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failed of their purpose, and "Kansas was obliged to wait upon the fortunes of parties."
Two Congresses ran their course while she waited, each of which brought to the Senate and House a number of new members of pith and quality. Connecticut was now represented in the Senate by James Dixon; New York by Preston King, destined to die untimely by his own hand; Rhode Island by Henry B. Anthony, a wise and gentle man, whose period of service was to end only with his life; Michigan by Zachariah Chandler, a shrewd and stalwart shop- keeper turned party manager; Pennsylvania by Simon Cameron, another political manager ready and adroit at bargains; Wisconsin by James R. Doolittle, who came to the Senate by way of the bench; Mississippi by Jefferson Davis, the eager and often supercilious cham- pion of the claims of his section; Tennessee by Andrew Johnson; and Iowa by James W. Grimes, who had been governor of his State, and who brought to his new duties a resolute independence and a clear-headed sagacity which made him one of the most potent and useful legislators of his time.
Another new Senator of the period was David
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C. Broderick, of California, a manly man, faith- ful to his friends, who had been a New York fire laddie in his youth, and who after his settle- ment in California had quickly won the leader- ship of the Northern wing of the Democratic party in that State. Broderick was in the Sen- ate when the Kansas struggle came on, and promptly arrayed himself against the admission of the Territory as a slave State. This earned for him the bitter hatred of the Southern men in California, and involved him, upon his re- turn home, in a number of acrimonious disputes, one of which provoked a challenge from David S. Terry, a justice of the Supreme Court of the State. The challenge was accepted, and the two men met a few miles from San Francisco on a September morning in 1859. The weapons were pistols, the distance ten paces. Broderick's pistol was discharged as he was raising it to the level, after the word had been given, and the ball struck the ground a short distance in front of Terry. The latter, in the mean time, had raised his pistol to the level. He fired an instant later, and Broderick fell, the bullet having lodged in his breast. He died on the fourth day, his last words being, " They have
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killed me because I was opposed to slavery and a corrupt Administration."
2
Thomas Corwin, in 1859, again became a member of the House from Ohio, which State also returned to that body Samuel S. Cox, a man who blended lively wit with sound common sense, and George H. Pendleton, distinguished in after-days as Senator and diplomat. Massa- chusetts was represented at the same time by Charles Francis Adams, soon to become Lin- coln's minister to England, and by Henry L. Dawes, whose services in House and Senate were to cover a period of thirty-six years. Mis- souri sent the younger Francis P. Blair, who had inherited much of his father's ability and vigor of speech; Iowa, Samuel R. Curtis, who was to develop on another stage into one of the most capable of the volunteer generals of the Civil War; Illinois, John A. Logan, before whom lay an equally brilliant career as a sol- dier ; Indiana, Albert G. Porter, later governor of his State and foreign minister; and Tennes- see, Horace Maynard, a signally gifted man, whose lithe figure, swarthy visage, and eloquent speech suggested the Indian chiefs whom Cooper loved to paint.
II .- II
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Three other new members of the House were of the type of men sure to come to the front in revolutionary periods. These were James K. Moorhead, of Pennsylvania, Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois, and John F. Potter, of Wisconsin. Moorhead was a man big of body and brain, and, though seldom heard in debate, knew how to make fire-eaters keep the peace when on the floor. A Southern member, who shall be called Smith, although that was not his name, one day in conversation with Moorhead at the lat- ter's desk lost his temper and called the Penn- sylvanian a liar.
" That remark," said Moorhead, " only serves to confirm the impression I long have had of you, that you are an unmitigated blackguard. That is all I have to say to you now, but when the House adjourns I will have something more to say."
Smith retired to his own side of the chamber, but presently one of his colleagues approached Moorhead, and said,-
" You and Mr. Smith had some altercation, and he used an expression that he regrets, and will apologize for it if you will give him the opportunity."
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" Yes," said Moorhead, "he's got to."
" Well," said the member, " he complains that you gave the first offence, and under the rules of the code you ought to afford the opportunity for an apology."
"I know nothing about the rules of your code," replied Moorhead. "I have a short code of my own. If a man insults me he must apolo- gize or I'll club him." The apology was made and there was no duel.
