USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. V > Part 16
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join, variously, the Republican or other Anti-Nebraska aggregations, the Know-Nothings, or the Democratic party as the party of the Union.
Into this confused condition of politics simplicity was gradually introduced as the result of the overshadowing interest in the great Kansas issue and the practical developments arising from it. The south was deter- mined to secure Kansas for slavery, but northern senti- ment was grimly resolved not to permit that outcome. A decision could be reached only by the weight of popular preference in Kansas itself after settlement had advanced sufficiently to admit of conclusive action by vote. For there was no possible question, in the exist- ing political circumstances, of repealing the Kansas- Nebraska act or of summarily awarding Kansas to one side or the other by national intervention of any kind. Southern and northern emigrants consequently thronged to Kansas, and with them, of course, went interested politicians and agitators who stoutly maintained the claims of their respective sides and were ready at all times to seek and seize every advantage. The southern partisans were mostly from the adjacent State of Mis- souri, and, as rough frontiersmen who had thoroughly convinced themselves that they had a superior right to the Kansas soil, they did not hesitate to take high- handed measures. Neither did the northern settlers, for that matter, after duly experiencing the difficulties and dangers of the proposition before them. The natural results were premature and one-sided elections, rival governments, armed conflicts (the celebrated "Border Ruffian" wars), neighborhood feuds, murders
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both unprovoked and retaliatory, and villainies of all varieties.
It should be always borne in mind that the Kansas issue and situation originated from the irreconcilable nature of the opposed views of the sections on the slavery question, which never had been a party question and which the Democratic party, as the responsible party of the Union, passionately desired should not be. On this point the most distinguished northern histo- rians-notably that preeminent authority concerning the period in question, James F. Rhodes-have done justice to the Democratic party. The south and north equally made the issue-the south's contribution being its insistence upon a position of political equality in the Union, and the north's its refusal to concede national equality to slavery. Suppose the Missouri Compromise had not been repealed-what then? Would the south then have consented to the opening of a new free Terri- tory in the Louisiana Purchase without the compen- satory arrangement of a new slave Territory somewhere else? Certainly not. Moreover, and this is a still more interesting point, if the south had been debarred from a chance in Kansas, would it not have elected to adhere to its favorite project, at that time ready for execution, of annexing Cuba? It is the opinion of many historical students that the move to annex Cuba after an indis- pensable war with Spain in that connection, was stopped only by the concession to the south of the Mis- souri Compromise repeal.
In the clear light of history it is easy to see that the repeal was nevertheless a great mistake, especially so on
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expedient grounds, and most particularly on the ground of the interest of non-sectionalism, which the Demo- cratic party had earnestly at heart. It was an experi- ment which appeared logical, but of which the conse- quences could not be foreseen, any more than the results to flow from the formation of the sectional Republican party could be predicted by even the wisest partici- pants in that epochal enterprise.
The House of Representatives of the Thirty-fourth Congress (1855-57) was organized by the Republicans, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, being elected Speaker. A consolidation of all the Anti-Nebraska members was necessary to accomplish the result after unsuccessful balloting for two months. Not a single southern vote was given to Banks. Thus in its first national success the Republican party took on the sectional character that has always distinguished it.
At their first national nominating convention, held in Philadelphia on June 17, 1856, the Republicans selected as their candidates two northern men-John C. Fre- mont, of California, for President, and William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, for Vice-President. Their platform was mainly a presentation of the issue of non- extension of slavery as related to the Territories, and the immediate admission of Kansas as a free State was demanded. One of the resolutions asserted it to be "both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery"; and there were other references to slavery which signified condemnation of it as a system. Dis- unionism, however, was utterly and of course with the
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greatest sincerity opposed, the declaration being made that "the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and Union of the States shall be preserved"; and the extreme anti-slavery proposals that previously had been urged by the Free Soil and Abolition parties were dis- regarded on account of the practical considerations against them.
Yet under the conditions that then existed a tendency of disunionism was marked out for the Republican party as inseparable from the nature of its organization and policy. Political sectionalism meant disunionism. It was so construed to mean by all the opponents of the Republicans in the canvass-the Democrats, the conservative Whigs, and the Know-Nothings. "The Union in danger" was a warning continually heard. Rufus Choate, the distinguished lawyer, wrote that the first duty was "to unite and dissolve the new geograph- ical party calling itself Republican, to prevent the madness of the times from working its maddest act-the very ecstasy of its madness,-the permanent formation and the actual triumph of a party which knows one-half of America only to hate and dread it. The triumph of such a party puts the Union in danger." And Mr. Choate prophetically added : "If the Repub- lican party accomplishes its object and gives the govern- ment to the north I turn my eyes from the consequences. To the fifteen States of the south that government will appear an alien government. It will appear worse. It will appear a hostile government."
