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 population1 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 free 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.

UNION SENTIMENTS.

627

property and enforce the laws, rather than in new guarantees for particular interests, compromises for particular difficulties or concessions to unreasonable demands.

"That all attempts to dissolve the present Union, or overthrow or abandon the present Constitution, with the hope or expectation of constructing a new one, are dangerous, illusory and destructive; that in the opinion of the Senate of the United States no such reconstruction is practicable, and, therefore, to the maintenance of the existing Union and Constitution should be directed all the energies of all the departments of the government, and the efforts of all good citizens." 1

This accorded fully with the Union sentiments in Wade's speech and was heartily supported by all the Republican Senators. When, on the sixteenth the Crittenden resolutions were up, Clark's resolutions were agreed to by a vote of twenty-five to twenty-three. Six Southern Democrats had abstained from voting. Knowing the end of the political game, why should they vote? Their hearts were with the new government to be formed in a few days at Montgomery, and their refusal now to vote against the Clark substitute for Crittenden's resolutions simply meant hostility to compromise and a declaration of secession principles.

On the day when the Clark resolutions were proposed, the President sent a special message to Congress urging "action, prompt action," but declaring that while he believed that "no State has a right by its own act to secede from the Union," and that he had no authority to recognize such independence, neither had he authority to prevent it. The message was another confession of impotency, than which nothing else was now expected

1 These resolutions, and those offered in the House, are given at the close of the chapter.

628

THE SOUTH CAROLINA COMMISSIONERS.

from Buchanan. The President accompanied the message with the correspondence of Barnwell, Adams and Orr, the three South Carolina commissioners appointed by the Convention in that State to settle terms between it and the United States,1 a transaction which the President had declined to enter into. He refused to meet the commissioners or to receive their communications.2 His decision was promptly translated into an insult and an act of war by the secessionists, and interpreted as a sign of future attempts at coercing the seceding States. To the leaders in disunion it was gratifying because it widened the breach and hardened the pride of slavocracy. It was another Southern grievance and injury. In a brief speech, Jefferson Davis, who had succeeded in having the communication from the commissioners to the President read in the Senate, treated the President's action as the rejection of the olive branch and expressed his pity for him and for the country. It was the pity which the conspirator feels for him who resists his schemes. Davis was far too astute a man not to detect the advantage to the cause of secession which Buchanan's negative conduct afforded. On the following day, in an elaborate and powerful speech, Davis attempted to refute the doctrine stated in the message in the words: "I certainly have no right to make aggressive war upon any State, and

1 For the correspondence, see Journal of South Carolina Convention, 1860, 484-502.

2 For a history of the transaction, see Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, II, Chapters XXIII, XXIV.

3 See the "Statement" of Miles and Keitt, S. C. Convention Journal, 498-499. Also Jefferson Davis's speech in the Senate, January 9, 1861. Globe, p. 289, and January 10. Id., 306-312. See Smith's Alabama Convention, p. 168.

In his speech of January 9, he had succeeded in having the letter of Barnwell, Adams and Orr read in the Senate. (See Globe, for January 9, 1860, pp. 288-9.)

LYMAN TRUMBULL.

629

I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that power even from Congress," which Davis pronounced "very good;" "but the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and against those who assail the power of the Federal Government, is clear and undeniable." Davis summed his comments on this in the words: The general government has "no power to coerce a State." To retain United States troops in the forts at Charleston against the wishes of South Carolina was coercion and a violation of the Constitution. The clear purpose of the secessionists was to put the national Government, as it had put the free States, in the wrong; thus the South, to escape tyranny and aggression had seceded. The reply to all this was made by Trumbull, of Illinois. "We have listened to the Senator from Mississippi, and one would suppose, in listening to him here, that he was a friend of this Union, that he desired the perpetuity of this government. He has a most singular way of preserving it, and a most singular way of maintaining the Constitution. What is it? Why, he proposes that the government should abdicate. If it will simply withdraw its forces from Charleston we will have peace. He dreads civil war, and he will avoid it by a surrender. He talks as if we Republicans were responsible for civil war, if it ensues. If civil war comes, it comes from those with whom he is acting. Who proposes to make civil war but South Carolina? Who proposes to make civil war but Mississippi and Alabama, and Georgia, seizing, by force of arms, upon the public property of the United States? Talk to us of making civil war. You inaugurate it, and then talk of it as if it came from the friends of the Constitution and the Union. Here stands this great govern

630

THE NATIONAL IDEA EXPRESSED.

ment; here stands the Union-a pillar, so to speak, already erected. Do we propose to pull it down? Do we propose undermining the foundations of the Constitution or disturbing the Union? Not at all, but the proposition comes from the other side. They are making war, and modestly ask us to have peace by submitting to what they ask. It is nothing but rebellion; it is nothing but insurrection." 1

The nominal difficulty in working out a new compromise was the territories and the unorganized public domain. These were the bone of contention. If Congress could get rid of the territories the question of slavery would be settled. On the sixteenth of Janu-ary, when Clark's resolutions were substituted for those so long and so earnestly advocated by Crittenden, Senator Rice suggested a scheme for obliterating the Territories. Kansas and New Mexico should be admitted, the boundaries of Minnesota, California and Oregon be readjusted, and thus, all the land be occupied as States. But this unique treatment of the disease may be said to have commended itself neither to the doctors nor to the patient. Slavocracy did not want the question settled, and the United States was a slaveholding Republic. When remedies become whimsical there is little hope for the patient.2

Secession was the inevitable consequence of slavocratic policy and ideas, and was itself the flower and fruit of the institution of slavery. The South Carolina declaration contained much history as well as much sophistry. Any one who will give a moment's thought to the subject must admit the truth of the saying that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The balance of power

1 Globe, January 10, 1861, pp. 312-313.

For the resolutions see Senate Journal, 103, 104.