants from the North and the South, from the East and the West proceed to the Territories. They carry with them that property which they suppose will best promote their material interests; they live together in peace and harmony. The question of slavery will become a foregone conclusion before they have inhabitants enough to enter the Union as a State. There will then be no “bleeding Kansas” in the Territories; they will all live together in peace and harmony, promoting the prosperity of the Territory and their own prosperity, until the time shall arrive when it becomes necessary to frame a constitution. Then the whole question will be decided to the general satisfaction. But, upon the opposite principle, what will you find in the Territories? Why, there will be strife and contention all the time. One Territorial legislature may establish slavery and another Territorial legislature may abolish it, and so the struggle will be continued throughout the Territorial existence. The people, instead of devoting their energies and industry to promote their own prosperity, will be in a state of constant strife and turmoil, just as we have witnessed in Kansas. Therefore, there is no possible principle that can be so injurious to the best interests of a Territory as what has been called squatter sovereignty.
Now, let me place the subject before you in another point of view. The people of the Southern States can never abandon this great principle of State equality in the Union without self-degradation. [“Never!”] Never without an acknowledgment that they are inferior in this respect to their sister States. Whilst it is vital to them to preserve their equality, the Northern States surrender nothing by admitting this principle. In doing this they only yield obedience to the Constitution of their country as expounded by the Supreme Court of the United States. While for the North it is comparatively a mere abstraction, with the South it is a question of co-equal State sovereignty in the Union.
If the decrees of the high tribunal established by the Constitution for the very purposes are to be set at naught and disregarded, it will tend to render all property of every description insecure. What, then, have the North to do? Merely to say that, as good citizens, they will yield obedience to the decision of the Supreme Court, and admit the right of a Southern man to take his property into the Territories, and hold it there just as a Northern man may do; and it is to me the most extraordinary thing in the world that this country should now be distracted and divided because certain persons at the North will not agree that their brethren at the South shall have the same rights in the Territories which they enjoy. What would I, as a Pennsylvanian, say or do, supposing anybody was to contend that the legislature of any Territory could outlaw iron or coal within the Territory? [Laughter and cheers.] The principle is precisely the same. The Supreme Court of the United States have decided,—what was known to us all to have been the existing state of affairs for fifty years,—that slaves are property. Admit that fact, and you admit everything. Then that property in the Territories must be protected precisely in the same manner with any other property. If it be not so protected in the Territories, the holders of it are degraded before the world.
We have been told that non-intervention on the part of Congress with slavery in the Territories is the true policy. Very well. I most cheerfully admit that Congress has no right to pass any law to establish, impair or abolish slavery in the Territories. Let this principle of non-intervention be extended to the Territorial legislatures, and let it be declared that they in like manner have no power to establish, impair or destroy slavery, and then the controversy is in effect ended. This is all that is required at present, and I verily believe all that will ever be required. Hands off by Congress and hands off by the Territorial legislature. [Loud applause.] With the Supreme Court of the United States I hold that neither Congress nor the Territorial legislature has any power to establish, impair or abolish slavery in the Territories. But if, in the face of this positive prohibition, the Territorial legislature should exercise the power of intervening, then this would be a mere transfer of the Wilmot proviso and the Buffalo platform from Congress, to be carried into execution in the Territories to the destruction of all property in slaves. [Renewed applause.]
An attempt of this kind, if made in Congress, would be resisted by able men on the floor of both houses, and probably defeated. Not so in a remote Territory. To every new Territory there will be a rush of free-soilers from the Northern States. They would elect the first Territorial legislature before the people of the South could arrive with their property, and this legislature would probably settle forever the question of slavery according to their own will.
And shall we for the sake of squatter sovereignty, which, from its nature, can only continue during the brief period of Territorial existence, incur the risk of dividing the great Democratic party of the country into two sectional parties, the one North and the other South? Shall this great party which has governed the country in peace and war, which has raised it from humble beginnings to be one of the most prosperous and powerful nations in the world—shall this party be broken up for such a cause? That is the question. The numerous, powerful, pious and respectable Methodist Church has been thus divided. The division was a severe shock to the Union. A similar division of the great Democratic party, should it continue, would rend asunder one of the most powerful links which binds the Union together.
