USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 43
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PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
is this selfish hunkerism of the property interest on the slave question."
No wonder this issue divided the community and would not down. It brought into play ultimate prejudices on each side. Moreover, one event after another kept it alive as the engrossing problem of politics and morals. From distant Washington, Webster, declaring that the rescue of Shadrach was, "strictly speaking, a case of treason," wielded the thun- ders of the administration; and a proclamation of the Secre- tary of War made plain his intention to enforce the Federal law. The prolonged contest over the election of Sumner kept the politicians alive to the question; the negro population was uneasy ; the Garrisonians were aggressive.
SIMS FUGITIVE SLAVE CASE (1851)
As a climax, slave catchers again appeared in Boston and seized one Thomas Sims in the hotel in which he was a waiter. This time, to prevent the possibility of a rescue, the courthouse was strongly guarded and surrounded by an iron chain. Dana was again at hand, employing every device of the law, but he met with strong resistance from the Massachusetts judge and the Federal judge to whom he appealed, and from the United States commissioner. After eight days, during which the fate of Sims was the supreme question of the hour, the negro was marched to a vessel before daybreak on the morn- ing of April 12, with an armed escort of one hundred or more city police. As the vessel left the wharf Sims cried : "And is this Massachusetts liberty?" These events produced their effect on the legislature, and on April 24 Charles Sumner was elected to the United States Senate.
The political power of the Whigs in Massachusetts was shaken, but the inner group, the true Websterians, had no intention of lowering the flag. On the day after the election of Sumner they appeared on the streets of Boston wearing bands of crape on their arms. Socially their solidarity was unbroken; they delivered their proscriptions with a ruthless hand. Of this period the biographer of Dana wrote in 1890: "The social, financial, and political conditions then existing are now almost forgotten, and in a few years more he who speaks the truth about them will be denounced as a maligner."
481
BREAK-UP OF THE COALITION
Sumner was already beyond the pale; Dana, who had offended by deserting those with whom were his natural affiliations and joining the Free-soilers, had outraged the "best people" afresh and endangered his professional career by undertaking the defence of Shadrach and of Sims.
CONTINUANCE OF THE COALITION (1852)
Social ostracism, however, was impotent against political leaders such as Wilson and Boutwell, who had brought to pass the Coalition; and only by its destruction could the Whigs regain power. To discredit it, a leader of the Bar, Benjamin R. Curtis, issued an address to the people which was signed by 167 Whigs, members of the legislature. It was a formid- able document, written with learning and denouncing the Coalition as a "factious conspiracy to violate a public trust, and as such criminal, not only in morals, but in the law of the land." In the fall campaign the Whigs put forth their best efforts. Their joint opponents entered the field no less ardently; the issue of Coalitionism versus Whiggery was vigorously, not to say violently, contested; and on election day the total of votes cast was 137,000-that is, an increase over the preceding year of 16,000, and the largest thrown in the history of the State down to that time. The relative standing, however, of the parties was much the same: the Whigs, as in 1850, had a percentage of .47 of the total vote ; the Democrats, .32; the Free-soilers, .21. Thus the people justified the "criminal conspiracy" by which Sumner had been elected.
BREAK-UP OF THE COALITION (1852)
This election also continued the control of the legislature by the Coalition, and Boutwell was again chosen governor. The next move was to weaken the Whig power in a more lasting fashion than could be achieved by one or two temporary vic- tories at the polls. The core of its strength, as has been said, was the solid delegation elected to the legislature on a general ticket by the city of Boston. The provision in the State Con- stitution which made this possible also limited the representa- tion from the smaller towns, where the other parties were stronger. This grievance, together with many lesser ones
482
PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
indicative of the rising tide of democratic discontent, swept the people into voting a call for a constitutional convention.
Even as it accomplished this object, the Coalition showed signs of dissolution. It was a presidential year, and Pierce was the Democratic nominee on a platform which declared the Compromise of 1850 a final settlement of the slavery question ; the members of the party in Massachusetts could not well take a different stand on a national issue. The Fugitive Slave Law was no longer a burning question.
A further sobering influence was the death of Webster late in October. A flood of proud memories surged over Massachusetts; even those who had assailed him most bitterly two years since paid tribute with a touch of repentance to the man, awe-inspiring in death as in life.
