USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Federal Period 1783-1860, Volume II > Part 25
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Interest in the slavery controversy now shifted to the Thirty-first Congress, the first session of which convened in December, 1849. In the Senate Mangum's attitude was un- compromisingly in favor of the complete rights of the slave owner. He presented for publication in the Congressional Globe resolutions of a meeting in Wilmington urging that del- egates be sent to the Nashville Convention, in which there was also a declaration that love of the Union, like individual life, must always be sacrificed for principle. The senator's re- marks were in harmony with the spirit of the resolutions :
Sir, I have heard much about compromises of this question. I . have heard much said about equivalents and compensations, but it seems to me that that conception is based on an unjust, if not an entirely false idea of our position. What is compensation for? What imperils? Have we done anything that the North has a right to complain of ? Are we to make compensation for the slanders, for the calumny, for the endangering of our firesides, for the exciting of domestic insurrection ? Are we to make compensation for aggression of this character ? No, sir. We stand by the Constitution and our rights, and we mean to stand by them under Heaven, and under that protection we believe that we have the power to maintain them, and we will do it at the hazard of our lives, and at the hazard of every- thing. Everything or anything will be incurred in preference to dishonor and an ignominious submission to an imprudent, arrogant and unconstitutional interference with our rights.
Nor was the outlook for harmony in the House more favorable. In the prolonged contest for the Speakership the whigs, realizing that Winthrop, of Massachusetts, could not be elected, turned on the fifty-ninth ballot to Edward Stanly, who received seventy-five votes. The plurality rule was then adopted, and Stanly magnanimously urged that his name be dropped for the first choice of his party. When Cobb, a Georgia democrat, received the required number of votes, Stanly as generously put the motion that he be declared elect- ed. Among the North Carolina whigs Clingman was notably radical. On November 13, in a letter to Senator Foote of Missouri, he held that the exclusion of slavery from territories would be revolutionary and would justify resistance on the part of the South. In Congress he advocated the extension of the northern boundary of Missouri to the Pacific as the
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line of division between slave and free territories in return for the admission of California as a free state, and to secure this compromise he urged filibustering on all other important matters until concession was made. Even more radical was Venable. Flushed with the success of his re-election over his whig opponent, he congratulated Clingman on his position and declared that the time had arrived when "a policy which under any form of federal legislation or executive intervention seizes for the non-slaveholding states the public domain, must
be given up. * Abolition in the District, the dock yards, forts, arsenals, must no longer be urged, and state laws preventing or impeding the capture and recovery of fugi- tive labor must be repealed." If these acts of justice were not done, "separation will be inevitable. Our wrongs are unsup- portable and can be tolerated no longer. But remember, we cannot be turned aside from the demand for redress by the cry of disunion; should it really ensue, on your head be the guilt, for we strove to avert the calamity." In contrast to this radicalism were the caustic and satirical remarks of Stanly, who pointed out the great influence of the South in the cabinet and in Congress, berated the politicians, ridiculed Venable as an "F. F. V., a strict Constructionist of the school of 1798, and to expect anything reasonable in politics from such a quarter is most unreasonable," engaged in a verbal altercation with Hilliard, of Alabama, and concluded "in the name of the people of North Carolina" that the "Union can- not be, shall not be, destroyed."