Lovejoy belonged to the political church mili- tant. His brother Elijah was one of the early martyrs in the anti-slavery crusade, and Owen served with all the ardor of a strong nature the cause for which his kinsman had given his life. Whenever the question of slavery came up for discussion in the House his soul took fire, and his anger found expression in a flood of the most impassioned oratory. Potter, on the other hand, was a man of deeds rather than words. A native of Maine, he removed early in life to Wisconsin, where, being stalwart and fear- less, he soon became immensely popular with the young men of his district. After Brooks's assault on Sumner they started the cry, "We want some fighting men in Congress; let's send
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John Potter down there." Potter was elected and took his seat in Congress, where he quickly proved his bravery and his worth. He could not be swerved from what he believed to be right, and whenever there was a prospect of blows he always was found at the front.
Lovejoy and Potter were the central figures in an exciting incident which helped to make memorable the opening days of 1860. The Democrats were again in a minority in the House when Congress convened in December, 1859, and by a fusion of the opposition, after an eight weeks' struggle, William Pennington, who in earlier years had been governor and chancellor of New Jersey, was elected Speaker. John Sherman was the first choice of the Re- publican members, but when he saw that his chances were hopeless he withdrew in favor of Pennington.
John Brown's raid was then an affair of yesterday, and in consequence the contest pre- ceding Pennington's election was attended by bitter attacks by some of the Southerners on such of their fellow-members as were opposed to slavery. The Republicans kept silence during the Speakership contest, but after it was ended
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Lovejoy took the floor to reply to these attacks. His speech was an argument against slavery, and never was there a more violent one. Soon, in his vehemence of delivery, he advanced into the area and occupied the space fronting the Democratic seats, whereupon Roger A. Pryor, of Virginia, who was sitting at the front, arose, and with gestures full of menace exclaimed,-
" The gentleman from Illinois shall not ap- proach this side of the House, talking as he has talked. He shall not come on this side of the House shaking his fist in our faces."
Potter, at this interruption, was instantly on his feet, and shouted,-
" We listened to gentlemen on the other side for eight weeks, when they denounced the mem- bers on this side with violent and offensive lan- guage. We listened to them quietly and heard them through. And now, sir, this side shall be heard, let the consequences be what they may."
"I make the point of order," said Pryor, " that the gentleman shall speak from his seat. He shall not come upon this side shaking his fist in our faces."
" You are doing the same thing," retorted
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Potter. " Your side of the House cannot say where a member shall speak, and it shall not say it."
The dispute as to where Lovejoy should stand was finally settled by his taking the clerk's desk, and he proceeded with his speech. Some days afterwards Pryor arose to a personal explana- tion. Potter was reported in the Congressional Globe as saying, "This side shall be heard, let the consequences be what they may." Pryor complained that these words had been inserted in the report by Potter, though not used by him in the debate. This charge was denied by Pot- ter, who explained that he had inserted the words in the official report because, though he had used them, they had accidentally been omitted by the reporter.
"The member from Virginia," he added, "erased those words, and he had no right to do it. I would have cut my right hand off before I would have done it. It was none of the gentleman's business, and he had no right to take the liberty of amending it. I stand by what I had said."
" The gentleman stands by his language," rejoined Pryor. "I am very glad to hear it.
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I understand him then to give me the liberty of construing his remark as I please. I will put what construction upon it I please, and whether he stands by it or not the sequel will demonstrate."
"Let it demonstrate," was Potter's reply.
Pryor had changed the record, but was not aware that the government printer could not send the copy to press until it had the endorse- ment of the member who had spoken the words concerned in the expurgation or change. Pot- ter was, therefore, correct in the facts when he said that a change had been made, and he was within his privilege when he made them appear in print as he claimed to have spoken them. However, Pryor, through seconds he had chosen, sent Potter a peremptory challenge. This chal- lenge was considered the same night at the rooms of John W. Forney, that gentleman, Colonels E. F. Beale and F. W. Lander, Ga- lusha A. Grow, and Potter taking part in the conference.