In the election the Whigs carried the State for their presi- dential candidate, Scott; they also gained control of the legislature by about ten votes, and so could elect the State officers and send Edward Everett to the United States Senate.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION (1853)
The Constitutional Convention of 1853 is elsewhere dis- cussed in this volume. Its political significance remains to be estimated. The Coalitionists brought it about, and May 4, 1853, the body thus authorized assembled. It was re- markable for the quality of its membership and for the dignity and earnestness of its deliberations. The Coalitionists were in the majority; their purpose was to modernize the old in- strument of 1780, which had been somewhat modified in 1820 by the infusion of a greater popular control. Thus they attempted to do away with the Whig grip on the city of Boston, to reform the judicial tenure so that judges should be more responsive to the wishes of the people; to free Harvard College from dominance by Whigs and Unitarians; and to establish a plurality instead of a majority rule in elections. But owing partly to the adroitness of the Whig leaders, and partly to the weakness of those opposed to them, the results were less radical than had been expected.
POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONVENTION (1853)
It had been assumed that the Constitution, when submitted
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONVENTION 483
to the people, would be approved. Rejection was hardly con- ceivable. Rejection, however, occurred; and the impetus to it came unexpectedly from Free-soilers, Adams, Palfrey, and Hoar, who were outside the Coalition and who had not been members of the Convention. Following their lead, the Whigs plucked up courage to join in the attack, and at the polls the majority against adoption was unequivocal. Such of the changes proposed as had substantial merits were within a few years adopted.
Abortive though it was, the Convention made a name for itself. Massachusetts, then and later, took pride in this chosen body of men that for three months discussed the fundamental problems of representative government. Her citizens delighted in the interplay of the keen and forceful personalities, rich in variety, representing all aspects of the community. They knew of Rufus Choate's brilliant defense of the judiciary; they thrilled at the ardent retort of Dana, when warned by a Bostonian of social prominence against "biting at the hand that feeds us" : "The hand that feeds us! The hand that feeds us! Sir, no hand feeds me that has any right to control my opinions !" Before eighteen months had passed the Conven- tion was to grow still more in esteem by its contrast with the rampant democracy that then filled the hall where it had sat. Still later, when its radical leaders, Wilson, Boutwell, and Banks, held places of honor in the Republican party, this fact was added to its credit. In a way, it stood at the end of an era, the closing events of which had succeeded each other with overwhelming suddenness.
With the rejection of the Constitution went also the over- throw of the Coalition. Not only had its Free-soil opponents attacked it, but Caleb Cushing, now one of the most influential members of Pierce's cabinet, had issued a notice, commonly called from its autocratic tone a "ukase," warning his fellow Democrats in Massachusetts that, if they wished to prosper, they must dissever themselves from their antislavery allies and fall in line with the administration.
At the moment, however, the Whigs could enjoy a victory undimmed by any suspicion of what the future held in store, and no sense of the obligations of privilege restrained them. Respectability triumphed over democratic nonentity with as
484
PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
much gusto and vulgarity as if it had never breathed the re- fined air of Beacon Hill. The hand that fed became also the hand that struck.
Henry Wilson-organizer of the Coalition, advocate of the Constitutional Convention and its most active spirit, and candidate for governor on the Free-soil ticket-was the chief victim. The persistent foe of the Webster Whigs and all that they stood for, he was now at their mercy; and it was a bitter thought that Adams and Palfrey had contributed to his downfall. On one side was the social and commercial aristocracy of Boston, aided by Harvard College; on the other an uneducated Yankee who, having failed as a shoe manu- facturer, had now failed in making a living off politics.
"The result appears to be this," wrote Warrington, the keen antislavery journalist, "that the coalition is completely dead; the secret ballot law and ten-hour law are prostrate, the Free-soil party disheartened, and the Democratic party good for nothing; constitutional reform will not be heard of again for many years; the fogies will frown down all at- tempts at agitation, whether by Democrats or liberal Whigs; the Whig party remains in the complete control of Boston, and the money-bags of Boston rule the State."
KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL (1854)
The shout of victory had hardly died on the air, and the "money bags" were just beginning their new rule with the year 1854, when from a most unexpected quarter came the blow that was to wreck the Whig party. Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois, reporting a measure for the organization of the vast region known as the Nebaska ter- ritory, proposed that the settlers there should decide the question of slavery for themselves. By implication the pro- posal repudiated the Missouri Compromise, which had forever excluded slavery from this area; and in a revision of the bill the repudiation was made explicit-the Southern leaders saw to that. No scheme of theirs to force slavery upon the whole country had ever been so daring, so far-reaching.
The North was aghast! The indignation aroused came from the depths of men's natures; in many cases it was the wrath of people who had been tricked, and so came in double
485
KANSAS-NEBRASKA
measure. The stand taken by the Springfield Republican, heretofore a staunch Whig journal, expressed the thoughts of earnest men and women always loyal to the Union. "No mere party or faction will array itself against this Nebraska scheme. The whole people are against it. The moral force of the North-the influence, the learning, the wealth, and the votes of the North-are against it and will make them- selves effectively heard, ere the agitation, now reopened by the insanity of the slave-holding interest, and in behalf of the schemes of ambitious partisans, shall have ceased. The South and its allies have sown the wind-will they not reap the whirlwind ?"
ATTITUDE OF MASSACHUSETTS ON KANSAS-NEBRASKA (1854)
So strong, so widespread was this wave of indignation, affecting profoundly thousands hitherto unmoved, that the great parties must inevitably be disrupted as national organ- izations. The word "national" was becoming synonymous with "proslavery." As Robert C. Winthrop wrote: "If I could have prescribed a recipe for reinflating Free-soilism and Abolitionism, which had collapsed all over the country, I should have singled out this precise potion from the whole materia medica of political quackery."
While this new stage of the struggle was in its first weeks, the interest of Massachusetts expressed itself in following the course of its Senators, Everett and Sumner. Everett, the golden-tongued orator, the pride of Boston, had been elected the year before, when the Whigs were in power. The em- bodiment of conservatism and timidity, he was wholly out of his element in the contest in which he found himself in- volved. He opposed the Douglas measure in committee, and his arguments doubtless had weight with conservative Whigs like himself ; but when, early on March 4, after seventeen hours of angry debate, the bill was passed, the fact that he was not present to vote against it (having gone home on account of sudden illness) was counted against him, and his excuse was scornfully brushed aside. The intemperateness of the critic- ism broke his health and his weak spirit, and within three months he resigned his seat,-not, however, before he had given further offense by his manner in presenting a petition
486
PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
against the Nebraska bill, signed "in the name of God and in his presence" by over three thousand clergymen of New Eng- land. As for Sumner, it was he who now expressed the temper of Massachusetts. For once he was not far in the lead; his constituents were fairly abreast of him.
RENDITION OF ANTHONY BURNS (1854)
The feeling of deep indignation which was finding utter- ance in the private conversation of men and women, day after day, as well as in public meetings, was now intensified by an- other case under the Fugitive Slave Law. May 24, 1854, Anthony Burns, a young Negro, was arrested in Boston on a false charge and carried, literally, by a gang of men to the United States courtroom on the top floor of the courthouse, where he was identified by his master. The news electrified the city; and two evenings later, after an excited crowd in Faneuil Hall had listened to impassioned speeches by Parker and Phillips, a rescue was attempted, in which Thomas Went- worth Higginson was a participant. The effort failed, but in the course of it one of the guards on duty was killed. Forthwith the building was protected by United States marines and artillery, as well as by State militia.
As in the case of Sims, Dana managed the defence. He was a man in whom his friends recognized a touch-more than a touch-of genius, and in these tremendous days he was living through the crisis of his life: the heart of a generous lover of freedom, the mind of an able lawyer, and the voice of a master of forensic oratory were working with the ut- most intensity to one end. The diary in which he records the story is a document of the first rank, a revelation unforget- table in its vividness of the irresistible conflict between free- dom and slavery.