We shall not dwell on this subject; our sole purpose in discussing it is to present dispassionately, and in as
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brief words as possible, the historical facts and the opposed points of view of those distressed times. There was a divided responsibility for the rupture of the Union, and neither the Democratic nor the Republican party knew or could estimate the actual bearings or consequences of its attitude. The responsibility of the sectional Republicans for the ultimate result was posi- tive, so was that of the sectional south ; while the Demo- cratic responsibility was purely incidental and negative. In the case of the Republicans the fact of positive responsibility is not changed by saying that their party zeal prevented them from taking the menace of seces- sion seriously-that indeed they were wholly of the opinion, as expressed by one of their chief leaders, Henry Wilson, that the southerners could not be kicked out of the Union ; for a great party is as directly to be charged with responsibility for its misconceptions and miscalculations as it is to be credited for its wise or fortunate judgments and acts. On the other hand, the Democrats had no zeal of party for any sectional prin- ciple or course ; their zeal was altogether for the Union ; and their connection with the eventuality of disunion was solely that of physical inability to control the powerful and irreconcilable forces operating for the Union's inevitable destruction.
Regarding this matter of responsibility there remains the question of right and wrong on the slavery issue. That question, on moral grounds, admits of no argu- ment; and on practical grounds it has long since, and everlastingly, been settled. At the period referred to it was, for the north, morally just as easy a question as
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it is now. The north, having no slaves, could with perfect convenience take the one impregnable moral position-that the pretended right of any man to have a slave was simply unthinkable. But the south had slaves, hundreds of thousands of them, inherited from past generations, multiplying by natural increase, con- stituting the entire foundation of her economic and social structure. It was impossible for the south even to consider the proposal of emancipation-and there was no alternative proposal save that of retention of slavery that was practical. And to what substantial use would be the noble altruism of liberation? To this question, however attentively considered, there had been no answer, and none seemed possible. Henry Clay, residing in Kentucky, was a slaveowner. A man of more lofty, humane, and generous character never lived. Addressing a political meeting at Richmond, Indiana, during his 1844 campaign, he was interrupted by a Quaker, a Mr. Mendenhall, who asked him why he did not free his slaves. Mr. Clay replied that he had about fifty of them. Some were old and infirm, others infants-should he abandon them to the cold charities of the world? Others would not leave him-should he drive them away? He estimated his slaves to be worth $15,000. If he would agree to lose that sum by liberating them, would Mendenhall and his friends agree to provide for them to the amount of $15,000 after they had been given their freedom?
Hence the question of right and wrong had more than one side in practice. And no one at the north had any definite program for helping the south to a solution.
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But as regarded by northern sentiment, slavery was intolerable. That was sufficient. The question of responsibility and consequences involved in the Repub- lican sectional attitude became insignificant when slav- ery reached out to northern soil, as it was doing under the Fugitive Slave and Kansas-Nebraska laws. Such, stated with perfect dispassionateness, was the true Republican position. The Democratic position was, that the Union was all important.
In its platform of 1856 the Democratic party announced that, "claiming fellowship with and desiring the cooperation of all who regard the preservation of the Union under the Constitution as the paramount issue," it repudiated "all sectional parties and platforms concerning domestic slavery which seek to embroil the States and incite to treason and armed resistance to law in the Territories, and whose avowed purposes, if con- summated, must end in civil war and disunion." James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, were nominated for President and Vice- President.
The Know-Nothings nominated former President Millard Fillmore, of New York, and Andrew J. Donel- son, of Tennessee, on a platform asserting their special ideas and adhering to conservative views on the slavery question. An anti-slavery faction of the Know-Noth- ings sought to effect a fusion with the Republicans, but its offer was declined, although no condemnation of Know-Nothingism was embodied in the Republican platform. The Democrats, however, adopted a very strong plank in opposition to the Know-Nothing
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demands for discriminations against the foreign-born and Catholics.
A national convention was held by the Whigs, which endorsed the Know-Nothing nominees.
Buchanan won, receiving 174 Electoral votes to 114 for Fremont and 8 for Fillmore. In the whole south the Republican popular vote was only 1,194. Buchanan carried fourteen southern and five northern States, Fremont eleven northern States, and Fillmore one southern State, Maryland.
The administration of President Pierce came to an end on March 4, 1857. In addition to the political events that have been narrated it is memorable for the great acceleration of the movement of homeseeking settlers to the far west; the acquisition of more territory from Mexico by the Gadsden Purchase (1854) ; the development of California, Oregon, and the new Terri- tories; and the entrance of the government upon a policy for promoting American interests in the Pacific. During this administration occurred the opening of Japan to commercial intercourse with the world-des- tined to prove one of the most tremendous events in modern history,-as the result of Commodore Perry's expedition and the treaty concluded between the United States and Japanese governments in March, 1854.