"It is for Potter," began Forney, "to con- sider what is to be done."
" Duelling is a barbarous custom," was Pot- ter's reply; " but this is an attempt to suppress
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free speech in Congress. I am going to accept the challenge."
" Take bowie-knives, and I'll show you how to use one," said Beale, leaping from his chair and drawing a bowie-knife from his boot-leg. Beale's suggestion was adopted, and Lander, as Potter's second, drew up a formal note of ac- ceptance, after which the parties to the con- ference separated. Lander and Grow lodged at the National, and kept each other company in the walk to the hotel.
" I'll tell you what I am going to do," said Lander to Grow, "but don't let Potter know ; he might not allow me to do it if he knew about it. Pryor's seconds will refuse to allow him to fight on the ground that the bowie-knife is a barbarous weapon. My principal being de- nounced by implication as a barbarian, I will then, following the precedent established in the Graves-Cilley duel, challenge Pryor myself, and they may select any weapons, from broadswords to cannon."
Lander's forecast proved correct. Pryor's seconds, when he delivered Potter's reply, promptly declared that, " not recognizing this barbarous mode of settling difficulties," they
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could not allow their principal to engage in it. Lander, thereupon, challenged Pryor, but an- swer was made that, as neither Pryor nor his seconds had any quarrel with him, they could not accept his "courteous offer." This ended the affair. Pryor's challenge to Potter was the last sent by one member of Congress to an- other.
While events of this sort testified to the ten- sion existing in Congress, the country turned to watch the party conventions. The Democrats split hopelessly on the slavery question, one wing of the party nominating Breckinridge and the other Douglas. A coalition of odds and ends calling itself the Constitutional Union party named John Bell. When the Republicans met in convention at Chicago Seward's nomi- nation seemed a foregone conclusion. Seward . was easily the most conspicuous and popular of the Republican leaders, and he had as ad- viser and supporter a very Saul among the politicians in Thurlow Weed. His candidacy, however, had to face the unrelenting opposition of Horace Greeley. When the New York dele- gates to the Chicago convention were chosen, Weed saw to it that his fellow-editor did not
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have a place on the delegation. But Greeley appeared at Chicago with the proxy of an Ore- gon delegate, and worked in season and out of season undermining Seward's strength. His chief argument was a singular one. Seward, while governor of New York, had signed a bill granting a portion of the school funds of the State to Catholics, and this act, Greeley de- clared, would cost him thousands of votes should he be nominated for President. Greeley's argu- ment, with the menace of Know-Nothingism still hanging over the land, made men pause. Coupled with the declaration of Curtin and Lane, Republican candidates for governor of Pennsylvania and Indiana, that they could not carry their States in October if Seward were nominated, it drove enough votes from the New Yorker to defeat him. Lincoln, on the fourth ballot, was nominated in his stead.
The campaign that followed, though earnest and exciting, was entirely one-sided. Douglas was the great figure of the canvass, and never was he so forceful and audacious as he was while stumping the East, West, and South in the fall of 1860. But he was warring against fate, and he knew it. The Breckinridge ele-
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ments of his party fought him in the South, the Bell men in the border States, the Lincoln men in the free States, and the Buchanan Ad- ministration all over the country. Attempts at a fusion of the Democratic factions failed in nearly all the States. Maine elected a Repub- lican governor in September, and in October decisive Democratic defeats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana foretold the end. The No- vember election gave Lincoln one hundred and eighty electoral votes, to seventy-two for Breck- inridge, thirty-nine for Bell, and twelve for Douglas. And the hour for the extinction of slavery had struck.
I7I
CHAPTER VII
THE APPEAL TO ARMS
W ASHINGTON journalism, during Bu- chanan's four years in the Presidency, was symbolic of the times. The Union con- tinued to be the mouth-piece of the Administra- tion, with John Appleton as its editor; a newly established journal called The States, on which Henry Watterson began his career, voiced the views of the pro-slavery men, and the Democrats who followed the lead of Douglas had an organ to their liking in the Sunday Chronicle, founded by John W. Forney in 1859, and soon trans- formed into a daily. Nor were the Republicans long without an editorial champion at the capi- tal. Dr. Bailey issued a Daily Era during the Fremont campaign, and in the summer of 1860 the National Republican was founded by Wil- liam J. Murtagh and gave hearty support to the candidacy of Lincoln.
