USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. VI > Part 11
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"Twenty-first. That we inscribe on our banner Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men, and under it we will fight on, and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions.
"Twenty-second. That upon this platform the convention presents to the American people as a candidate for the office of President of the United States, John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, and as a candi- date for the office of Vice-President of the United States, George W. Julian, of Indiana, and earnestly commends them to the support of all freemen and all parties."
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The Election
Neither the Democratic nor Whig sympathizers with anti-slavery principles were to any considerable extent disposed to repeat their previous third party experiments. Leaving the slavery question out of consideration, party convictions and affections were strong. As both the great parties had fully accepted the Compromises, there was no real question between them. The Democrats were again united. Among the northern Whigs there was felt much dejection and disgust on account of the purposeless position of the party, and in the south the greatly superior strength of the Democrats was from the beginning of the canvass beyond doubt. The Whig party suffered a crushing defeat.
For President and Vice-President, Electoral vote :
Franklin Pierce and William R. King, Democrats :- Alabama, 9; Arkansas, 4; California, 4; Connecticut, 6; Delaware, 3; Florida, 3; Georgia, 10; Illinois, 11; Indiana, 13; Iowa, 4; Louisiana, 6; Maine, 8; Maryland, 8; Michigan, 6; Mississippi, 7; Missouri, 9; New Hampshire, 5; New Jersey, 7; New York, 35; North Carolina, 10; Ohio, 23; Pennsylvania, 27; Rhode Island, 4; South Carolina, 8; Texas, 4; Virginia, 15; Wisconsin, 5. Total, 254. Elected.
Winfield Scott and William A. Graham, Whigs :- Kentucky, 12; Massachusetts, 13; Tennessee, 12; Vermont, 5. Total, 42.
Popular vote :
Pierce, 1,601,474; Scott, 1,386,578; Hale, 156,149.
1856
Thoughtful men at the north had not failed to real- ize the grave import of the new principle of neutrality on the part of the national government concerning slavery extension which was made the distinguishing feature of the legislation for erecting the Territories of Utah and New Mexico. Recognition was thereby given slavery as having, to the extent that the legisla- tion territorially applied, an equal right to future ex- pansion altogether without either the prejudice of an unfriendly predisposition toward the institution itself or the circumspection of a politic and discriminating treatment of it as a local system requiring to be geo- graphically constricted. This recognition was gener- ally supposed, until the year 1854, to have been in intent and probable effect only a nominal concession to the south in return for freedom in California; but its great potentialities for trouble were manifest if the south should decide to urge an aggressive claim to more territory for slavery upon the basis of accepted principles.
In all the debate on the Compromise measures there had occurred no serious reference to a possible im- perilment of the Missouri compact as the result of the slavery-neutrality policy for the new Territories carved out of the Mexican cession. The guarantee by the Missouri compact of complete and perpetual slavery prohibition in all the unorganized territory of
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the Louisiana Purchase north of the line 36° 30' was consequently assumed to remain inviolate and inviola- ble. Already, pursuant to the compact, Iowa and Minnesota, fronting the Mississippi River on the west and running northward from Missouri, had been or- ganized with free institutions : Iowa had been admitted as a State (1846), and Minnesota had been organized as a Territory (1849). To the westward of the tier Missouri-Iowa-Minnesota, the region guaranteed to freedom by the Missouri compact stretched to the crest of the Rocky Mountains (where it joined the Mexican cession and Oregon Territory)-with an area of nearly 500,000 square miles, comprehending the present States of Kansas and Nebraska, parts of South and North Dakota1 and Colorado, and nearly all of Wyoming and Montana. In this entire country no Territory had yet been established. It was still dedi- cated to the aborigines, and so devoid was it of any pretension to settlement that it contained at the begin- ning of 1854 hardly a thousand white people.
At that time the free and slave States, and their re- spective representations in the two houses of Congress, were as follows :
Free States .- California, Connecticut, Illinois, In- diana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsyl- vania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Total States, 16. United States Senators, 32. Members of the House of Representatives, 144.
1The larger part of the Dakotas was originally included in the Territory of Minnesota, which extended to the Missouri River.
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Slave States .- Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Flor- ida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mis- sissippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Total States, 15. United States Senators, 30. Members of the House of Representatives, 90.
In addition, Oregon and Minnesota were in process of development into free States, and were expected to be qualified for admission in the near future. But there was not in the whole nation a single unit of erected territory to which the south could turn as an available element for reinforcing its declining strength in the Union. In the Louisiana Purchase south of 36° 30' there remained only that strip of "Indian Coun- try" bounded on the east by Arkansas and on the south and west by Texas which later took the official name of Indian Territory and now constitutes the main part of Oklahoma; it was rigidly closed to settlement. Neither of the huge new Territories of Utah and New Mexico was regarded by the country as adaptable to early statehood. Utah had a troublesome Mormon population, and New Mexico, on account of its remote situation and lack of inducements to immigrants, was not likely to show the requisite development for many years. Both Utah and New Mexico, moreover, as arid and mountainous regions, were unsuited to the employment of slave labor.
