USA > Kansas > A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I > Part 44
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The following amendment, by Senator Chase, of Ohio, was rejected :
Under which the people of the Territories through their appropriate representatives, may if they see fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein.
The bill was finally completed and passed by the Senate at five o'clock in the morning of the 4th of March, but the session was that of the 3d of March.
In the meantime the House bill had run the usual course of legislative procedure. Mr. Richardson, its author, from Illinois, was a warm friend of Senator Douglas. There is no doubt but that he waited on the struggle in the Senate. On the 31st of January he reported his bill. It was referred to the Committee of the Whole, and no farther action was had on it until the 8th of May, when it was taken up and considered to the exclusion of other business. The Senate bill was offered as a substitute, and the matter was debated until the 22nd. On that day Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, moved that the enacting elause be stricken out. This motion prevailed. The Committee then arose and reported its action, which the House refused to sustain. Then Mr. Richardson moved as an amendment that all after the enacting elause be stricken out, and that the Senate bill be substituted in lien thereof. On this motion he demanded the previous question. The motion prevailed. The bill was then engrossed, read the third time, and passed, at eleven o'clock, P. M. The vote was 113 to
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100. The bill, while that of the Senate, had passed the Ilouse as an original bill, and had to be considered again by the Senate. It came up in the Senate on the 25th of May, and passed on the session of that day, but the vote was had at 1:15 A. M., May 26. It was signed by President Pieree on the 30th day of May, 1854.
The question as to the real author of the Missouri Compromise has been asked for more than half a century. Senator Douglas certainly was not the author of that measure. There is no evidence-at least no suffi- eient evidence-that he had considered the matter of the Repeal before the meeting of the 33d Congress. His management of the bill clearly shows that he was averse to the absolute Repeal until after the 4th of January, 1854. Ile wished to temporize, to take refuge in hazy and obscure phraseology capable of one interpretation in the North and another interpretation in the South. He sought until the very last to shift the responsibility to the Compromise of 1850.
The South-the slave power of the South-always hoped to repeal the Missouri Compromise. In that purpose it never wavered. Calhoun made every effort to render it impotent. It became the settled policy of the South to prevent the organization of territories in the country covered by the Compromise. It also became the policy of the South to insist on the rights of slavery in that country, to secure those rights if it could, but if finally excluded, to dissolve the Union.
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, as that Repeal was effected, resulted from the attitude of the South as applied to the political condi- tions in Missouri for the ten years prior to 1854. These conditions came to involve the organization of Nebraska Territory. In the latter stages, Nebraska Territory became the paramount consideration, everything else being concentrated in it. With the struggle in Missouri we have dealt at length. That Senator Atchison, as the representative of the radical element of the Missouri Democracy, foreed the Repeal through Congress, there is little doubt. In faet, there is overwhelming evidence that he did do that very thing. That he was in position to do this is shown by the speech of Hon. Francis P. Blair, of Missouri, a quotation from which is made by Mr. Ray in his Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and which is here reproduced :
Mr. Douglas has the eredit of having originated this scheme of break- ing compaets, fraught with such fatal tendencies. He does not deserve this precedenee. It will be remembered that at the last session of Con- gress, Mr. Atchison broached the idea of dissolving the Missouri Com- promise, in connection with the then pending Nebraska bill. Mr. Cal- houn's Southern unit contrived to get Mr. Atchison made President pro tem of the Senate. From that hour he became the tool of the Nullifiers, and when Mr. Calhoun died, he left his swaggering and some- times staggering President pro tem to the eare of Messrs. Mason, Hunter and Butler, who were his factotums at the elose of his life, and may be considered the executors of his estate of Nullification.
" See Wilder's Innals, Edition of 1886, pages 43 and 44, for analysis of the vote.