Of the various solutions for the slavery problem, Stanly was willing to accept that of President Taylor, the imme- diate admission of all territories to statehood,-in reality a free soil policy. Clingman and Venable were inclined to Cal- houn's program of a non-partisan alliance of all southern members to secure everything the South desired. In fact one correspondent declared that forty-five members of the House would follow Clingman in filibustering to secure full recogni- tion of southern rights in territories. The decisive influence proved to be that of Henry Clay, whose resolutions of January 29 were worked over into the Compromise of 1850. Under his
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leadership Mangum's radicalism waned. Indeed, Mangum was a member of the committee of thirteen which framed the' Compromise, and he recommended the measure in the follow- ing words: "I shall never feel any gratification in having one portion of the country gain or triumph over another por- tion, or in promoting the welfare of one section at the expense of another. Let us differ as we please on this or that question of policy; but upon those questions which touch the integrity of the Union, and the perpetuity of the Govern- ment, and shake the solid continent to its center, I can have but one heart, one will, one mind; that is to do justice to all." Throughout the debate on the Compromise in the Senate, Man- gum and Badger were active in its support. On Webster their influence was important. Wrote an observer in 1852: "Henry Clay had thrown himself into the breach, but he was powerless without some efficient aid from the North. The leading south- ern whigs, such as Mangum, Badger, and Dawson, rallied upon Mr. Webster, seized upon him, stuck to him, and finally brought him to the mark. His speech on the 7th of March gave a new impulse to the Compromise movement, and the whole country felt that the danger was substantially passed. But it is a notorious fact, that in the proceedings upon the re- port of the committee of thirteen, Mr. Webster wavered again, voting this way and that, and was only held to his place.by the unceasing vigilance of Messrs. Mangum and Badger." +
In the House the opposition to the Compromise by the North Carolina democrats was not serious, being confined to criticism of the Utah bill and the Texas boundary. In May, after the Washington Union came out in favor of the Com- promise, Venable and Ashe, together with Mangum and Cling- man, attended the meeting of southern leaders whose purpose was to establish a newspaper in Washington devoted to southern rights.
The vote of the state delegation on the Compromise as a whole is shown by the following table :
4 New York Herald, April 13, 1852. Quoted from Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 165, n.
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Texas Boundary
Cali- fornia
New Mexico
Fugitive Slaves
Utah
Slave Trade in District
Senate.
Badger
yea
yea yea
yea
yea
nay
Mangum
yea
nay
House
Ashe (Dem.) .
nay
yea
yea
nay
Caldwell (Dem.) .
yea
yea
yea
. yea
nay
Clingman (Whig)
nay
nay
yea
nay
Daniel (Dem.).
nay
nay
yea
yea
Deberry (Whig)
yea
nay
yea
yea
nay
Outlaw (Whig)
yea
nay
yea
yea
nay
Shepherd (Whig)
yea
nay
yea
yea
Stanly (Whig)
yea
yea
yea
yea
Venable (Dem.).
nay
nay
yea
nay
The Compromise now became the issue in state politics. In the early months of 1850 there was considerable sentiment for representation in the Nashville Convention, called by southern radicals to formulate a plan of cooperative resist- ance. The Standard approved of the plan, and was also favor- able to suggestions of secession. The Star also approved the convention, but the other whig papers were against it. Gov- ernor Manly was urged to call a special session of the legisla- ture to send delegates. When it was realized that he would not act, numerous county and district meetings, especially in the region bordering on South Carolina, were held to name delegates, but no representative of the state made the journey to Nashville. The party conventions met before the compro- mise was enacted; that of the whigs approved it, but the demo- cratic convention favored an extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, and declared that all palpable violations of the Constitution or attempts by a sectional ma- jority to wield the government to the injury and degradation of the South should be resisted. The democratic victory in the state elections, undoubtedly due to the suffrage issue, was considered by the more radical democrats as a condemna- tion of the Compromise. This, together with the strong move- Vol. II-20
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
ment for its repudiation in the cotton states, led to a long dis- cussion in the legislature of 1850. A joint committee on slavery was appointed, to which was referred a number of resolutions. Of these the most radical were those introduced by J. B. Shepard; they declared secession to be a right of self- defense which had never been surrendered, that whenever a majority of the people of North Carolina decided that they could not safely stay in the Union, it was their right and duty to secede, and that any policy of the Federal Government pre- venting the emigration of slave property would be an assault on property rights. The report of the committee, however, advised acquiescence in the Compromise, but retaliation in the future if slavery in the District of Columbia or the interstate slave trade were restricted, the fugitive slave law changed, or a slave state refused admission to the Union. It also recom- mended an advalorem tax on merchandise imported from the non-slaveholding states to offset the agitation against the fugitive slave law. A minority of the committee recom- mended additional resolutions defending the right of seces- sion. The center of debate was the Senate, for there the margin between whigs and democrats was narrow. In the end the resolutions of the minority looking toward secession were rejected, and also those of the majority were first revised and then rejected. This result was brought about by a cleavage among the democrats, a faction favoring moderation led by Weldon N. Edwards cooperating with the federalistic whigs. When radicalism was checked in the Senate, the controversy in the House of Commons ended. Thus was the democracy itself divided; even the Standard, loud in its demand for Southern rights and even defending the right of secession, changed its tone and urged acceptance of the Compromise. An interesting phase of the controversy in the legislature was a special daily edition of the Raleigh Register, the purpose of which apparently was to rally sentiment for the Compromise.