D-CADY HERRICK
D-Cady Herrick, lawyer; born Esperance, Schoharie county, April 12, 1846; educated Albany classical school; studied law with Justice Rufus W. Peckham; admitted to the bar, 1868; democratic nominee for district attorney Albany county, 1877; elected 1880 and 1883; corporation counsel of the city of Albany, 1886-1891; justice supreme court of N. Y., 1891 to December 31, 1905; served as associate justice of the appellate division, 1894-1905; candidate for governor of New York, 1904.
SMITH MEAD WEED
Smith Mead Weed, lawyer; born at Belmont, N. Y., July 26, 1833; educated in public schools and worked in stores for five years; studied law and admitted to the bar, January 1, 1856; graduated from Harvard law school, 1859, and practiced at Plattsburg, N. Y .; member of the state assembly, 1865-1873 ; member state senate, 1867-1869; 1887-1889; 1890-1892; delegate at large to constitutional convention, 1867; delegate to several democratic national conventions.
CHAPTER VII THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF 1860
1857-1860
T HE immediate events that brought on the Civil War were the natural developments of the irreconcilable political positions and sectional antagonisms which have been briefly reviewed in the last chapter. Probably the chiefest of these events, in the respect of intensifying feelings, was the decision in the Dred Scott case by the United States Supreme Court (March 6, 1857), declaring that Congress had no constitutional power to prohibit slavery in the Terri- tories, and also practically affirming slavery to be a legitimate institution on fundamental grounds. Thus all for which the south had contended on the broad basis of asserted right was made the law of the land. It was impossible that the south could thenceforth fail to insist upon results to its own advantage ; and equally it was impossible that northern anti-slavery sentiment could fail increasingly to seek the power of unhamp- ered political action-a power transcending every other, and therefore able to find ways for effectively dealing with slavery in spite of technical difficulties on certain points.
Another outstanding development was the contest over the celebrated pro-slavery Lecompton Constitu-
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tion of Kansas, an instrument which, from the circum- stances of its inception and subsequent submission to the people of the Territory (1857), had excited the bitter opposition of the free-State party. President Buchanan regarded the Lecompton Constitution as the result of competent action taken under due legal authority ; but many of the northern Democrats, headed by Douglas, condemned and repudiated it because they believed it was not representative of the popular will. The controversy was with reference to the admission of Kansas on the basis of this Constitution. At the national election of 1856 the Democrats had recovered control of the House of Representatives, besides retaining the Senate; they consequently had the power to enact the Lecompton bill and admit Kansas as a slave State. Douglas and his followers, however, prevented that consummation. A compromise measure, the English bill (introduced by William H. English, an anti- Lecompton Democratic member of the House from Indiana, who afterward, 1880, ran on the Democratic ticket for Vice-President), was passed and signed by the President (1858), which directed that the Lecomp- ton Constitution be resubmitted to the Kansas voters, together with certain propositions concerning the public lands. The Kansans thereupon rejected the pro- posed Constitution by a majority of ten thousand. And so the final decision against slavery in Kansas was reached under a Congressional act of Democratic origin and Democratic administrative approval. It is true the measure embodied details unacceptable to Republican leaders; but it brought the main issue
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before the people of Kansas in a manner creating a situation practically very different from that upon which the pro-slavery partisans had previously taken their stand.
With Kansas irrevocably lost to the south, the whole idea of popular sovereignty as a practical device for implanting slavery at the west was seen to be a delusion. It is indeed strange that the south could ever have seriously expected to be able to outvote the anti-slavery people on a great competitive effort in the Territories ; and stranger still is it that the southern leaders could have taken the position of resting their case for the future upon the outcome in the single Territory of Kansas. In its last reduction the question of the political control of Kansas was a question of establish- ing on the soil the major number of settlers; and for economic reasons the unencumbered northerners were certain to outdo the slave-ridden southerners in the settlement contest. According to the historian Rhodes, there was at no time in Kansas a slave population of more than three hundred-this notwithstanding the proximity of the slave States of Missouri and Arkansas. Pro-slavery sympathizers of course went in large numbers; but the successful competitive taking up of Kansas lands for either immediate or future cultivation by slave labor was not a practical matter in the emer- gent case made by the inrush of homeseekers from the north.
