USA > Ohio > Ashtabula County > History of Ashtabula County, Ohio > Part 33
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The close of the Twenty-seventh congress was signalized by the famous address of the twenty members of congress exposing the scheme for the annexation of Texas, denouncing it, and warning the northern people in time. It was drawu by Mr. Gates, and signed by Messrs. Adams, Giddings, S. J. Andrews, Slade, Gates, and others, and widely published.
It will be remembered that Mr. Cushing replied to Mr. Giddings' slave-trade speech, and denounced his "Creole" resolutions as "a British argument." He was one of the Tyler guard, rewarded with a mission to China, and the contempt of Massachusetts. On his return home, the rough handling he received at Gid- dings' hands in the speech referred to damaged him so much that in the public press he declared that the speech as circulated was never made, the publication a fraud, and the charges untrue. Mr. Giddings replied with such evidence that no rejoinder was attempted. Mr. Giddings returned to his post at the beginning of the Twenty-eighth congress, to find his position more trying than ever. Messrs. Slade and Gates had retired. Mr. Adams was seventy-six, and quite infirm. He was himself the object of Democratic execration, and was now to realize what a social outlaw he had become at the capital, where society and social life are so much. A man of fine social qualities, urbane and courtly in mauners, he must keenly feel, but he proudly concealed what he felt. Meu can live without the favor of their fellows. Most men grow morose in its absence. Mr. Giddings retained his cheerfulness. He lost his place ou the Claims, and was made seventh on Revo- lutionary pensions. He supported Mr. Adams in an attempt to revise the rules. At the end of two weeks' acrimonious debate, the old man, who had borne the brunt, was obliged to leave the work to the younger. He had hoped to see the " gag" removed. He feared he should die ere that event. The present effort failed, and it is evident from the tone of Mr. Giddings' work on the Rebellion that these were dark days to both. Many incidents in the personal history of Mr. Giddings occurring in this congress must be passed. He needs the breadth of a memoir. I am cramped to a sketch. It must shrink to a bare outline.
A treaty for the annexation of Texas was hastily concluded. General Jackson, " in the twilight of" the Hermitage, signed a letter urging its ratification. The address of the twenty had done its work. It was proposed to correllate Texas with Oregon. Webster had given place to Upshur. The explosion of a gun made another vacancy, and Mr. Calhoun stepped into it. The treaty was his work. Benton made war on it in the senate. As thus to be brought in, Texas on paper included nearly the whole of New Mexico, and large portions of Coahuila and Chihuahua. Mr. Benton killed the project. The President then sent a mes- sage to the house, asking that Texas be taken by joint resolution. This could be passed by a majority. From that day to the end of the session it was the subject of elaborate debate. Mr. Giddings' masterly speech will be found on page 98 of the collection referred to, delivered May 21, 1844. The presidential election was at hand. The two parties were tending to a division on Texas. This would help abolitiouize the Whigs of the north. Giddings was still a Whig. He had not yet despaired of bringing the north wing to his views. He could not act with the Liberty party. He cordially hated the Democracy. He would, if possible, pre- serve an organization already opposed to it. He would oppose every candidate who would further involve the free States in the support of slavery. Mr. Van Buren wrote a letter against Texas, and was dropped. Polk was nominated, and Polk, Texas, and the (Whig) tariff of 1842 was the battle-cry. Mr. Clay made a speech at Raleigh, wrote a letter against annexation, and was nominated by the Whigs. He wrote two more Texas letters, and was beaten. Mr. Giddings supported Mr. Clay, and thus intensified the enmity of the Abolitionists. They loved while they hated him. The three-cornered war between slavery, the Aboli- tionists, and Mr. Giddings and his political followers-all the young Whigs of northeru Ohio-iu its way was a curious spectacle. A few days before the elec- tion a singular forgery was set afloat, seemingly in the interest of Mr. Clay,-a letter purporting to be written by Mr. Birney, the Liberty candidate, declaring his purpose of supporting Mr. Polk. It came out under a guise calculated to
impose, and Mr. Giddings and others at first supposed it to be genuine. This intensified the feeling against him, and called from him a stinging letter to the editor of the Birney organ at Cleveland.
On the reassembling of congress, joint resolutions were introduced to conclude the Texas annexation. A thorough canvass of the house showed a majority of thirty against it. Mr. Giddings had no confidence in Democrats in opposition. On Feb. 28 the vote was taken, and the senate bill passed, one hundred and thirty- two to seventy-six, and it became law. A cannon on the west terrace of the cap- itol thundered it to the city, which answered with bonfires, shouts, and revelry. With Texas and prospective war, the empire of the south seemed assured. Pen- sive with gloomy foreboding, Mr. Giddings took his way from the degraded hall, through the streets of the drunken city, to the silence and solitude of his own quarters.