The right of secession, however, was carried to the people by the radicals in the congressional campaign of 1851. In the third district Green W. Caldwell, democrat, elaborated and defended the right to withdraw from the Union, while his whig opponent, Alfred Dockery, went so far as to declare that if
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South Carolina or even his native state should attempt seces- sion, he would vote for an appropriation to be used in forcing the offender to remain in the Union. Likewise in the eighth district Edward Stanly took a similar position against Ruffin, secession democrat, and his campaign was watched with inter- est by the Northern press. In the mountain district Clingman faced an independent whig, B. S. Gaither, and was forced to make conciliatory explanations of his previous utterances. During the campaign the whig press was emphatically for the preservation of the Union. The Fayetteville Observer quoted Madison's opinion that there could be no conditional ratifica- tion of the constitution. The North State Whig justified the use of force. "The President of the United States," it said, "and every executive officer under him, are sworn to execute the law, and if they are resisted, it is his solemn duty to quell such resistance, and if it is necessary in order to do it, to use the army and navy and militia of the country. War must follow. War as a result of secession is as fatal as any of the eternal purposes of God." The result was that the whigs carried five of the nine districts, among them the third and eighth, although the democrats had carried the state elections of the preceding year.
Thus love of the Union was stronger than sectionalism, and secession was repudiated. But during the contest the whigs suffered more than the democrats. Among them the cleavage over nationality and states rights came earlier and was deeper. Moreover they had to meet the crisis in federal relations at a time when the democrats were raising the suffrage issue. Also, in the solution of the national problem the whigs of the South, especially in the cotton areas, ex- hausted their strength. With the slavery question temporarily shelved, they had no new issue with which they could catch the imagination of the people. The reaction toward the demo- cratic party was therefore intensified.
CHAPTER XVI PARTY POLITICS, 1852-1860
PARTISAN DISSENSIONS - ADVALOREM SLAVE TAXATION - THE CAMPAIGN OF 1860
In the course of party politics after the exciting congres- sional campaign of 1851, there were three well-defined tend- encies; a rapid consolidation of democratic strength, the whig organization collapsing after 1854, an inclination to emphasize other questions than those arising from slavery expansion, and a test of strength between the forces of sectionalism and nationalism. No one of these three tendencies was continually prominent and political interest shifted from one to another of them from year to year.
The point of departure is the state and national campaign of 1852. The whigs were at a disadvantage, for they suffered by the cleavage made in their ranks by the Compromise of 1850. Over a caucus of whig leaders held at Washington early in the year, Senator Mangum presided. A resolution endorsing the Compromise was rejected; thereupon a number of Southern whigs bolted, among them Outlaw and Clingman. In the state the preference of the party for the presidential nomination was Fillmore, with Graham as a running mate, a choice officially sanctioned by the state convention. But Man- gum favored General Scott, who was nominated by the national convention, while Graham was named for vice president after Crittendon, Dawson, and Mangum refused the honor. On the other hand, there was unanimity among the democrats; in the national convention Dobbin led the stampede for Pierce's nomination. A distinct source of strength for the democrats was the undivided position of the party on manhood suf- frage. Reid, an experienced and successful leader, was again
308
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
the candidate for governor, while Kerr, the whig nominee, had never held an elective office and quibbled over the proposed suf- frage reform. The principal feature of the national campaign was defection among the whigs. Unconvinced of Scott's sound- ness on the Compromise of 1850, a movement for Webster and Graham in place of the regular ticket was launched. It had the support of two newspapers, the Wilmington Commercial and the Asheville News, and a new party name was proposed, national republican. Apparently the movement collapsed when Graham asked that his name be withdrawn from the new ticket. Of greater importance was the policy of Clingman, who a few days before the election expressed a preference for Pierce, on the ground that the election of Scott would destroy the influence of Webster and Fillmore, the real friends of the Compromise among the whigs, and that the defeat of Pierce would be a blow to friends of the South among Northern demo- crats. The results of the campaign were a democratic triumph in the state elections, Reid being elected in August, and a similar victory in the presidential election, Pierce receiving the electoral vote in November.