Indeed, the new-comer was conducted with such vigor and aggressiveness as to give rasp-
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ing offence to the pro-Southern element then dominant in Washington, and on the night of Lincoln's election its office was attacked and gutted by a mob. The sacking of the National Republican has real significance for the student of history, for it bore lawless witness to the anger and alarm with which the Southern peo- ple viewed the election of Lincoln. The leaders of the party which had triumphed at the polls wished, and meant, to check the extension of slavery, but it is now acknowledged that few, if any, of them purposed to interfere with its existence in the States. The South, however, viewed the matter in a very different way. It saw in the triumph of Lincoln the establishment in power of a party bent upon the destruction of the Southern system, and its press and public men were practically a unit in declaring that it was morally impossible any longer to preserve the Union.
The course the South was to follow was made evident on the morrow of election day. South Carolina still chose her Presidential elec- tors through her Legislature. That body, having chosen Breckinridge electors on Novem- ber 6, 1860, remained in session until the result
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of the election was known, when it called a State convention to meet in Charleston. Towards the end of December the conven- tion thus summoned adopted an ordinance of secession; and during the next few weeks Georgia and the Gulf States followed South Carolina's example and formally withdrew from the Union. A month ere Lincoln's inauguration the Confederacy was set afoot with Jefferson Davis as its President.
A policy of inaction, meanwhile, ruled the North. Her people refused at first to believe that there was to be either a permanent dis- solution of the Union or an actual conflict of arms. Compromise, to the contrary, was con- fidently expected, and this point of view gave a flippant tone to the utterances of the Northern press and to the proceedings of Congress that now seems strangely out of place. A minor phase of the secession movement furnishes a case in point. Clingman, of North Carolina, in taking leave of the Senate, compared the seceders to the "ten tribes of Israel." This comparison brought Hale, of New Hampshire, to his feet. "Ten tribes," the latter retorted, " did go out from the kingdom of Israel, but
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the ark of the living God remained with the tribe of Judalı. And what became of the ten tribes ? They have gone, God only knows where, and nobody else. It is a matter of specu- lation what became of them; but the Senator's suggestion is full of meaning. Ten tribes went out, and remember they went out wandering. They went, as I said before, God only knows where. But let us hope and pray that this com- parison, so eloquent and instructive, suggested by the Senator, may not be illustrated in the fate of those other tribes that are going out from the household of Israel."
Before the end of February, 1861, only two Southerners remained in Congress; these were Bouligny, of Louisiana, a patriotic member of the House, who alone refused to follow his State out of the Union, and Wigfall, of Texas, a noisy champion of secession, who lingered for a time in the Senate for purposes best known to himself and his associates. Soon Wigfall also took his departure, and came next into no- tice as an eager participant in the firing upon Sumter. A brief interview which he had with General Scott may have hastened his departure. The heroic old general, at the time of Lincoln's
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election, had for some years had his head- quarters in New York, but in December, 1860, scenting danger, he returned to the capital, col- lected such regulars from the army as he could, and gave notice that the first man who laid a hand of force on the government would be shot down without trial, mercy, or delay. " While I command the army there shall be no revolu- tion in the city of Washington," was his decla- ration to all who called upon him, while to the apologists for secession he defined his purposes with an emphasis that bordered now and then upon profanity.
" Would you dare to arrest a Senator of the United States for an overt act of treason?" Wigfall was reported to have asked him.
" No! I would blow him to hell!" was the grim reply.