The recoil against slavery, following this its greatest triumph, threw out of the Democratic party Jacob Brinkerhoof, John P. Hale, Preston King, and many valuable citizens. From the mouth of congress its gag. For ten years Mr. Adams and Mr. Giddings had waged relentless, persistent war against it, and now by one hundred and eight to eighty it was cast back to the cesspool. The seeming victory was an empty show. Slavery, notwithstanding this defeat, merely changed the process. Ilitherto it rejected petitions. Henceforth it so con- structed committees that they were never heard from. The struggle thereafter would be for a speaker who would so construct certaiu committees that they would consider and report upon petitions.
Southern members were often aggressive'on Mr. Giddings, who replied the latest slave outrage. There were always a plenty. Early in February of this session he canceled an insult. While speaking on the Indian bill he reminded them of the money paid the Georgians for the children their runaway female slaves would have borne had they been faithful to their masters. Black, of Georgia, whom he had once excoriated, answered with vulgar, personal abuse, prompted by his associates. He said Giddings owned the team with which Torry made his last attempt at " nigger stealing." Torry was in the penitentiary. IIc would send Giddings there. Giddings had franked a calico dress to his wife. Mr. Giddings inade short work of Black and his backers.
The excoriation was sharp. While speaking, Black approached him, and at the utterance of a particularly forcible sentence he raised a large canc, and shouted, " If you repeat those words, I will knock you down." Giddings turned fully upon him and repeated them with emphasis, and continued his speech, leaving Black petrified, with uplifted cane. Black's friends came to his relief. At that moment his old assailant, Dawson, rushed toward Giddings, with his hand in his pocket, exclaiming, " I'll shoot him, by G-d!" and those near him heard the click of his pistol-lock. At this moment Causine, a Maryland Whig, interposed betweeu Giddings and Dawson, facing the latter, with his hand on a weapon in his bosom, while Slidell, of Louisiana, and Stiles, of Georgia, each with hand on weapon, took positions by Dawson. At this Kenneth Raynor, of North Carolina, armed, came to Mr. Giddings' left, Charles IIudson, of Massachusetts, quietly approached his right, and Foot, of Vermont, occupied the aisle through which the discomfited Black was retired. Thus menaced, defended, and surrounded, Mr. Giddings, exhilarated, finished his speech in a blaze. Had he defended Milo, the presence of the Roman soldiers would not have embarrassed him, as it is said they did his advocate, Cicero.
He deemed it prudent to develop the franking story, and addressed a note to Postmaster-Geucral Wickliff to know whether anything had come to the notice of the department out of which it could be made. A few days later, that pon- derous official made his appearance in the house, and after solemn consultatiou with the Democrats, attended by IIon. E. D. Potter, of Ohio, a Democrat, he approached Mr. Giddings, and gravely informed him that he had received a letter from the Democratie postmaster of Painesville, Ohio, stating that the package referred to was a shawl, sent by the famous McNulty, theu Democratic clerk of the house, to Mrs. Potter, franked by him officially, and attested to be genuine " public documents," by the Hon. E. D. Potter. Here was a mess. The two worthies submitted it to the honor of Mr. Giddings. They assured him that Black's foolish tale could not injure a man of his character, but if known would ruin poor Potter. A Democrat knew what a good character was worth.
President Polk announced to the Twenty-ninth Congress the latest Democratic programme. Notice to England to end the joint occupancy of Oregon, a seizure of the whole, and war. The Democrats were jubilant. The Whigs supinc. The radical abolitionists demanded a dissolution of the Union. Mr. Adams and Mr. Giddings were left alone to meet the crisis. Mr. Calhoun had re-entered the senate. The senate resolution for notice to England came up in the house on the 5th of February, 1846, and Mr. Giddings secured the floor. He began by announcing that slavery had the control of the government, and the Democracy was its instrument. That a war with England which would add Oregon aud
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HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.