However the democratic success was not followed by una- nimity in the councils of the party. Factionalism at once appeared in the election of a senator to succeed Badger. James C. Dobbin was the choice for the democratic caucus, but Romulus M. Saunders desired the honor, as did also James B. Shepard. The whigs formally nominated Kenneth Rayner, but did not uniformly support him, throwing votes instead to Saunders in the hope of preventing the election of a democrat. After some forty ballotings Dobbin asked for another caucus and generously proposed that his name be withdrawn. His sacrifice was refused, and the deadlock continued to the end of the session. Not till 1854 was the vacancy filled, when Mangum having also retired, Asa Biggs and Governor Reid, both democrats, were elected. In the meantime Badger had been nominated by President Fillmore to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, but the Senate re- fused to confirm the nomination. Dobbin became Secretary of the Navy in 1853, a position he filled with distinction. Among his services were the establishment of the apprenticeship sys-
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
tem, promotion for merit, the retired list on pay, and the con- struction of the first steam frigates of the navy.
Insurgency next threatened the democrats. The opportu- nity for revolt was the old question of distribution. In 1852 Henry Bennett of New York introduced into Congress a bill which proposed to distribute the remaining public land among the states for internal improvements and other local needs. At that time the North Carolina democrats were rapidly com- ing round to the whig policy concerning state aid, and distri- bution, which the party had opposed, now made an appeal to many members as a means of securing revenue for the pro- posed public works. Hence in the congressional elections of 1853 three politicians bolted the party lines and endorsed distribution. One of these, Duncan McRae, who announced himself as an independent candidate in the Third District, was eliminated by an appointment as consul to Paris. Immediately his place in the field was taken by W. F. Leake, another demo- crat, in opposition to William S. Ashe, regular nominee of the party. In the Second and Seventh Districts W. C. Loftin and A. W. Venable, secessionists of 1851, raised the issue against Thomas Ruffin and A. M. Lewis, the regular nominees of the party. In all three districts the independents failed of election, but in the Seventh the division among the democrats enabled the whigs to elect Sion H. Rogers. However the delegation stood five democrats and three whigs.
The state campaign of 1854 proved to be the supreme test for the waning whig party. Its convention endorsed distribu- tion, favored constitutional reform through a convention chosen on the existing basis of representation, and nominated for governor Alfred H. Dockery, unionist of 1851 and a skill- ful campaigner. The democratic convention was notable for a new party policy. Its platform favored common schools and internal improvements; it also demanded suffrage reform by legislative initiative, and endorsed the states rights interpre- tation of the Constitution. Thomas Bragg, a comparatively new leader, was nominated for governor, mainly through the influence of Holden. During the early weeks of the contest, the odds favored Dockery. This was due to the proposed western extension of the North Carolina Railroad, which Dock-
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
ery ardently favored, a measure which appealed strongly to the region west of Salisbury, traditionally a center of whig strength. On the other hand Bragg, an easterner, was apathetic toward the extension until Holden showed him the necessity of taking a favorable attitude. The democratic oppo- sition being righted, the tide then turned against the whigs. The decisive influence was the attitude of the whig convention on the issue of constitutional reform. In the more western counties there was much dissatisfaction because the platform had not demanded a change in the basis of representation; moreover, the platform did not explicitly endorse suffrage reform. A whig meeting at Asheville in April voiced the dis- content by declaring that a sovereign convention could not be limited by the legislature and that any constitutional conven- tion should face the matter of the basis of representation. The result of the campaign was the election of Bragg and also a democratic legislature.
Apparently the whigs now lost faith in the future of their party, for in the congressional campaign of 1855 they dropped their party name and merged with the new American or Know Nothing party. Prominent in the ranks of the new movement was Kenneth Rayner, who framed the third or union degree of the order. A few democrats joined, notably James B. Shepard. On the other hand some whigs, notably John Kerr, refused to follow the trend of the party and became demo- crats. The secrecy of the new party and its Northern origin did not lend to its popularity, and in the congressional elec- tions the Know Nothings carried but two districts, the Eighth and the Fifth, Puryear and Edward G. Reid being the suc- cessful candidates. In the state campaign in the following year the inequality of the parties was further revealed, Bragg defeating Gilmer, the American nominee for governor, by a majority of over 12,000. The democrats also carried the legis- lature by a large majority.