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The first (Mr. Mason of Virginia), you all remember, was called upon by Mr. Calhoun to be his mouth piece, and read the last drivellings of his doetrines of disunion, while he sat by, the glare of phrensy in his eyes, unable to stand or speak, evineing "the ruling passion strong in death" which was to ruin what he was not permitted to control. He was the fanatic and martyr of ambition. Peace to his spirit! May it have better repose than he has left to his country! The next man in the trio in the confidence of Mr. Calhoun was Mr. Hunter of Virginia. He was withdrawn from his party, like Mr. Atchison, by the tactics of Mr. Calhoun, who had him elected to the Speakership of the House of Repre- sentatives, soon after entering it, by a coalition of the Whigs and Nulli- fiers, Mr. Calhoun putting him forward in preference to his devoted friends, Dixon H. Lewis and Mr. Piekens of South Carolina, either of whom was more acceptable to the Democracy of the House; but Mr. Calhoun gloried in putting down the will of the majority of the Democ- racy in the person of Mr. Hunter, and it is but justice to the latter to say that he followed his patron, rather than his party, during his life, and that his spirit of hostility to the compacts which bind the Union together survives in him. The third man of the junto to whom Mr. Atchison was committed is Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, Mr. Calhoun's successor, who bears in his look the fiery temper of the furious Nullifier, but has certainly, with more heat, less of the dangerous factious feeling which lies at the bottom of the designs of his colder, calculating companions.
Mr. Atehison has ever since, and I believe before the death of Mr. Calhoun, been decidedly domiciled with these men; they have one house- hold, I am told, and make a little knot and lump of leaven, that works up the whole batch that belongs to the Southern institution, when occa- sion requires. This is the brotherhood which brought the Southern delegation to unite in a mass, many most unwillingly, to give adhesion to the plot to make the united vote of the South the reward for that treachery among the Northern aspirants which would sacrifice the solemn compact that had guaranteed the peace of the country in fixing the limit of that threatening subject to the country, by having agreed boundaries and conditions assigned in compromises, in concessions on the part of both seetions of the nation it provoked to strife. This dangerous measure has from first to last been managed by the nullifiers, with all the adroitness taught in the school of their Machiavel. The bill originat- ing with Atehison and the elnb of Nullifiers who chamber with him, has been at every stage in the hands of the Southern Senators, by means of a cauens or nightly convention held by them with Northern Doughfaees brought over by the list of pluinder and the temptation of getting the vote of the South as a unit in the next Presidential convention.
We have the avowal of Mr. Atchison himself that he was the anthor of the Repeal. True, he was "in liquor at the time," but often secrets were told only when men were "in their enps." Mr. Ray quotes a letter published in the New York Tribune, which is here given :
ST. LOUIS, MONDAY, MAY 28, 1855.
Among all the letters in the Tribune from Kansas and its neighbor- hood, I do not recollect anywhere to have seen the true reason stated why the Parkville Luminary was destroyed and its proprietors presented with the alternative of flight or violenec. Let me briefly disclose it. One warm day last summer a large crowd had assembled at the town site of Atchison in Kansas to attend a sale of lots. "Dave" himself was there, and as there was much whiskey and many friends, he got "glori- ous" a little earlier in the day than usual. So with much spitting on
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his shirt and making himself more nasty than common the Vice-President delivered himself something after this wise :
"Gentlemen, you made a d-d fuss about Douglas, but Douglas don't deserve the credit of this Nebraska bill. I told Douglas to introduce it. I originated it. I got Pierce committed to it, and all the glory belongs to me. All the South went for it, all to a man but Bell and Houston, and who are they? Mere nobodies, no influence, nobody cares for them."