Canada to the free north would never occur. Such a war would be one of eman- cipation. The black regiments of the British West Indies would land on the southern coast, and slave insurrection, devastation, fire, and rapine would envel- ope the south. The south stood aghast. They sent a howl through the land, and Mr. Giddings was denounced as inviting invasion and panting for slave in- surrection. Mr. Adams followed Mr. Giddings, said that a war would empower an American general. as a means of defense. to emancipate the slaves, and he was in favor of holding the whole of Oregon. The black regiments conquered Oregon and the Democracy. Great Britain offered the forty-ninth parallel. The senate advised Mr. Polk to accept, which he made haste to do. Then followed the Mexican war. Our "army of occupation," under General Taylor, was sent across Texas. a hundred miles into Mexico, and found what it sought. a Mexican army. and fought the battles of the Sth and 9th of May, and the American con- gress declared that war existed by the act of Mexico. But fourteen in the house voted against it. Massachusetts and Ohio furnished each five of these. One would rather tear than rewrite this page of our history. Then came rumors of an Indian war. The Seminoles had been foreed west. The Creeks seized and enslaved one hundred of them. The Cherokees would not receive them. and they plunged into the wilds of Mexico, beyond the reach of even our conquest, and disappeared from our history. The war with Mexico went on. languished, " and languishing did live." Mr. Giddings made some of his most effective speeches on this war.
In March, 1847, he found in an appropriation bill fifty thousand dollars to pay for the " Amistad" Africans, placed there by the seuate, which he assailed with his old bitter vigor. Mr. Adams, who had attempted no speaking for many months. was aroused by the old battle-ery. It was the bugle-call to an old war- horse, and he flashed out with the old fire. Members left their seats, reporters dropped their pens. and all gathered about him. When he closed the senate amendment was rejected almost unanimously. It was Mr. Adams' last speech. He was soon after attacked by paralysis. Mr. Giddings hurried to him. Mr. Adams supposed his end was near, and persisted in possessing Mr. Giddings with his final views and laid on him his last injunctions. He was to linger a year longer ere " the last of earth."
With December, 1847, came the Thirtieth congress and the first contest for speaker under Giddings' lead. The Whigs nominated Winthrop. Palfrey was in the house. At Mr. Giddings suggestion Palfrey wrote him a note asking if he would so arrange the committees that the petitions from the free States should be respect- fully treated. No answer, and Giddings, Palfrey. and Tuck gave him no votes. Boyd. from Kentucky. fared worse; fourteen Democrats refused to vote for him .- a wonder for Democrats. Finally, Winthrop was elected. Mr. Giddings was denounced as an apostate by the Whig journals ; notably in the Cleveland Herald. To this he replied at length. and the reasons he gave for his course were such a pungent stricture of Mr. Winthrop that he felt compelled to answer through the public prints, and the end was not yet. The manner in which the new speaker made up the important committees was an ample vindication of the course of the three for not supporting him. They sustained the Mexican war with vigor, and prepared the way for General Taylor to the presideney. During this session Mr. Giddings had the satisfaction of presenting a petition by citizens of the District of Columbia for the suppression of the slave trade at the capital ; nothing came of it. Moved by a case of exceptional horror. he visited the slave-prison within view from the windows of the house, offered a resolution for a select committee to prepare a bill to expunge slavery from the District. A motion to lay it on the table failed. When slavery and its allies awoke from their amazemeut, after much effort, that disposition of it was seeured, ninety-four to eighty-eight.
The case of the eighty slaves who escaped down the Potomac in a rotten old schoouer. and were captured, returned, aud lodged in the Washington jail. subjected Mr. Giddings to great peril from the mobs he found at the jail and in the house. His courage finally won a savage respect. eveu from slave-drivers. His statement to Haskell. of Tennessee. that slaves had a moral right to leave their masters, created more astonishment than did his intrepidity. Perhaps the bravest act of his life was his vote against the otherwise unanimous house on the resolution thanking General Taylor for his gallantry in the pro-slavery war, which gained him new maledictions at the north.
The month of April was signalized by a fierce and able debate on slavery. Mr. Adams had passed away; Mr. Giddings had followed his remains to his native Quincy. and, though solitary. he was not now alone. Palfrey and Tuek were with him. arol his colleague, Root, one of the most effective debaters who had appeared in the house for years.