The legal struggle was fought through to its foregone con- clusion; and the end was a procession, surrounding a slave worth perhaps $1,200, down State Street to the wharf. It was accompanied by the "marshal's guard" of one hundred and twenty-four men taken from the dregs of society, and eleven hundred and forty United States soldiers with mus- kets loaded, while the entire police force of the city and twenty-two companies of Massachusetts militia stood guard
THE ESCAPE ON SHIPBOARD.
ARREST
אן BOSTON.
DEPARTURE FROM BOSTON.
THE
SALE.
THE ADDRESS.
Anthony Burns
TAUCTION
tres
From an original broadside
Courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society
THE STORY OF A FUGITIVE
487
EMIGRANT AID COMPANY
alongside. Thus (at a cost of $40,000 or more) the Con- stitution of the United States of America was upheld in Boston, and the nation-that is, the North and the South- looked on, wondering and fearing what might befall next.
NEW ENGLAND EMIGRANT AID COMPANY (1854-1857)
At the time that these events were occurring, the Kansas- Nebraska Bill received the President's signature. It was plain that the political battle had been fought and won on sectional, rather than party lines. Politically the North had been shown to be impotent to prevent the transfer of Kansas to slavery; but its fighting spirit, far from being crushed, ex- pressed itself in new ways. Kansas was now open to the white man; it could be made free, if enough settlers went from the North. Here was a call to action in which business enterprise must take the lead-and it was Amos A. Lawrence who met the challenge. The selling agent of a cotton-manu- facturing concern and a man of importance on State Street, a sound Whig but not a Webster man, he had been so affected by the recent events that he now came forward to join Eli Thayer of Worcester in the arduous task of organizing the emigration to Kansas of able-bodied men to till and also to hold the soil.
Thayer had already obtained from the Massachusetts legislature a charter for this purpose, and out of this begin- ning grew the New England Emigrant Aid Company. As its treasurer, Lawrence personally took the responsibility for a large part of its financing. Thayer was an active propa- gandist, and within three months ninety-nine settlers had been started for the new territory. The money was spent not for travelling expenses but for the erection of schoolhouses, saw and grist mills, and similar community undertakings, among them a new town called Lawrence. New Englanders never were the majority even of the northern settlers. From New York State, from Ohio and Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa, antislavery settlers passed into Kansas.
Later, when the struggle between northern and southern settlers became violent, and Kansas was "bleeding," one of the directors of the company collected from a "small but mixed company of hunkers, republicans, and abolitionists"
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PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
the sum of $1,600 for the purchase of arms, to which Law- rence added $1,000; and soon "boxes of primers" were re- ceived in Kansas "for the education of their Missouri neighbors." Apart from its national consequences, which were by no means insignificant, the movement to save Kan- sas was important in Massachusetts because it provided a common ground for action by men who had hitherto stood apart.
DECADENCE OF THE OLD PARTIES (1854)
Simultaneous with the beginning of this frontier enterprise were many attempts to give political expression to the new state of feeling in Massachusetts. The Whigs were no longer a national party, for the southern wing had deserted them in support of the Nebraska bill; but they felt confident of their strength as a State organization and opposed fusion with the Free-soilers. The proposed union of recent enemies was too much to expect of human nature. Besides, the next legis- lature would elect a United States Senator, and they feared the loss of the prize if they joined with the antislavery men. The Free-soilers were themselves disunited; and the Demo- crats who resented the "ukase" of Cushing and could not fol- low Douglas had nowhere to go. As Dana wrote in his diary : "The Whig party has lost its tone, the Democratic party never had any, and the Free-soil party has been lowered by the coalitions and managements of Wilson and others, until it has lost or essentially impaired its power of doing good." A new vessel must be found for the new wine, and this was pro- vided for the time by the American or Know-Nothing party.
RISE OF THE KNOW-NOTHINGS (1848-1853)
The rapid increase of the Irish in Boston during recent years had become a matter of general concern to the old stock. A concomitant increase in crime, pauperism, and insanity had been noted; and though it was connected with the general change of economic conditions and occupations, a considerable part of the voters felt that this "foreign" element (which in 1855 amounted to forty-two per cent of the population) was a cause for alarm. Especially was this the case since in reli- gious faith it owed allegiance to a spiritual head who was also
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RISE OF KNOW-NOTHINGS
a European potentate, a temporal ruler, and fundamentally opposed to the free institutions of this country. Moreover, it was commonly believed that these new voters were hostile to moral issues which were fast becoming the great concern of the Commonwealth. Had not their influence contributed to the defeat of the new constitution? Were they not against the recent legislation restricting the sale of liquor-the "Maine law?" Had not the signatures of their clergy been lacking to the petition against the Nebraska bill? At the time of the arrest of Anthony Burns, had not the comments of their newspaper, The Pilot, been unsympathetic? All these counts, exaggerated and intensified by religious and racial animosity, combined into an indictment which at this time immensely af- fected public opinion.