It happened that a young man from Parkville was present, a friend of Atchison, by the way. When he came home he was sounding Atchi- son's praises and repeating what he had said. Patterson of the Luminary got him to write down the exact words of the Vice-President, and the next number contained a verbatim report of portions of his conversation. By this time some of Dave's friends were sober, if he was not. There was trouble in the camp. The Platte Argus, the Atchison organ, came out with a flat denial of the language. The Parkville young man replied over his own initials, that he had heard and reported the words exactly as they were published, and whoever should deny them was a liar, intimating his readiness to maintain the same against all comers. Mean- time a chivalrous nephew of John Bell residing in St. Louis had seen the report of Atchison's language in the Luminary, and had written him requiring a categorical answer to the question whether he had used the language imputed to him concerning his uncle. The tone of the letter was strongly suggestive of "the usual satisfaction." Dave evidently thought his three hundred pounds of flesh too good a mark for a pistol ball, and he accordingly replied to the nephew that he had the most distinguished consideration for his uncle and never said such a word about him, if he had said anything that the lying scoundrels had tor- tured into what they published, he begged that it might be passed by, as he was "in liquor at the time." And thus the Vice-President escaped the vexation of personal responsibility for his language. Drunkenness is not usually regarded as a valid plea for a lawyer to make in behalf of a client, but it seems very good for a Vice-President.
But the mischief was done, notwithstanding. Douglas looked glum about his stolen thunder. Bell and Houston were not disposed to any special affability toward the President of the Senate. So he sent his resignation and stayed away two or three weeks after the meeting of Congress. Judge with what bitter hatred he regarded the Luminary, and when he could sway the mob power, how eagerly he employed it to wreak his private vengeance. Veritas.
So the Kansas-Nebraska bill was the work of David R. Atchison, a Missourian of Kentucky birth. His connection with Kansas did not cease with the enactment of the bill. He tried for some years to force slavery into Kansas, but ingloriously failed. On the Kansas prairies he met many a follower of Senator Benton-many a Missourian who had come to Kansas to live in a free state-who fought other Missourians to make Kansas free.
It has long been the judgment of this author that Judge William C. Price, a Missourian of Virginia birth, originated the movement in Mis- souri which resulted in the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The idea of the Repeal was, no doubt, original with him-that is, the Repeal at the time it came. When Mr. Ray was writing his excellent book he wrote me for anything I could furnish him on the subject of the Repeal. I wrote him as follows, as shown at pages 247 and following of his work :
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Judge Price always maintained that the idea of the Repeal originated with him. He claimed that he pressed this idea on the South, saying that Missouri could not remain slave with Iowa free on the north, Illinois free on the east, and a free State on the west. In short, Missouri had to accomplish that Repeal or become a free State. That was what Judge Price preached for twenty years before the war. And the South allowed Missouri to have her way.
The Repeal was discussed in a gathering of extreme Democrats in New Orleans as early as 1850. Judge Price attended this gathering, as he has often told me. I have the names of others in attendance, but my papers are so much in disorder that I have been unable to find the
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JUDGE WILLIAM C. PRICE [From Portrait Owned by William E. Connelley ]
memorandum. I remember that Jefferson Davis was at that meeting; Judge Priee often related to me the feeling speech he made there. I remember that J. P. Benjamin and Toombs were there. And a Mr. Smith, I think a minister of the Gospel, either then or afterwards a Member of Congress from Virginia, was there. . Without my papers I would not say that this meeting was in 1850, but I am sure it was as early as that.
The idea, the intention, of the Repeal had been discussed secretly in every gathering of pro-slavery men in Missouri for ten years. Benton repudiated the idea in Springfield, Mo., in 1844, so Judge Price informed me. And from that day the radical slave faetion of the Missouri Demoe- raey fought him to the death. Judge Price and other radical Southern leaders saw at that time that a conflict was inevitable; they were seces- sionists per se. Judge Price was the man selected to lead the fight in
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Missouri for the use of a part of the Indian country which was north of the old Compromise line for Slavery. In this capacity he made known to Benton the conclusion of the radical slave faction. Price and Benton had been warm friends to this time. They never spoke after- wards. Price registered a vow to drive Benton from public life and accomplished it. . . In presence of a large company gathered in a store on St. Louis street, in Springfield, Mo., he vowed he would fight Benton to the death. To make it more open and public he wrote his determination on the walls of the store, where it remained until the building was torn down after the Civil War. So said Judge Price to me many times.