A national situation both politically and territorially, therefore, had become fully established which placed the south at a distinct and increasing disadvantage, subject only to the moderate disposition of the north
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concerning sectional and slavery questions existing or to arise. It was the fact of this situation that led to the Compromises of 1850 and induced the conservative ele- ments of both sections to regard them as conclusive. The possibilities of any other solution than that of com- promise with subsequent complete observance of its principles and arrangements, were felt to be too appal- ling even to be thought of. Already there was an insist- ent sentiment at the south, represented by young leaders of great ability and popularity, that demanded the full measure of southern interests regardless of conse- quences, even to the extremity of disunion. At various southern State elections as early as 1850-51 this senti- ment had been strongly manifested. But the influence of the older southern leaders (both Democrats and Whigs) and of the more substantial classes generally, was wholly for Unionism and continued accommoda- tion in accord with the similar spirit that unquestion- ably controlled the north at that period. There exists no evidence of any new overt intentions, except in rela- tion to Cuba, on the part of the prevailing forces at the south from the time of the settlement of 1850 until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854.1
During the brief Congressional session extending from December, 1852, to March, 1853 (the close of Fillmore's administration), an attempt was made to organize out of the Louisiana Purchase a Territory which it was at first proposed to call Platte and later
1See James F. Rhodes's History of the United States from the Com- promise of 1850; also Theodore Clarke Smith, Parties and Slavery, vol. xviii of The American Nation.
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Nebraska. The bill originated in the House, which passed it; in the Senate it was reported without amend- ment from the committee on Territories by Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, as chairman of the committee, but was defeated by southern votes, many northern mem- bers refraining from voting. As it was silent on slavery and hence did not disturb the Missouri compact, it caused no stir.
On the 4th of January, 1854, Douglas reported to the Senate a new Nebraska bill, accompanied by an explanation, in which it was stated that the committee, after due consideration, had decided to adhere to the principles of the Compromise measures of 1850 in rela- tion to all new Territories, and therefore had adopted for every case the rule that "When admitted as a State, the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union with or without slavery as their Constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission." After some debate a substitute measure was offered (January 23), creating two Territories, Nebraska and Kansas, without the restriction of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which restriction, it was added, "being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void-it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slav- ery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it there- from, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their
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own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."
This Kansas-Nebraska bill, with its repeal of the Missouri Compromise, passed the Senate by 37 to 14 (11 not voting), and the House by 113 to 100 (21 not voting), and was signed by President Pierce on May 30, 1854.
For the repeal of the Missouri Compromise there can be no doubt that Douglas was primarily responsible. True, the desire to do away with it was not new. Indi- vidual southerners, especially Calhoun, had contended that the measure was unconstitutional, and it had been exceedingly distasteful to all southern statesmen, in- cluding those who originally accepted it in 1820; but no proposal to abrogate it had ever been urged in Con- gress. "From the circumstances under which the Mis- souri Compromise was enacted," says Rhodes, "from the fact that it received the seal of constitutionality from an. impartial President [Monroe] and a
thoroughly representative cabinet, it had been looked upon as having the moral force of an article of the Constitution itself." Certainly Douglas, in initiating the repeal, was not inspired by any public demand from the south. In a recent historical discussion1 it is shown that Senator David R. Atchison, of Missouri, exerted a strong persuading influence upon Douglas, and the view is therefore maintained that Atchison was the real author of the repeal. This may be conceded
1The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise: Its Origin and Authorship, by P. Orman Ray.
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without, however, altering the fact that the practical responsibility is to be assigned to Douglas. He is said to have been actuated by the desire of cultivating a more favorable southern disposition toward his nomi- nation for the Presidency in 1856. However, his action was entirely consistent with his record and his posi- tively announced opinions ever since the new slavery questions sprang up during the Mexican War. He had voted against the Wilmot Proviso while a member of the House, and had been actively identified with the legislation of 1850 for Congressional non-interven- tion regarding slavery in New Mexico and Utah. He firmly held that the only correct basis for settling the slavery issue in the Territories was that of an equal
chance for each side-"popular sovereignty." Re- specting the slavery institution itself, he always ex- pressed unconcern ; on that subject his mind was recep- tive to no other idea than that the people locally had the right to "vote it up or vote it down" without national tutelage or interference. After the failure of the original Nebraska bill of 1853, which contained no reference to the Missouri restriction, it was appar- ent that the south would not consent to the organiza- tion of new Territories in the Louisiana Purchase upon the plan of slavery inhibition. Early Territorial organization in that quarter was demanded by the peo- ple of Missouri ;- and a bill embodying the popular sovereignty principle seemed to Douglas eminently practical as well as logical.
