1856.]

THE ASSAULT ON SUMNER.

15

1850 proclaimed that there was "a higher law than the Constitution," and a few years later that we were in the midst of "an irrepressible conflict," and Mr. Lincoln said, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," it was evident that the rising party at the North must sooner or later become an abolition party, whether it wanted to or not.

Two dramatic episodes intensified the feeling and increased the popular alarm on either side. One, in 1856, was an assault, for words spoken in debate, upon Senator Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, by a South Carolina Congressman, who beat him upon the head with a heavy cane in the Senate Chamber, almost destroying his life. The real cause for alarm in this case lay not so much in the fact that an individual had lost his temper and done what he ought not to have done, as in the action of his constituents, who, instead of rebuking their representative, deliberately made his offence their own by unanimously re-electing him when he resigned after a majority (but not the necessary two thirds) had voted to expel him from his seat for the murderous deed. The other was John Brown's raid into Virginia in 1859, for the purpose of liberating the slaves by force of arms-a project that lacked all justification of possible success.

While the contest of opinion and the education of conscience were in progress, politicians and statesmen were working at the same problem on other lines. Alexander Hamilton, in urging the New York Convention to adopt the Federal Con

16

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

[1820.

stitution, said the Convention that had framed it was "governed by the spirit of accommodation," and "it was necessary that all parties should be indulged." The attempt to indulge all parties was kept up for nearly seventy years, and to many of our public men it never occurred that it was possible to do anything else. By the Ordinance of 1787, slavery was excluded from the territory northwest of the Ohio River, but as a compromise the slaveholders were permitted to recapture slaves that escaped into it. As the country grew rapidly after the adoption of the Constitution, and the natural antagonism between the two systems of labor was more apparent, each section became fearful of the other's supremacy, and the idea was to some extent established of admitting new States in pairs, a free State and a slave State at the same time. When Missouri applied for admission, in December, 1818, with a slave clause in her Constitution, the representatives of the free States objected. They held that the institution was only tolerated by the Federal Constitution, and should be excluded from the Territories and from new States. The Southerners pointed to the fact that Missouri was not a part of the Northwest Territory, but was included in the Louisiana purchase, in which slavery already existed to some extent, and took the ground that Congress had no right to prohibit it in the Territories. After discussing the subject for two years, Congress adopted a compromise proposed by Henry Clay. This consisted in admitting Missouri as a slave State, and providing

1832.]

NULLIFICATION.

17

that all other territory north of the parallel of 36° 30' (Missouri's southern boundary) should thenceforth be free.

Some thought that a greater danger to the Union lay in the opposition of interests on the question of the tariff. Various tariffs were adopted from time to time, but only once did any serious difficulty arise. That was when South Carolina objected to the collection of duties in Charleston harbor, in 1832, and promulgated her doctrine of nullification that any State had a right to nullify such of the laws of the United States as might not be acceptable to her. This, expanded into the bold theory that no State had resigned its sovereignty by accepting the Federal Constitution, and that each was at liberty to withdraw from the Union at will, was made the justification for the attempt at secession in 1861; but no such mere abstract principle was the cause of the great insurrection.

In the Presidential canvass of 1844 the real issue was the annexation of Texas, which claimed to have established its independence of Mexico. The Democratic party, which favored the scheme, sought to conciliate Northern sentiment by declaring, on the other hand, that the disputed boundary-line of Oregon should be carried up to 54° 40', with or without war with England. This was popularly called the "fifty-four-forty-or-fight" plank. Their candidate, James K. Polk, was elected, Texas was admitted as a slave State, and the Mexican war was fought in consequence. But when

18

THE FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAW.

[1850.

it came to the question of Oregon's boundary (which England wanted to fix at Columbia River), the Administration ignored the fifty-four-forty-or-fight promise, and quietly accepted a compromise at the parallel of 49°, which gave away half the harbors of Puget Sound, and but for which we might now practically possess the entire Pacific coast.

Still another struggle to maintain the balance of power between free and slave States was carried on over the question of a homestead law. The slaveholders wanted no legislation that would facilitate the peopling of the Territories with small farmers, and every form of homestead law met in Congress not only their opposition but that of their Northern political allies. When at last the Democratic members from the free States were afraid to deny any longer to their constituents the opportunity to acquire homes in the great West, they voted with the Republican members for such a bill; but James Buchanan, the last of the proslavery presidents, vetoed it.

In 1850 Mr. Clay brought forward some more compromises, the principal of which were, on the one hand, the admission of California as a free State, and on the other the enactment of a more stringent fugitive-slave law. All of the bills were passed, and received the signature of President Fillmore. The new slave law was denounced at the North as infamous and insulting; and many of the States passed new liberty bills to nullify it. However necessary it might have been for the security of slave property, it certainly was not consistent with

1856.]

THE FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAW.

19

the theory of any other kind of property. A Northern man might sit still and see his next-door neighbor's horses and cattle stray away; but if a Southerner appeared on the scene, pointed at a black man, and said, "That is my runaway slave," the Northerner was required to assist in his capture. If the black man replied, "I am no one's slave, I am a free negro," the question could not be tried by a jury, but was submitted to a commissioner; and this commissioner's fee was to be twice as great if he decided in favor of the alleged master as if he decided in favor of the negro. When an alleged fugitive had been thus secured, he was to be returned to the master's residence at the expense of the United States Government. Under this law Anthony Burns, a recaptured slave, was marched through the streets of Boston by a strong military guard while they were thronged with excited people, and was placed on board of a revenue cutter and taken back to Virginia. In an attempt to rescue him, one man had been killed. A little before this, a slave named Shadrach had been successfully rescued in Boston, being snatched from the very court-room in a sudden rush. In Philadelphia, a man named Passmore Williamson was imprisoned for attempting to secure the freedom of three slaves accompanying a North Carolinian, John H. Wheeler, who had been appointed to a foreign mission and was on his way through that city to embark for his post of duty, Another grievance of the North was furnished by the Supreme Court's decision (December term,