Judge Price was the head of the pro-slavery extremists of the South. He was in close and constant communication with Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, John C. Calhoun, John C. Breckenridge, Judah P. Benjamin, and other Southern leaders, for many years prior to the Civil War. These men looked to him to inaugurate and carry out the measures in Missouri supposed to be for the benefit of the aggressive policy of the extremists of the slave power. No better selection was ever made. He believed in the righteousness of slavery. And when enlisted in a cause he knew no such word as fail. Ile would not sacrifice the thousandth part of the most insignificant principle for any advan- tage which might be offered him. Compromise was repugnant to him. He would always drive straight ahead to the end in the way marked out, let the consequences be what they might.
The aggressive leaders of the slave power became dissatisfied with the course of Senator Benton of Missouri. They marked him for defeat. While Benton had spent the greater part of his aetive life in Washington and away from the people of Missouri, he was still, in 1844, supreme in Missouri. While it is true that a new generation had sprung up in Missouri who knew not Benton. it is also true that the older generation stood by Benton, and by their aid he dictated the political policy of the State. It was supposed to be political death for any man to even whisper a breath against "Old Bullion," the idol of Missouri.
Judge Price was never a rash man. He had a cool head and a pulse even and regular under every trial. He knew what his declaration meant. Benton was a born leader, and in manner much like Judge Price. He was intolerant, often dietatorial and unjust. The declaration of hostilities by Price was accepted by Benton and the political battle royal of Missouri polities began, and the first in the fight for the Repeal, though the issue was veiled. Neither side urged the real issue between them. Price hoped that with the defeat of Benton events would naturally shape themselves as the Southern leaders desired. Benton hoped that with his victory extreme agitation by the Southern leaders would dis- appear. So this fight was not made on the issues really the cause of it, Judge Price often said.
Price was away from home for months at a time for the six years following 1844. There were no railroads in Missouri and travel was by horseback. Ile visited every part of the State time and again. He selected Judge Geyer of St. Louis as the man to defeat Benton. When Benton returned to Missouri in 1850 he found himself actually beaten and turned down. The first battle of the aggressive and rabid extremists of the slave power was thus fought out in Missouri and was a victory for them.
I asked Judge Price concerning the opening of Kansas to settlement. Ile said :
"We were opposed to the opening of any part of the territory of Old Missouri Territory to settlement, and for many reasons. It had
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been set aside as the Indian Country. The Government had removed the Eastern Indian tribes to that country and covenanted with them that they should never be molested in their new home. And this was done with a purpose, for if slavery could not go there we wanted no one there except the Indians. And there was no necessity for such settlement; millions of acres of better land were open to settlement in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.
"To establish Territories in that country would, we knew, bring up the subject of slavery, and its admission or exclusion. We were excluded by the Compromise, but Southern men hoped in some way to bring about the repeal of that measure in some peaceful manner. Their most eher- ished hope for many years was to look upon the old manner of retaining the influence of Slave-State and Free-State at a balance in the Union by the admission one slave State and one free State when the time for the admission of any part of that domain was demanded by the economic conditions of the country. In the meantime we hoped to make four States of Texas, and to have slavery established in the country obtained from Spain and Mexico.
"Many things transpired which we could not foresee. The discovery of gold in California was one of these. Then, as I said, it was necessary to defeat Benton in Missouri. The effects of this defeat were bad. Ile was ambitious, though old. He should, according to our ealeulations, have retired when he was defeated. But he immediately espoused the cause of Nebraska Territory. There were two causes for this. He knew we were opposed to it and he knew that the slave power was not prepared to enter upon a struggle for its very existence. He wished to precipitate things. And, he saw he could never regain his seat in the Senate from Missouri. He had become interested in Fremont's explorations of the West.
"Benton was a man of ability and wonderful foresight. He pre- dieted that a great eity would one day be built at the mouth of the Kansas River. He intended to move there and live in the new Territory and eventually be one of its first United States Senators when it was admitted as a State, as he had been one of the first of Missouri's Sen- ators. At my suggestion Atchison accused him of this intention, and denounced him for it in a speech, delivered I think in Liberty.
