622

PROPOSITIONS OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.

at the discretion of Congress and new States admitted, slave or free, as their people might decide.

Senator Douglas submitted the only plan that touched on the citizenship of free persons of color. Congress should make no law as to slavery in a territory, but its condition under the act of 1850 should continue till the territory, with whatever boundaries it received from Congress, should have a population of fifty thousand white inhabitants. Then it could form a constitution, slave or free. New territory should be acquired only with the concurrent vote of two-thirds of both Houses; the status of slavery should continue as at the time of its acquisition and then be determined by the constitution ultimately adopted by its people. New States should have an area of not less than sixty nor more than eighty thousand square miles.1 The fugitive slave law should be executed in States and territories alike.

"The elective franchise and the right to hold office, whether federal, State, territorial or municipal," should "not be exercised by persons of the African race, in whole or in part." But the United States should be empowered to acquire, as might be needed, districts of country in Africa and South America for the colonization of such free persons of color as the States might wish to have removed there.2 This plan for prohibiting the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and in other fed

1 The equalization of the basis of representation was a subject of earnest discussion in the constitutional conventions of the States, beginning about 1845, and had been continued ever since. For typical discussions of district areas and population see the debates in the conventions of Louisiana, 1845; Kentucky, 1849; Michigan, 1850; Minnesota and Iowa, 1857.

2 For an account of the condition of free persons of color, in the United States, see my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. I, Ch. XII.

AMENDMENTS BY NORTHERN SENATORS.

623

eral territory was the same as Crittenden's. Like him, Douglas would suppress the slave trade; would make the United States responsible for the escape of fugutive slaves, and would have all slavery amendments beyond amendment in the future.

Seward, who may be considered the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, proposed an amendment that may be taken as the Chicago platform of 1860 in the guise of a constitutional amendment, but expressed in negative form. No amendment should be made that would authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in a State.1 The fugitive slave act of 1850 should be so amended as to give the alleged fugitive a jury trial. The State legislatures, at the request of Congress, should review all their legislation and repeal, or modify, that which contravened the Constitution and the acts of Congress.

Senator Bigler, of Pennsylvania, like Crittenden, would restore the line of the Missouri Compromise, and would organize four territories to the South, ultimately to be slave States; and eight to the North, ultimately to be free. He would continue slavery in the District of Columbia as long as it continued in Virginia and Maryland, but would make no more slavery amendments nor abolish these new ones.

Senator Rice, of Minnesota, would restore the line of 36° 30′, and organize all territory north of it as the "State of Washington," and all south as the "State of Jefferson." As soon as one hundred and thirty thousand people were inhabitants of sixty thousand square miles of this area, he would form them into a new State with such boundaries as Congress might prescribe. This

1 See note, p. 553.

624

ANDREW JOHNSON'S PLAN.

was the only plan submitted that did not mention slavery.1 Of these plans, Seward's alone excluded slavery from the territories and resolved it into a State institution. All the others were ghosts of the Missouri Compromise, or radical schemes, like that of Davis, to nationalize slavery. There was no hope of compromise, and on the thirty-first of December Powell reported that the committee had been unable to agree upon any general plan.

But there were other plans. On the thirteenth, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, proposed an elaborate amendment, one feature of which was unique. The President, to be elected in 1864, should be chosen from one of the slaveholding States and the Vice President from one of the non-slaveholding. In 1868 the order should be reversed and the rule should then be followed "during the continuance of the government." The plan was later referred to the Committee of Thirteen, but was not considered.

Senator Lane, of Oregon, on the eighteenth, suggested a Federal Convention, but the Southern States, "being in a numerical minority," and complaining of aggressions, "previous and prospective from the Northern States," should first meet in a convention of their own, should formulate their demands and then submit them to a convention of the Northern States, or to each separately.2

Not a day now passed that did not witness some variation in the general amendatory scheme. The multiplicity of plans indicated how deep-seated was the disease. On the third of January, Crittenden, who was recognized as the chief peacemaker, proposed that his resolution be

1 Senate Reports, 2d Session, 36th Congress, No. 288, which is the Journal of the Committee of Thirteen.

2 Globe, December 13, 1860, p. 82.

CRITTENDEN'S PLAN.

625

submitted to the vote of the people, and that they might decree the pacification of the country, and, in an eloquent speech, he appealed to the Senate and to the country to compromise all differences. But history has not yet afforded us an illustration of revolutionists taking the advice of an old man. With all the veneration accorded to the Kentucky Senator, and it surpassed that felt towards any other man then in public life, nationalists and secessionists, and men who trimmed, and men who took middle ground knew that the Missouri Compromise line was a thing of the past; an arbitrary division at best, offering no permanent solution of public questions and serving practically only to revive old animosities, for the South had always claimed that it was cheated of its rights by that compromise, and the Supreme Court had recently decided that it was unconstitutional. Crittenden, like all old men, had the backward look. In a Republican form of government precedents count for little. Republicanism is another word for opportunism. It will be noticed that propositions to restore the Missouri line came from members of the old parties. The new party was represented by Seward; it would limit slavery to the States, and give the fugitive slave a jury trial. But this, too, was contrary to the decision in the Dred Scott case and slavocracy was not going to abandon that decision.

No part of the various schemes for amending the Constitution attracted less attention than that proposed by Douglas, wholly excluding free persons of color from the exercise of political rights. No one asked whether the national government could be empowered thus to define the right to vote and to hold office, by excluding the free black. The clause conformed with twenty-eight of the State constitutions and doubtless seemed super

626

NEGRO COLONIZATION.

fluous. But it touched a vital question and one which was to be decided in a very different way before ten years were passed. At this time the free colored population of the country numbered four hundred and eighty eight thousand and had increased slightly over fifty thousand in ten years. It was about one-eighth of the slave population' and was unwelcome in every part of the country. Douglas had the wild dream of colonization in Africa or South America; that abstraction which had promised relief for half a century. Doubtless Douglas knew the danger to slavery in a free population. The existence of nearly a half million of this class in a Republic, which was straining its resources to make slavery permanent in the slaveholding States, and in the Territories if possible, and perhaps extend the institution southward indefinitely over Mexico, Central America and beyond the Amazon, was a dangerous anomaly which Douglas recognized. He was not lacking in astuteness, and he knew that pacification of the country, as long as frée persons of color were allowed any political rights, must be impossible.2

On the ninth of January, Daniel Clark of New Hampshire gave notice that when Crittenden offered his resolutions he should propose, as a substitute:

"That the provisions of the Constitution are ample for the preservation of the Union and the protection of all the material interests of the country; that it needs to be obeyed rather than to be amended, and that an extrication from the present dangers is to be looked for in strenuous efforts to preserve the peace, protect the public

1 Eighth Census, Preliminary Report, 7.

2 The importance of this factor in the slavery question has been much overlooked. The issue was essentially one of the extension of the franchise.