654 A SLAVE-HOLDING EMPIRE SOUTHWARD. They were attempting Creator had made un and privileges with the white man. to make things equal which the equal. I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world." Nor was this the limit of slavocratic opinions, plans and purposes. Calhoun had hinted at a slaveholding republic extending indefinitely southward over the islands of the sea and beyond the forests of Bolivia. This was in 1844, when, as Secretary of State, he resented any action of Great Britain to prevent the annexation of Texas and its absorption into a slaveholding country. That dream of a slaveholding empire had ever since flitted over the Southern mind. Fifteen years of brooding on the prize had almost clothed it with reality. The theme was a favorite one with Southern orators whose words might not be seized as the outline of a policy. 2 "It is true," said a member of the Alabama convention, "that the interests of the South may demand territorial expansion, for expansion seems to be the law and destiny and necessity of our institutions. To remain healthful and prosperous within, and to make sure our development and power, it seems essential that we should grow without. Arizona and Mexico, Central America and Cuba, all may yet be embraced within the limits of our Southern republic. A Gulf Confederacy may be established in the South, which may well enjoy almost a monopoly in the production of cotton, rice, sugar, coffee, tobacco and tropical fruits. The trade of all tropical America, combined with that of the Cotton States, would make our Confederacy the wealthiest, the most progressive and the most influential power on the globe. Should 1 Johnston's American Orations, III, 169. 2 Letter to King, Works, Vol. V, 379-392. NO MAN SPEAKS FOR THE NEGRO. 655 the border States refuse to unite their destiny with ours, then we may be compelled to look for territorial strength and for political power to those rich and beautiful lands that lie upon our southwestern frontier. Their genial climate and productive soil; their rich agricultural and mineral resources, render them admirably adapted to the institution of slavery. Under the influence of that institution, these tropical lands would soon add millions to the commercial wealth of our Republic, and their magnificent ports would soon be filled with ships from every nation. Slave labor would there build up for the Southern Confederacy populous and wealthy States, as it has built up for the late Union the States of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas." This dream was not a passing fancy in Alabama, only; it was hidden in the address which South Carolina issued to the people of the slaveholding States, treating of slavery, territorial expansion, power, wealth. Because Northern men did not believe these things, they denied belief in them to the South. The more clearly and earnestly Southern members set forth these opinions, the North merely said: "Another fugitive slave law will quiet them." When Iverson and Davis and Brown and Hawkins and others declared from their places in Congress that the South wanted no more compromises, that nothing the North could do would satisfy the Southern demand, Congress responded with the committees of thirteen and thirty-three. And no voice was heard on behalf of the millions whom the Creator had made the subordinate race. Save the Union, and spare not the bondman; the Union is a sacred compact; the African is property. It is not strange that some men and women exclaimed: save the African and let the Union go. But these were radical 1 Smith's Debates, 236-237. 656 THE SECESSION MOVEMENT NOT RECOGNIZED. abolitionists, abhorred by the Democratic party North and South, and almost equally abhorred by the party which had elected Lincoln and Hamlin. Yet Phillips and Garrison and their associates were slowly giving name and character to the North. Lincoln was not an abolitionist, in 1860, neither was Seward, nor Chase, nor Stanton, nor Thurlow Weed, nor Horace Greeley, nor was the Republican party an abolition party at that time. It demanded the limitation of slavery: no more slave Territories. It did not say, "No more slave States," though it denied the right and power of Congress to make slavery legal anywhere. In this it was opposed to the Southern wing of the Democratic party which declared that Congress had no right or power to limit slavery whether in territories or States. But slavery limitation meant abolition, to the South, whence the tone of thought and speech on the subject in all the secession conventions fully expressed in the declarations of causes for secession sent out by South Carolina and Mississippi.1 It is difficult, usually impossible, to see things that are too near the eye. The mighty secession movement of 1860 was unseen by many Northern members of Congress and was scarcely known to the mass of the people in the free States. On the eleventh of December, Hawkins' service on the committee was again discussed. "I can but regard this committee as a tub thrown out to the whale to amuse only until the fourth of March next; and thus arrest the present noble and manly movement of the Southern States to provide by that day for their security and safety out of the Union," said Reuben Davis, of Mississippi; "with these views, I take my place on the committee, for the purpose of preventing it being made a means of decep1 See pp. 561-570. THE LABORS OF THE COMMITTEE. 657 tion, by which the public mind is to be misled and misguided; yet intending honestly and patriotically to entertain any fair proposition for adjustment of pending evils which the Republican members may submit." Cobb, of Alabama, gave notice of the approaching convention at Montgomery and said, "If anything is to be done to save my State, it must be done quickly."2 By a vote of one hundred and one to ninety-five, the House refused to excuse Hawkins, and by a vote of one hundred to one hundred, refused to excuse Boyce, of Virginia; but neither of these attended its sessions. As the Southern States seceded one after another, their delegations in the House announced the fact and most of the members withdrew. Thus before the committee was ready to report, all the Southern members, except Andrew J. Hamilton, of Texas,3 had withdrawn, and the committee had become a forlorn hope. But the committee earnestly and faithfully entered upon its heavy labors. It had two services to render: to report necessary legislation and a constitutional amendment. This double duty it sought to perform in its almost daily sessions from the twelfth of December to the fourteenth of January. The leading members of all parties in the House, abounded in resolutions and amendments and these were duly read and referred to the committee. They did not differ in substance from propositions, to the same end, submitted in the Senate, of which an account has been given. But they greatly exceeded the Senate propositions in number and in the variety and combination of 1 Globe, December 11, 1860, p. 59. 2 Id. 3 Appointed military governor of Texas, by President Lincoln, in 1862. 4 See twenty-three of these resolutions in the Globe for December 12 and 17, 1860, pp. 76, 77, 78, 79, 96. 658 VARIOUS PROPOSITIONS. their remedial elements. The legislation demanded by most members was thought by them of sufficient importto be given permanent form in a constitutional amendment. It would be futile therefore to attempt to classify the propositions as legislative and constitutional, or even to group the propositions as a whole. The committee was large and its own members submitted many resolutions. The Constitution should be amended by the addition of the Crittenden resolution; the Federal Government should protect slaves like other property; it should admit new States with or without slavery, as their people might decide; it should reimburse slaveowners for escaping slaves; it should exclude from the right to vote, in every State, all persons not of pure, unmixed blood, of the Caucasian race, and should not legislate on slavery in any territory.2 The States should revise their statutes and repeal all conflicting with federal laws.3 Morrill, of Vermont, on the thirteenth, in committee, offered the pacific resolution that "any reasonable, proper and constitutional remedy necessary to preserve the peace of the country and the perpetuation of the Union should be promptly and cheerfully granted," but this was promptly voted down by twenty-two to nine. By twentytwo to eight the committee adopted the resolution of Dunn, of Indiana, slightly modifying that by Rust, of Arkansas, that "additional and more specific guarantees" of the peculiar rights of the South "should be promptly and cheerfully granted."5 New Mexico should be admitted, 4 1 Report No. 31, H. R., 36th Congress, 2d Session. Journal of the Committee. The Crittenden Resolutions proposed by Nelson of Tenn. 2 Id., p. 4, proposed by Whitely of Delaware. * Id., p. 5, proposed by Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, - 4 Id., p. 7. 5 Id., p. 8. |