"One of the things which proved bad for us was the removal of the Wyandotts to the mouth of the Kansas River. It was the intention that they should settle there. They were to have a large tract of land in Southern Kansas (what is now Southern Kansas). No one supposed they would buy land of another tribe; such a thing had not been thought of. When they bought land of the Delawares and obtained control of the mouth of the Kansas River we were fearful that it was not for our best interest; there were too many white men in the tribe. Then the tribe came recently from Ohio where there was much opposition to slavery, and where existed the most successful underground railroad for conveying slaves to Canada. Then again, this tribe had but just settled at the mouth of the Kansas River when the division of the Methodist Church into Northern and Southern parts caused almost a war between the factions of the tribe. The portion of the tribe which wished to remain with the Old Church eried out against slavery, and the question was kept in constant agitation where we most desired nothing said. When it was supposed that Nebraska Territory would be organized we were often solicited by the faction in favor of the Church. South, to take a hand, but we were averse to doing that and hoped the question would quiet down. However, it did not do so. Benton, Blair, Brown, even Phelps, encouraged its agitation. The moving spirits in the cause
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of the Church, North, and in condemning slavery, were J. M. Armstrong and Abelard Guthrie. Guthrie remained in Washington much of the time, as we believed then, at Benton's expense. At any rate, it was known that he and Benton were much together; we had no doubt they acted in concert.4
4 This statement is published in the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise by P. Orman Ray, Ph. D., Professor of History and Political Science, The Pennsylvania State College. The quotations found in this chapter are taken from Professor Ray's book. It is the best authority on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It is exhaustive, and is very care- fully prepared. Much of the material for this chapter, aside from the quotations, was drawn from his work.
CHAPTER XVI
KANSAS TERRITORY
The Kansas-Nebraska bill was approved by President Pierce, May 30, 1854.
Kansas Territory had its inception in the old idea of admitting two states at the same time-one a free state and the other a slave state- in order that the political balance should be maintained in the United States Senate. But for this idea, there would have been only Nebraska Territory organized west of the States of Missouri and Iowa. Kansas Territory might have been later organized from a portion of the greater territory so established. The plan to set up the two territories rather than one was evidently worked out by Senators Atchison and Douglas.
There is no record to show who brought forward the name Kansas for the new territory. There is little doubt, however, that Senator Doug- las left this matter to Atchison. The new territory was watered princi- pally by the Kansas River. That fact, it is reasonable to believe, suggested Kansas as the most fitting and appropriate name for Kansas Territory. It was in accordance with the name for the Northern terri- tory which had always been called Nebraska, for the Nebraska or Platte River.
The evidence that the slave power expected to have Kansas come into the Union a slave state, and Nebraska a free state, developed later, when the effort to force slavery into Kansas was made. At a meeting held at Independence, Missouri, this sentiment was embodied in a series of resolutions, one of which is inserted here.
Resolved, That we, without distinction of party, desire to act in accordance with what is right and due, not only to interests of the South, but likewise to interests of the North, and though knowing that the North, through certain fanaties, has endeavored to dictate to the South, we yet wish to meet them as brothers and friends, and only ask our rights as compromise, viz. :
That we, the South, be permitted peaceably to possess Kansas, while the North, on same privilege, be permitted to possess Nebraska Territory.
Many expressions embodying the same sentiments are to be found in the public prints of Missouri immediately following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill.
That portion of the Kansas-Nebraska bill erecting Kansas Territory, began with Section 19 and ended with Section 37. The Territory was bounded as follows :
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Beginning at a point on the western boundary of the State of Missouri, where the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude erosses the same; thenee west on said parallel to the eastern boundary of New Mexico; thenee north on said boundary to latitude thirty-eight; thenee following said boundary westward to the east boundary of the Territory of Utali, on the summit of the Rocky Mountains; thenee northward on said summit to the fortieth parallel of latitude; thence east on said parallel to the western boundary of the State of Missouri; thence south with the western boundary of said State, to the place of beginning.
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