The thousands of young Whigs -- in name-of northern Ohio, the disciples of Mr. Giddings, who were kept from the Liberty party by its declared disunion doe- trines, and kept within the Whig party by their faith in their leader, only awaited a pretext to sunder the filmy bond that attached them to it. They found this in the nomination of General Taylor. Three days after, a young mau ealled a con-
vention in Geauga, which was the initiative, followed by similar conventions in all the counties of the Reserve. The elders hesitated, were swept away, and a great majority of the Whigs of that region were Whigs no more. Then came the Buf- falo convention, and the nomination of Van Buren. No severer test of the sin- cerity of the revolted Whigs could have been devised. The Liberty party, by common consent, merged and was lost in the Free-Soil organization. Mr. Gid- dings was the acknowledged leader of the Ohio wing. Chase, Lewis, and Vaughan, from the south, with Root, Tilden, Briggs, and many able men from both parties, cast their fortunes with it. Eminently, it was a young men's movement, char- acterized with the fervor and élan of early manhood. Save one senator, holding over, it elected every member of the legislature in the Reserve counties. All young men, with one exception. All former Whigs but two. In the general assembly they commanded eleven votes, and held the balance of power between the old parties, whose warfare had reduced the State to incipient anarchy. No- thing but a lack of courage among the Democrats saved it from bloodshed. The term of Mr. Allen in the senate was about to expire. Mr. Giddings was unani- mously nominated by the Frec-Soilers. The place was his by every right. There were Whigs enough in the legislature to elect him. Because he was only less true to the party than to God, they refused. They preferred that the Demo- crats elect a man whom they detested, whom they never trusted, and whom they thwarted in his highest ambition .* The party was doomed, and then iu the madness which precedes destruction, though imparted by no celestial hand. Their action worked this good .- it kept the senate open to Wade. In the presi- dential coutest Democracy was humbled .- it lost nothing. The Whigs, trium- phant. gained nothing. The Thirtieth congress reassembled. A long way is yet before me. I cannot linger over its inconsequent debates and less consequeut votes. Mr. Giddings got a vote to abolish the slave-trade in the District. It was reconsidered. Then came up the case of a claim for the slave " Louis," the guide who conducted Major Dade into the ambush, in 1835. The bill was engrossed. Mr. Giddings moved a reconsideration, and attacked it again. It was declared passed by a false count. That was detected. It worried through the house, yet so battered that it was never called up in the senate. Back of all lay the ominous question of slavery in California and New Mexico. The war was long, close, bitter, doubtful. deadly. The senate would have slavery in California, the house would not. They were at a dead-lock. Mr. Giddings told the northern men that slavery would wait till the last hour of the last night, hoping to writhe and glide like a snake through house while men slept. At three of the morning of the 4th of March the thing came. The warned north was on the watch. It was strangled. California was free. The war was fought to plant slavery in California and New Mexico. Slavery had lost .- was doomed. The lowest abyss of frand and cor- ruption ever achieved in American politics was yet to be sounded ere this matter should pass to history. Beaten at the south, slavery would yet turn north. Hav- ing lost California, it would invade and war for Kansas. Yet it was doomed. That fatal defeat marked its decline.
At the meeting of the Thirty-first congress (1849) it was seen that neither party alone could organize the house. Giddings and Root, of Ohio, Tuck. of New Hampshire. Allen. of Massachusetts, King, of New York, Wilmot, of Pennsyl- vania, Julian. of Indiana, Durkee, of Wisconsin, were consecrated to freedom and justice by the ballot. Winthrop and Cobb were the opposing candidates. Either could have received the eight votes by a pledge to make up the committees fairly. Neither gave it. On the final ballot, December 22, Cobb received one hundred and two, Winthrop ninety-nine, Wilmot eight. Under a resolution already adopted Cobb was declared speaker. The eight were a power that had to that time not appeared in the house. The Whigs -- representatives, press, and people -- denounced the Free-Soilers for the election of a slave-holder. Mr. Root set that matter right. He showed that it was the Whig and Democratie resolution which elected Cobb against the declaration of Mr. Giddings. That was a winter of petitions, memorials, and legislative resolutions, of debates upon slavery, the rights of man and States, of Mr. Clay's omnibus bill. It was memorable for the address of the southern members foreshadowing secession. It was the fugitive slave law year and fall of Mr. Webster. He assured the north that he would speak on their side; showed a skeleton of his intended speech. They went to hear it. It was that 7th of March. He was dressed with constitutional care. Constitutional freedom survived the blow he dealt it. Mr. Webster did not. He died of the bite of the presidency, fatal to many. This was the year of the Galphin swindle. Above all, of the ten million Texan corruption law. As is remembered, Texas claimed not only a part of two Mexican states, but a great share of New Mexico, including Santa Fé, the capital. Under pretense of settling this elaim, and to induce her to relinquish to Mexico what we admitted was hers, and to the United States what was ours by purchase of Mexico, a bill was introduced to pay her ten
£ Salmon P. Chase.