President Buchanan's course during the closing days of 1860 also proved his sincere desire to maintain the integrity of the Union. He had entered the Presidency through the solid vote of the slave States, and pro-slave influences had hitherto guided his counsels, but when brought face to face with the fruits of his policy, he promptly severed all intercourse with
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the Southern leaders. This entailed a complete reorganization of his Cabinet. General Cass, greatly enfeebled by age, gave up the portfolio of State, and his retirement was speedily fol- lowed by the enforced resignations of Cobb from the Treasury and Floyd from the War De- partment. Attorney-General Black became Sec- retary of State; Postmaster-General Holt was promoted to Secretary of War, and Philip F. Thomas, of Maryland, succeeded Cobb, while Edwin M. Stanton, of Ohio, was made Attorney- General, and Horatio King, of Maine, Post- master-General. Thomas remained in office only a month, when he gave way to General John A. Dix, of New York. Stanton, Dix, and Holt were aggressive loyalists, and at once gave an altered tone to the Administration. Buchanan, however, while declaring secession illegal, held that there was no constitutional warrant for coercing a State to do her duty under the law; and so, although the seceding States in quick succession seized the arsenals and other federal property within their juris- diction, no effective measures were taken to fore- stall their aggressions.
Congress, also, in the presence of so great a II .- 12
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crisis, appeared incapable of decisive action. Late in January, 1861, after Southern with- drawals had given the Republicans a majority in the Senate, it passed a bill admitting Kansas as a free State; but on the subject of greatest exigency the most that it did was to try once more the old remedy of compromise and con- ciliation. A day or two after the opening of Congress in December a committee of thirty- three, headed by Thomas Corwin, was appointed by the House to consider " the present perilous condition of the country," and while its mem- bers were seeking to frame a compromise that would be acceptable to the South, a Senate committee of thirteen was busy with the same task. A compromise fathered by John J. Crit- tenden, and which was, in effect, a complete surrender to slavery, failed in the Senate by a single vote, but greater success attended the labors of the House committee, which finally proposed a constitutional amendment declaring that --
" No amendment shall be made to the Con- stitution which shall authorize or give to Con- gress the power to abolish or interfere within any State with the domestic institutions thereof,
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including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
Such was to have been the thirteenth amend- ment to the Constitution, and had it been rati- fied by a sufficient number of States, it would have placed slavery so firmly in the Constitution that it could have been dislodged, if at all, only by a revolution. However, only two States adopted the amendment ; others rejected or took no notice of it, and the inswelling tide soon buried it from sight.
A like fate overtook the recommendations of the Peace Conference. This body was born of a suggestion put forward by Virginia, and included delegates appointed by the governors of most of the States still within the Union. It met in Washington early in February, chose ex-President Tyler as its presiding officer, and for upward of three weeks deliberated, behind closed doors, as to the best means of restoring and preserving the Union. These deliberations took final form in a series of proposed amend- ments to the Constitution, adopted by a majority of one, "which should assert the right of the owner to transport his slaves through any State or Territory south of the line of the Missouri
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Compromise; the admission of new States north or south of that line with or without slavery, as the people of the new State might determine ; that slavery in the District of Columbia should not be abolished without the consent of Mary- land; and that, when these amendments were adopted, they should not be changed without the consent of all the States." Large hopes, at the North at least, had been built upon the labors of the Peace Conference, but nothing came of its proposals. Though they were sub- mitted to Congress during the last hours of the session, the House would not permit them to be brought before it for action, and when offered in the Senate, as an amendment to the Crittenden compromise, they were rejected by a vote of four to one.
Congress and the Peace Conference were still engaged with their profitless tasks when what many regarded as an alarming crisis was met and safely passed. It was generally be- lieved in Washington that a conspiracy was afoot to prevent the counting of the electoral vote and the declaration of Lincoln's election; and anxiety was greatly increased by the fact that Vice-President Breckinridge, on whom
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alone the Constitution, as then construed, de- volved the duty of counting the votes, was a Southern man and known to be in sympathy with the leaders of secession. Breckinridge, however, was to prove faithful to his oath of office, and adequate measures had been taken by General Scott for the prompt suppression of any outbreak. Great crowds flocked to the Capitol at an early hour of the day appointed by law for the count, only to find every entrance to the building guarded by soldiers, and ad- mission denied to all except Senators and Rep- resentatives, and those who had tickets signed by the Speaker or the Vice-President. No soldiers were visible inside the Capitol, and a Northern member of the Peace Conference, who had found a seat in the gallery of the House by the side of an officer of the District militia in civilian dress, said,-
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