And even if the south had won Kansas previously to 1858 the desired balance of the States, sixteen to sixteen, would have obtained only temporarily. For in 1858
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Minnesota was admitted as a free State, and in 1859 Oregon, also free, was admitted. It is worthy of remark that both these admissions, giving the north eighteen States to the south's fifteen, occurred during the Democratic administration of Buchanan, when the sectional situation had reached its most critical stage. As both Minnesota and Oregon were deemed to have sufficient population, as their inhabitants unanimously desired admission, and as there were no complicating conditions locally on the subject of slavery, the national government welcomed them to statehood notwithstand- ing the aggravated political position as between the sections and the menace to the Democratic party. More- over, before the going out of the Buchanan admin- istration Kansas, too, was admitted (January 29, 1861).
The uselessness of any further struggle for slavery extension by the means of popular vote in the Terri- tories had at last become perfectly plain. Yet there remained the facts of slavery's right to enter the Terri- tories under the Supreme Court decision, the south's determination to yield nothing, and the certainty of a crisis in the event that the Republican party should come into full control nationally. Thus the fateful issue was made up for the campaign of 1860. Meantime there was an unmistakable growth in Republican strength. The elections of 1858 gave the Republicans a plurality over the Democrats in the House of Repre- sentatives, with the Know-Nothings holding the balance; and when the new House organized a Repub- lican, William Pennington, of New Jersey, was chosen Speaker. This was the period of the rise of Abraham
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Lincoln to a conspicuous position in the national polit- ical field as the result of his debates with Douglas in Illinois in 1858, followed by his remarkable address in Cooper Institute, New York City, on February 27, 1860. Thoughtful people began to realize that there could be but one logical conclusion to Republican suc- cess-that of progressive and in the end decisive action, regardless of southern opposition and of the necessary consequences, along the line of Lincoln's declaration made at Springfield, Illinois, June 17, 1858, "This government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free"; a declaration paraphrased by William H. Seward in his "Irrepressible conflict" speech deliv- ered at Rochester, New York, October 25, 1858.
Officially, however, it was no part of announced . Republican policy to take overt measures for putting an end to the half-slave status of the Union. Lincoln expressly disavowed any such radical design, saying in his Cooper Institute address that he did not mean to assert that the power of emancipation was possessed by the Federal government, and adding, "As to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation." He gave it as his understanding and con- viction that the issue as to a Union either all slave or all free was wholly made by the aggressive and uncompro- mising attitude of the south; that the south would ultimately be satisfied with nothing short of abolition of all the free State Constitutions, so that slavery could
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become national; and therefore that the responsibility for sectionalism, for the Republican party's position, and for the apprehended eventualities was altogether upon the south.
But this view was hotly resented by the south and totally rejected by the more conservative northern people, especially the Democratic leaders, who main- tained above all things the practicability of a peaceable and harmonious final arrangement. In the historic Lincoln-Douglas debate at Freeport, Illinois, August 27, 1858, Lincoln propounded to his antagonist several categorical questions, one of which was: "If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political conduct?" Douglas with great warmth answered that he considered the inter- rogatory amazing; that there was "not one man, woman, or child south of the Potomac, in any slave State, who did not repudiate any such pretension"; and that the suggested Supreme Court decision, infringing upon State rights, would simply be a patent violation of the Federal Constitution. "Such a thing," he
exclaimed, "is not possible. It would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to." With equal intensity Douglas might have added that in the surmised case no northern Democrat of any influence would for a moment have tolerated the intrusion of slavery into the free States in contempt of the established and unanimous local public sentiment against that institution ; and he might with great perti-
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nence have reminded Mr. Lincoln of the sincerity, reliability, and enormous power and value of the north- ern Democracy as a factor for maintaining the integrity of the anti-slavery position of every northern State and moreover every Territory. Throughout all the exciting events incidental to the formation of the new common- wealths west of the Mississippi, the northern Democrats who had become settlers in them had not only been active participants on behalf of freedom, but had invariably formed the predominating element of the electorate. California up to 1858 had been uniformly Democratic. Iowa, Oregon, and Minnesota had begun their careers with Democratic popular majorities. Even among the free settlers of Kansas the supporters of the Democratic party originally outnumbered every other political element; at the noted free State Consti- tutional convention held in Topeka in October, 1855, the roll of delegates showed that 19 were Democrats, 6 Whigs, and 9 Independents, Free Soilers, and Repub- licans.
Lincoln's doctrine of the impossibility of the govern- ment's permanent endurance half slave and half free was perfectly expressive, however, of the sentimental conviction of an undoubted majority of the northern people that the country's destiny was bound up in the cause of resistance to slavery-resistance to such an extent and such a conclusion, at least, as fully to satisfy his demand that "the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public . mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction." This was a far different matter
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