As created by the act, Kansas and Nebraska Terri- tories comprised the whole of the formerly unorgan-
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ized part of the Louisiana Purchase north of the pres- ent southern line (37°) of Kansas. Like all the large Territories established from the beginning of the gov- ernment, they were subject to ultimate partition, for additional State purposes, according to the discretion of Congress in due time. Kansas was made very much smaller than Nebraska; the former, in its south to north extent, was wholly adjacent to the slave State of Missouri, while Nebraska, except for a small part of its southern area, coincided with the western bounds of the free State of Iowa and free Territory of Minnesota. Manifestly, it was intended and expected that Kansas would be settled from Missouri and the south and have slavery, and that Nebraska would be left undisputedly to the north and freedom. To the minds of those who for various reasons believed in political concessions to the south, this was an ideal arrangement.
But northern sentiment instantaneously and unquali- fiedly repudiated the plan as violative of a settled national principle and time-honored compact, and as purely donative to slavery. On January 24 (the day after the presentation in the Senate of the perfected Kansas-Nebraska bill with the specific Missouri Com- promise repeal), an influential group of Democratic Senators and Representatives, headed by Chase and Sumner, issued a powerful deliverance entitled, "Ap- peal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States," in which the measure was bitterly denounced and Douglas was accused of sacrificing the interests of the country to promote his chances for the Presidency. "Will the people," it was
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
William Henry Harrison, 9th president; born at Berkeley, Va., February 9, 1773; physician; served in indian wars; appointed secretary of the Northwest territory and served as its delegate to congress from March 4, 1799 to March, 1800; terri- torial governor of Indiana, 1801-1813 ; defeated the british and indians at Tippecanoe, November 7, 1811; elected to congress and served from December 2, 1816 to March 3, 1819; member state senate, 1819-21; United States senator from March +, 1825 to May 20, 1828 ; minister to Columbia from May 24, 1828 to September 6, 1829; president of the United States from March 4, 1841 until his death, which took place April 4, 1841 at Washington, D. C.
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asked, "permit their dearest interests to be thus made the hazard of a Presidential game?" Strenuous oppo- sition was offered to the bill by eminent Whig, as well as Democratic, leaders of both houses. All over the north it was condemned by great popular meetings, and similar action was taken by State Legislatures and other bodies. Following its final passage and signature the opposition began to crystallize into a new political party. The supporters of the general movement of opposition, embracing former Whigs, regular Demo- crats, and Free Soilers, were called "Anti-Nebras- kans"; but after a few months the name "Republican party" had been adopted by many of them and some organizations had been formally established.
At the south the move for opening the Louisiana Purchase to slavery was altogether unexpected, and, being of northern origin, was not immediately regarded with particular interest. The north's intense hostility to the bill, however, had a natural reaction upon the southern people, and they came solidly to its support. Meantime there arose a determined northern sentiment against resigning Kansas to slavery, which signified an active competition for its control by the only remain- ing means of the settlement of free-State men on its lands. Thus began the great struggle for Kansas. Its dramatic and complicated history need not here be narrated. We are concerned only with its national political bearings and results.
Authentic writers regard the northern migration to Kansas as in by far its greater part voluntary. To most of the northern emigrants the cause appealed, and to all
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the virgin and fertile soil of the Territory meant oppor- tunity. There were, however, organized agencies of encouragement and help. One of these was the New England Emigrant Aid Society, which furnished trans- portation and supplies to emigrants, loaned them money for the erection of hotels, mills, etc., and otherwise stood ready to care for their interests. Its operations became the subject of severe comments in Missouri and the south, which took the form of allegations that great and wealthy organizations at the north were systemati- cally working to fill Kansas with fanatical Abolition- ists and so seize the lands to which the Missourians had the first and best claim and deprive the south of the new State rightfully belonging to her. The natural ill- feeling in Missouri against the incoming northern men was greatly increased by these charges, and the settle- ment of Kansas by the rival forces was therefore begun under the most alarming conditions. In western Mis- souri pro-slavery sentiment was rampant, and the slave population was estimated at 50,000-an abundant source of supply for the plantation of a flourishing slave system in Kansas. When the first free immi- grants arrived, slaves had already been introduced, lands taken up, and town foundations laid by Mis- souri men.