I entertain no such fearful apprehensions. The present issue is transitory, and will speedily pass away. In the nature of things it cannot continue. There is but one possible contingency which can endanger the Union, and against this all Democrats, whether squatter sovereigns or popular sovereigns, will present a united resistance. Should the time ever arrive when Northern agitation and fanaticism shall proceed so far as to render the domestic firesides of the South insecure, then, and not till then, will the Union be in danger. A united Northern Democracy will present a wall of fire against such a catastrophe!
There are in our midst numerous persons who predict the dissolution of the great Democratic party, and others who contend that it has already been dissolved. The wish is father to the thought. It has been heretofore in great peril; but when divided for the moment, it has always closed up its ranks and become more powerful, even from defeat. It will never die whilst the Constitution and the Union survive. It will live to protect and defend both. It has its roots in the very vitals of the Constitution, and, like one of the ancient cedars of Lebanon, it will flourish to afford shelter and protection to that sacred instrument, and to shield it against every storm of faction. [Renewed applause.]
Now, friends and fellow-citizens, it is probable that this is the last political speech that I shall ever make. [A Voice. “We hope not!”] It is now nearly forty years since I first came to Washington as a member of Congress, and I wish to say this night, that during that whole period I have received nothing but kindness and attention from your fathers and from yourselves. Washington was then comparatively a small town; now it has grown to be a great and beautiful city; and the first wish of my heart is that its citizens may enjoy uninterrupted health and prosperity. I thank you for the kind attention you have paid to me, and now bid you all a good-night. [Prolonged cheering.]
The observations contained in this chapter on the anti-slavery agitation have been made because that agitation and its consequences are great historical facts, necessary to be considered in a just appreciation of the conduct of any American statesman who acted an important part in national affairs during the quarter of a century that preceded the civil war. The detail of Mr. Buchanan’s course on this subject, down to the time when he became President, has been given, and need not be repeated.
He was one of the earliest of the public men of the North to discover and to point out the tendency of this agitation. That he denounced it boldly and sincerely cannot be denied, even by those who may not have held, or who do not now hold, the same opinions concerning the “abolitionists” and their measures. He endeavored, at an early period, to keep his own State of Pennsylvania free from the adoption of such dogmas as the “higher law,” and to have its people appreciate the mischiefs which the anti-slavery societies were producing in the South. It is easy to impute this course to his political relations to the Democratic party and to the dictates of his own ambition as one of its principal Northern leaders, who, in any future prospect of political honors beyond those which his own State could bestow, might have to look to Southern support. But is there no sensible, patriotic, sound and unselfish motive, no honest and well grounded conviction, discoverable in what he did and said? If his opinions about this agitation were substantially in accordance with those of wise and judicious men, who could not have been influenced by party spirit or personal objects, they may claim to have been sincere and just, as certainly as they may claim to have been courageously uttered.
It will not be doubted that when the abolition agitation began, there was at least one man in the North, who, from his deep and fervid interest in whatever concerned the rights of human nature and the welfare of the human race, from his generous love of liberty and his philanthropic tendencies, might be expected to welcome any rational mode of removing the reproach and the evil of slavery from the American name and the condition of American society. Such a man was that celebrated New England divine, William Ellery Channing. What his feelings were about the slavery that existed in our Southern States, all who know anything of his character and his writings know full well. His position as a clergyman and his relations to the moral and spiritual condition of the age, put out of the question the possibility of any political motive, other than that broad, high and comprehensive view of public policy which was above all the interests of party, and beyond all personal considerations. If such a man foresaw the dangerous tendencies of the abolition agitation, conducted in and from the North, and at the same time discovered that the evil of slavery ought to be and might be dealt with in a very different spirit and by far other means, it is rational to conclude that men in public life and in political positions might well place themselves in opposition to the spread of such principles and the adoption of such methods as those of the anti-slavery societies of the North. It was, in truth, the one thing which it was their duty, as statesmen, to do.[62]