1859]

JOHN BROWN

403

He

lowers, seized and held the United States armory. intended to arm the negroes and start a slave insurrection. He was deceived in his plans. The slaves did not flock to him. He was speedily overpowered by a company of regular troops, commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee; was indicted for murder and treason against the state of Virginia; was found guilty, and hanged at Charlestown, December 2, 1859. The anti-slavery people considered him a martyr; the pro-slavery people spoke of him as a murderer, a traitor, and an inciter of a servile insurrection.

On the 23d of April, the first of the great nominating conventions, the Democratic, met in Charleston, South Carolina. Divisions appeared as soon as the convention tried to adopt a platform. A majority insisted that the right to hold slaves could not be impaired by Congress or by a territorial legislature, and that it was the duty of Congress to protect slavery everywhere. A minority insisted that it would abide by the decision of the Supreme Court. The division broke up the convention, though both sections agreed that Cuba should be annexed; that the "personal liberty acts" were unconstitutional; that the fugitive slave law should be more faithfully executed, and that the Pacific railroad should be built with some aid from the general government.

The majority, the "Douglas" Democrats, adjourned to Baltimore, where in June they nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia. The "Breckenridge" Democrats also adjourned to Baltimore, and in June nominated John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Union party met in Baltimore, in May, and nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. They advocated "the Constitution of the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws.

In the same month, the Republicans held their convention in Chicago, and nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine. Their platform proclaimed that, "That new dogma that the Constitution. of its own force carries slavery into any or all of the terri

tories is a dangerous political heresy." The normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom. Congress has no authority to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States. The African slave trade should not be reopened. Kansas should be admitted a free state. Congress should conduct internal improvements, and among them, help build a railroad to the Pacific coast. It should enact a homestead law.

Lincoln and Hamlin received 180 electoral and 1,865,913 popular votes; Breckenridge and Lane received 72 electoral and 848,404 popular votes; Bell and Everett received 39 electoral votes and 591,900 popular votes; Douglas and Johnson received 1,347,664 popular votes, but only 12 electoral votes. Thus Lincoln and Hamlin received a majority of the electoral vote and a plurality of the popular vote. Each branch of Congress had a large Republican majority. Thirty-three states voted. Minnesota had been admitted May 11, 1858; Oregon, February 14, 1859; both free. Lincoln was inaugurated March 4, 1861. The new ideals which he represented will be better understood if we glance for a moment at the condition of the country and the life of its people since 1830.

CHAPTER XXX

STATE SOVEREIGNTY

1776-1860

In an unpublished letter of Jefferson's occurs one of the earliest descriptions of national parties. It was written to John Wise, of Virginia, February 12, 1798, from Francis's hotel, late the Indian Queen, on Fourth Street, Philadelphia, where the Vice-President at the time lodged, and was accustomed to confer with his political associates. Wise had written demanding why Jefferson, in a recent conversation, had spoken of him "as of Tory politics." Jefferson's reply defined the radical difference between the parties of his day, and was a prophecy of the essential difference between them for a century to come. "It is now understood that two political sects have arisen within the United States-the one believing that the executive is the branch of our government which more needs support; the other, that, like the analogous branch in the English government, it is already too strong for the republican parts of the Constitution; and therefore, in equivocal cases, they incline to the legislative power; the former of these are called Federalists, sometimes Aristocrats or Monocrats, and sometimes Tories, after the corresponding sect in the English government of the same definition; the latter are styled Republicans, Whigs, Jacobins, Anarchists, Disorganizers, &c.; these terms are in familiar use with most persons; both parties claim to be Federalists and Republicans, and I believe in truth as to the great mass of them, these appellations designate neither exclusively, and all others are slanders except those of Whig and Tory, which alone characterize the distinguishing principles of the two sects."'* Probably in this letter is the first form of the famous sentence in Jefferson's first inaugural, six * See The American Historical Review for April, 1898.

years later: "We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists."

Party differences in 1798 were in great measure a continuation of the long colonial struggle between assemblies and royal governors. The Revolution developed and intensified the cause of these differences, but until about the time when Jefferson retired from Washington's Cabinet the characteristic struggle of the century—that between the supporters of a strong legislative and a strong executive-had not effected party organization. This awaited a master mind, a manager of men. Jefferson, more than any other man of his generation, was a party organizer. He had quite perfected his work before he wrote his brief definition of parties.

He had witnessed the triumph of the assemblies and the flight of the governors. He had participated in establishing a lawful succession to the overthrown colonial executives, in the persons of governors for the states, and had served as chief executive of Virginia. But from the day when Congress first assembled it became the rival of the state legislatures and the object of their constant attack. Again the assemblies triumphed, and before a dozen years passed, Congress could not maintain a quorum. But the powers

of the states in no wise diminished. They rested on an industrial foundation; they levied and collected taxes; they executed laws. However, the most difficult, the first step toward nationality had been taken; the national organism could not be destroyed. Economic necessity forced the legislatures to send delegates to the Philadelphia convention, to propose a form of government "adequate to the exigencies of the Union," and this body of unequaled men, taught by fear, expediency, and experience, refused to rest the fate of the new Constitution in the hands of the legislatures, but placed it in conventions specially chosen to consider it. The legislatures were outwitted, but the Constitution was saved. The new government was inaugurated, and, true to its plan, was maintained independently of them. But the states looked upon the new government as their own creation, whose functions and powers were obscure. When Jefferson wrote this letter, the new government was

1776-1860]

THE STATE LEGISLATURES

407

in its tenth year. Practical administration was interpreting the so-called "supreme law of the land." Certainly no one need doubt of its limited character. Were not restrictions placed on Congress by eleven amendments; and were not ten of these the familiar provisions of the state bills of rights? Were not the legislatures the representatives of the paramount democracy of the land? The state constitutions determined who were citizens, who were electors. Not one of them set limits within which the legislature must act. These legislatures came down in unbroken succession from colonial assemblies, of which the first had met on a July day at Jamestown a hundred and seventy years before Washington was inaugurated. Had he not accepted the presidency the new government might have failed for lack of men. The people had confidence in their state governments and in Washington; they cared little for the government of the United States. It was not to establish this that Lexington and Yorktown were fought. Independence was sought and won that every man might enjoy his rights and liberties, and these were secured by the state constitutions. In popular conception, individualism was the chief corner-stone of American democracy. An act of Congress in the least curtailing the popular notion of individual rights and liberties was bound to provoke organized opposition. Undoubtedly, at this time, an exaggerated idea of personal liberty tended, in some parts of the country, to take the form of individualism gone mad. In the isolated rural districts along the frontier a strange notion of liberty prevailed. It was not thought of at the commercial centers. The law and order that prevailed in Boston, in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Charleston, were not the law and order that were respected beyond the Alleghanies, in Pennsylvania and Virginia, in the Carolinas, or in Kentucky and TennesYet this valorous western individualism was not crass ruffianism. The sons and daughters of the East had settled the West. Men of affairs there were not infrequently the sons of pronounced Federalists in the older states. But in changing their habitation the young men of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania who were now building up the Northwest Territory, and they from Virginia and the

see.