In the meantime interest in slavery extension was revived. In 1854 Stephen A. Douglas introduced into Congress his famous Kansas-Nebraska bill, giving the people of the terri- tories of Kansas and Nebraska the right to accept or reject slavery and repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The
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North Carolina democrats unanimously and strongly favored the measure; the whig-Americans were lukewarm and critical. Congressmen Rogers and Puryear were in the opposition on the ground that an amendment submitted by Clayton, pro- hibiting foreigners in the country from voting, was defeated. In the Senate Badger, although he voted for the measure, first proposed an amendment that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise should not revive the old Louisiana law that pro- tected slavery, and he also held that squatter sovereignty, the right of the people of a territory to determine for themselves the issue of freedom, was derived exclusively from Congress. Within the state, the Standard, the democratic organ, unquali- fiedly endorsed the bill. The whig press was apathetic; the Register doubted its expediency, especially the wisdom of repealing the Missouri Compromise, while the Fayetteville Observer feared a free soil reaction. The whig state plat- form of 1854, however, approved the measure in its entirety. In the succeeding legislature Mr. Settle, a democrat of Rock- ingham County, introduced radical resolutions approving the Kansas-Nebraska act and threatening resistance in case the Northern states should interfere with slavery in territories. They aroused scarcely any debate, and were rejected.
However in the presidential campaign of 1856 popular excitement over slavery reached a high record. There was genuine alarm in democratic circles over the situation in Kansas and the prospect that the new republican party of the Northwest, committed against the further expansion of slav- ery, would win. The Standard declared that the Union could not survive the election of Fremont, the republican presiden tial candidate, and Clingman likewise advised resistance if the election should so result. That public opinion was deeply aroused is well attested by the case of Professor Benjamin S. Hedrick, a North Carolinian, a graduate of the State Univer- sity, who pursued advanced studies at Harvard and then returned to his alma mater as professor of applied chemistry. Early impressions of the evils of slavery were strengthened when he saw the prosperity of the North and compared it with his native state. During the presidential campaign he stated in reply to a direct question that he would vote for
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Fremont, provided there was a republican electoral ticket in the state. News of this opinion reached Holden, and on Sep- tember 17 the Standard hinted at the presence of a Fremont supporter on the faculty of a certain college. On the twenty- ninth a letter signed "Alumnus" formally charged that such was the case at the university, and demanded the resignation of the offending professor, though his name was not men- tioned. Then, against advice, Hedrick replied to the charges against him. In an open letter published in the Standard, he expressed his admiration for Fremont's character. He also made plain his opposition to the extension of slavery into ter- ritories and cited similar views of early southern statesmen.
Opposition to slavery extension is neither a Northern nor a sec- tional ism. It originated with the great Southern statesmen of the Revolution. Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Madison, and Randolph were all opposed to slavery in the abstract, and were all opposed to admitting it into new territory. One of the early acts of the patriots of the Revolution was to pass the Ordinance of '87, by which slavery was excluded from all the territories we then pos- sessed. This was going farther than the Republicans of the present day claim. Many of these great men were slaveholders, but they did not let self interest blind them to the evils of the system. Jefferson says that slavery exerts an influence both over the whites and the blacks but he was opposed to the abolition policy, by which the slaves would be turned loose among the whites. In his autobiography he says: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, can not live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines between them." Among the evils which he says slavery brings upon the whites, is to make them tyrannical and idle. "With the morals of a people their industry is also destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor." What was true in Jefferson's time is true now. * No longer ago than 1850, Henry Clay declared in the Senate, "I never can, and never will vote, and no earthly power ever will make me vote to spread slavery over territory where it does not exist." At the same time that Clay was opposed to slavery, he was, like Fremont, opposed to the least interference by the general gov- ernment with slavery in the states where it exists. Should there be any interference with subjects belonging to state policy, either by other states or by the federal government, no one will be more ready than myself to defend the "good old North," my native state. But, with Washington. Jefferson, Franklin, Henry, Randolph, Clay and Webster for political teachers, I cannot believe that slavery is prefer-
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