The contest for political control was started without delay. One of the provisions of the Territorial act granted immediate suffrage to all white men becoming inhabitants, inclusive of aliens who declared on oath their intention to be citizens. At an election in No- vember, 1854, for a Territorial Delegate to Congress,
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and another in March, 1855, for a Territorial Legisla- ture, large bands of armed Missourians came across the border, voted, prevented many free-State men from voting, and then returned; on the latter occasion 5,427 pro-slavery votes were cast out of a total of 6,320, although it was well known that there were at the time less than 3,000 legal voters in the Territory.1 The first Territorial Legislature met in July, 1855, was made unanimously pro-slavery by the expulsion of sev- eral opposition members, and passed various acts of extreme character in the interest of slavery. Follow- ing these events the free settlers adopted a State Con- stitution at a convention in Topeka in the fall of 1855, and held elections (not participated in by the pro- slaveryites) at which the Constitution was ratified and State officers and legislators were chosen. As these proceedings were held to be irregular and in conflict with national authority, the new State regime was sup- pressed, its Governor being arrested and its Legislature dispersed by Federal troops when it assembled in July, 1856. But while the pro-slavery people had secured temporary legal control their opponents were deter- mined to gain the mastery in the end. Hatred, out- rages, and violence attended by tragical incidents had meantime constantly increased. The two parties were arrayed in deadly hostility. They had come to the verge of an armed clash in force during the "Wakarusa
1An enumeration of the inhabitants and qualified voters of the Territory had been taken under Federal auspices in January-February, 1855, which resulted as follows: Total population, 8,501; white natives of the United States, 7,161; of foreign birth, 409; slaves, 242; free negroes, 151; total voters, 2,905.
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war" in the winter of 1855-56, and passions had been still further inflamed by the attack on the "free- Staters' " town of Lawrence (May, 1856), which re- sulted in burning the Emigrant Aid Society's hotel and other acts of destruction. So the situation stood at the time of the opening of the Presidential campaign of 1856.
The enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was fol- lowed by surprising developments in the field of na- tional politics. Notwithstanding the terrible defeat of the Whig party in 1852, its leaders had hoped that it would show revival as the Democratic party had done after 1840. This hope was now seen to be futile, as on the issue of further slavery extension the anti- slavery people were resolved upon uncompromising political action. Coincidently with the formation and rise of the new Republican party occurred the incep- tion and rapid progress of the "Know-Nothing" move- ment-so called from the essential feature of its secret and oath-bound basis, all who joined being required to profess that they knew nothing about it. It sought to exclude foreigners generally, and especially Roman Catholics, from public office. As a political organiza- tion it took the name of the "American party."
At the Congressional elections in the fall of 1854 the two new parties won notable successes and the Pierce administration was left in a minority in the House of Representatives. Owing to the great political confu- sion resulting from the repeal of the Missouri Compro- mise, the dissolution of the Whig party, and the for- midable development of Know-Nothingism, no deter-
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minate classification of the Representatives-elect by generic designations was possible; even that eminent political authority, the "Tribune Almanac," met with but indifferent success in attempting to group them. There were pro-slavery and anti-slavery Democrats, Whigs, and Know-Nothings; Republicans; Free Soil- ers; Anti-Nebraskans with no declared party affilia- tion; fusionists of several varieties; and independents of miscellaneous views and tendencies. When the new House assembled for organization in December, 1855, the consolidated Anti-Nebraskans (of whom the Re- publicans formed the predominating element), while considerably more numerous than the pro-slavery Democrats, lacked a majority, the balance being held by the pro-slavery Know-Nothings and Whigs and the members more or less indifferent about slavery. It was found impossible to elect a Speaker under the majority rule, and after two months consumed in balloting the House voted (February 2, 1856) to decide the contest by a plurality, whereupon Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, Republican, was chosen by 103 votes to 100 for his principal opponent, William Aiken, a southern Democrat. This was the first national Re- publican victory.
The 1854 elections brought no change, however, in the Senate, which continued Democratic by an ex- tremely large majority ; and they were altogether with- out modifying effect upon the administration's Kansas policy. But a sobering influence was exerted in an- other direction. Before the Kansas issue came up the administration had taken a course plainly looking to
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an early demand upon Spain for cession to us of the island of Cuba. The diplomatic situation had become strained by certain events, which, however, in no man- ner justified extreme measures; but those were times throughout the world of slight scruple concerning de- tails of justification when weighty national interests were involved and favorable opportunities for their realization were offered. The south was most anxious to acquire Cuba for the erection of new slave States; and in the case of war becoming necessary the people at large were expected to support the government on the undebatable principle of "My country, right or wrong." After matters had progressed to a stage re- quiring a decision, Secretary of State Marcy directed our Minister at the Spanish court, Pierre Soulé, to con- fer with James Buchanan, Minister to England, and John Y. Mason, Minister to France, and, in agreement with them, formulate an advisory program of policy. The three diplomats met at Ostend, Belgium (autumn of 1854), and drew up the celebrated paper known as the Ostend Manifesto, in which it was proposed to pay Spain $120,000,000 for Cuba and declaration was made that, as the island was necessary to our safety and to the preservation of our internal repose, we would, in the event of Spain's refusal to sell, be justified in wrest- ing it from her.1 On account of the excitement about
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