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HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.
millions of dollars. There was an immense amount of Texan scrip, of little ap- preciable value before. There was a gathering of all the evil passions, lusts, vices, and crimes, scarcely latent at that time in official life, mostly engendered in the rotting carcass of slavery, gathered as to a festival. The bill rotted its way through both houses, and became a law. The first, and I believe the last act which ever bribed itself through Congress.
Against the fugitive slave bill, the Texan bill, and the other enormities of this sad time, Mr. Giddings and his associates, and many brave and noble men of the north, exerted themselves to the utmost. To offset these evils California was finally admitted free, and the slave-trade abolished in the District of Columbia. That session must forever stand prominent on the page of history.
The thread of Mr. Giddings' career hitherto has been easy to trace in the web of public affairs. He has now become one of many younger men, in some sort his political pupils, ambitious and able, come to divide, in fact, bear off the ripen- ing fruits of the ultimate triumph of truth and justice, because they never bore any part of the odium which his labors called upon his head, an odium which survived when all men could see there never was good cause for it. I must fol- low him more rapidly.
Abolition was at an end, slavery secured ; so declared the proclamation of the slavocrats at the end of the Thirty-first congress. The Thirty-second opened with declarations of Whig and Democrat that each was entitled to the glory of the great pacification. Henceforth the contest was to be a zealous race to protect the Union, and they elected Boyd, of Kentucky, speaker. Then began debates in both houses to define how much slavery had gained by the pacification, and so the charm was dissolved, as Giddings told them it would be. Then came the Lopez invasion of Cuba, and the Kossuth invasion of America ; came also old claims for loss of young slaves, and for numerous new losses of old slaves ; also another presidential election, with Pierce and Scott as the great rivals, while Hale led the growing hosts of Free-Soilers. With the smoke and dust of the fight disappeared the once great Whig party from the wondering eyes of men. On the reassembling of congress, Mr. Giddings was placed ou the committee of terri- tories, and reported a bill for Kansas. Howe, of Pennsylvania, demanded why it did not contain a prohibition of slavery. Giddings replied that it was north of 36° 30'. The bill passed, was held in the senate until the next congress, when, under Pierce, came the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the border war, and ultimately free Kansas. Those who would know what Mr. Giddings said during those portentous days, will find some of it in the volume of his speeches. There was a knot of new, brilliant, and very able men in the senate,-Seward since 1849. Sumner succeeded Webster in time to reply to his speech on the fugitive slave bill. Chase was there at the same time. Wade soon followed him. Pending the Kansas war, Mr. Pierce sought to acquire Cuba, and we had the Ostend mani- festo, and the Sims case in Boston, which cost the United States thirty thousand dollars and one man's life, and thus the northern tendency to agitate was quieted. The Whigs disappeared, and were naturally followed by confessed Know-Nothings. They appeared in large numbers in the Thirty-fourth congress, which convened December, 1855. Some forty Know-Nothings, and Free-Soilers now numerous, under Mr. Giddings' lead, adopted a resolution to support no man for speaker who would not make up the standing committees fairly, and the select committees with majorities friendly to the measures submitted to them in accord with usage. Be- yond this there was no organization. The Free-Soilers voted for Banks. He had said two years before that were we to extend slavery or dissolve the Union he would " let the Uniou slide," which was awful then. Wrangling debates, inter- spersed with ballots and threats by the south to dissolve the Union,-no longer treason,-ran on till the one hundred and thirty-third ballot, when, on the 4th of February, 1856, Nathaniel P. Banks was declared elected speaker. At last the vic- tory was won. The organs of the house must hear and answer petitions. The moral effect of two or three individuals standing for the right was seen. Then the grand figure, the hero of so many fights and now the victor, with his full locks of silvery white hair, came forward, as Father of the house, to crown with the oath of office the young speaker. The galleries recognized him, and spontaneous cheers greeted him. Standing just within the inner row of desks in the old hall, with upraised hand, and swelling voice having the trill of cmotion in it, he adminis- tered the oath in the form of the Puritans. It would be but fitting if Ohio, in recognition of his services in the cause of constitutional freedom, should trans- late the form of the champion into marble and return it to the hall, and thus illustrate this supreme event in the advance of truth and justice, and the noblest achievement of the life of their faithful partisan at the scene of its accom- plishment. The deepening contest was to have another illustration. Sumner was assaulted in May following. On the 18th of June, 1856, the Frec-Soil convention assembled at Philadelphia. Mr. Giddings and Preston King were the leading spirits. It put forth a compendious platform of two resolutions, one by Mr. Giddings, the other by Mr. King, setting forth the old principles.
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