To people persuaded of the subtlety and pervasiveness of this danger, countermining seemed the proper remedy. Al- ready had sprung into existence a secret order of national extent, with lodges, ritual, and all the panoply of organiza- tion suitable for a dark and desperate enterprise against a well-organized and resourceful enemy. Thanks to adroit manipulation by the northern leaders of the movement, the Slave Power was now bracketed with the Pope as a common foe. Thus restless multitudes were expertly shepherded into the new fold. Since leaders were needed, too, the managers of the new power sought out well-known men from all the old parties. Henry Wilson was captured in March, 1854; others of less note followed him. Robert C. Winthrop was assured that, if he would consent to a private initiation into one of the lodges, he would be made their candidate for gov- ernor, be elected, and might, if he desired, be sent to the Senate. His urbanity enabled him to conceal his astonish- ment and to give a courteous refusal.
The extent, leadership, and principles of the combination were, until within a few weeks of the election, successfully kept under cover. The old political managers and the news- papers were in the dark; or rather, they were vaguely aware of influences in action whose extent and direction they could only guess. Henry Wilson accepted the Free-soil or Repub- lican nomination for governor, so that outwardly the contest was running its course in the old channels.
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PRELIMINARIES OF CIVIL WAR
KNOW-NOTHING TRIUMPH (1854)
Alarm was not precipitated even when at last the names on the Know-Nothing slate were made public. The Whig leaders felt some concern as they recognized the Free-soil lion under the American sheepskin; but even then they could not suspect the doom that awaited them on election day. A com- parison of the returns for 1853 and 1854 shows how over- whelming was the overthrow.
1853
1854
Whig
60,600
27,200
Democratic
36,000
13,700
National (proslavery) Democratic
5,400
6,400
Free-soil
29,000
6,400
American
None
81,500
Thus the American party had elected its entire State ticket, most of the legislature, and all the members of Congress.
This result can hardly be regarded as a triumph of anti- slavery or anti-Nebraska sentiment, for on that issue there was practically no difference of opinion throughout Massa- chusetts. It was a protest by those who prided themselves on American descent and who cherished American institutions against what they considered to be alien in race and foreign in religion. Also it was a censure of the three parties for their lack of leadership. In essence, it was an uprising against the prestige and power of a bourgeois aristocracy based on excessive respect for property and comparatively indifferent to human rights. Most of the members of the American party were propertyless, in the State Street sense, and nonentities to the eye of Beacon Hill, but a spirit of inde- pendence and likewise a lively resentment made them long to deliver a knock-out blow at the "money bags" of the one and the snobs of the other.
If the rank and file of the party which was about to take over the State government were unsophisticated politically, there were Free-soilers among them whose eye teeth were al- ready cut. Chief of these was Henry Wilson, a man whose course up to this time seemed to be the resultant of a strain of moral earnestness and a desire to keep himself in politics as a
Courtesy of Harvard College Library
HENRY WILSON
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ANTI-CATHOLIC ACTION
means of earning a living. For years a foe to slavery, he had never lost an opportunity to announce his determination to drive from power in Massachusetts the individuals and the parties who upheld it. Yet to accomplish this purpose he had made such opportunist use of political ways and means as to alienate the very men who were most needed to give strength and standing in Massachusetts to the cause that he avowedly had at heart. With the backing of the Know-Nothings, he was now able to snatch the prize of the Senatorship away from the helpless Whigs. Thereafter he played a small part in State affairs. He became a national figure, one of the founders of the Republican party, steadfast to its principles through the Civil War; finally, after a long and honorable career as Sen- ator, he was elected Vice-President of the United States in 1872.
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