III.

KANSAS AND THE TERRITORIAL QUESTION.

THE writer was thrown into Congress by the refluent wave that followed the excitement growing out of the Kansas question. The Republican party had made the issue with Judge Douglas on his doctrine of sovereignty. A majority of the 35th Congress had been returned on the principle of laissez faire to the people of the Territories. The travail which gave birth to Kansas as a State, was the same agony prolonged which eventuated in civil strife. Had the Democratic party, then in power, united wisely to thrust aside the fraudulent constitution of Kansas made at Lecompton, there would have been no distraction in its ranks in 1860. The Charleston Convention would have agreed. Most probably no Republican success would have made memorable that year. Hence,. in inquiring into the real, if not the proximate causes of the war and the alienation of the sections, we cannot ignore the questions as to Kansas. To be sure, Kansas was the occasion, rather than the cause of conflict.

The slavery agitation was the paramount cause. There is something ineffably repugnant to the human heart in the relation of master and slave. The idea of one human being owning another human being would thrust itself forward in all these struggles, irrepressibly foremost. Whether in resistance to the constitutional authorities-as in the case of fugitives from justice and labor—or in the admission of new States, or in the organization of territories, the anti-slavery zealot, whether sincere or not, handled a weapon so tempered with seeming justice, so flashing, as it were, in defence of a higher than human law, and wreathed as with the "beauty of the lilies" by the lyric poetry of the time, that the sanctions of authority were as mere houses of cards before his blows. No wonder that with such an impulse the devotees of anti-slavery, in the language of one of their eloquent champions, "would rend the Union to destroy slavery, though hedged round by the triple bars of the national compact, and though thirty-three crowned sovereigns, with arms in their hands, stood around it." The pro-slavery men of 1857 forgot the growing power of this sentiment, and the increasing power of the North to enforce it. They desperately struggled to force Kansas into the Union as a Slave State, by a stupendous fraud. In the reaction against its perpetration, a fresh agitation was aroused. This new agitation outlasted the interest in the case of Kansas. The whole country became a Kan

sas.

It absorbed all the energies of debate. The first speech made by me in Congress, and, as it was noted, the first made in the new hall of the House, on the 16th of December, 1857, was also the first speech against Lecompton by any one in the lower house of Congress. I remember taking it to Judge Douglas at his house on the Sunday preceding the discussion, to read him parts of it in manuscript. The Globe of that time will show the speech, and the attempt by Southern statesmen, Messrs. Bococke, Quitman, Jones, and others, to cut me off from the debate. As a consequence of this speech, my friend the postmaster at Columbus lost his office, and I lost caste with the administration. I was content to wander for four years throughout the administration of President Buchanan-a Democrat who had helped his election, without influence to help a single friend.

As the interest in that discussion has subsided, I do not propose to reproduce these speeches. The points will appear from this extract:

I propose now to nail against the door, at the threshold of this Congress, my theses. When the proper time comes, I will defend them, 'whether from the assaults of political friend or foe. I would fain be silent, sir, here and now. But silence, which is said to be as "harmless as a rose's breath," may be as perilous as the pestilence. This peril comes from the attempt to forego the capital principle of Democratic policy, which I think has been done by the constitutional convention of Kansas. I maintain :-1. That the highest refinement and greatest utility of Democratic policy-the genius of our institutions-is the right of selfgovernment. 2. That this self-government means the will of the majority, legally expressed. 3. That this self-government and majority rule were sacredly guaranteed in the organic act of Kansas. 4. That it was guaranteed upon the question of slavery in terms; and generally with respect to all the domestic institutions of the people.. 5. That domestic institutions mean all which are local, not national-State, not Federal. It means that and that only-that always. 6. That the people were to be left perfectly free to establish or abolish slavery, as well as to form and regulate their other institutions. 7. That the doctrine was recognized in every part of the Confederacy by the Democracy; fixed in their national platform; asserted by their speakers and presses; reiterated by their candidates; incorporated in messages and instructions; and formed the feature which distinguished the Democracy from its opponents, who maintained the doctrine of congressional intervention. 8. The Lecompton constitution, while it is asserted that it is submitted to the people in the essential point, thus recognizing an obligation to submit it in some mode, cannot, in any event, be rejected by the people of Kansas. The vote must be for its approval, whether the voter votes one way or another. The people may be unwilling to take either of the propositions, and yet must vote one or the other of them. They have to vote "constitution with slavery," or "constitution with no slavery;" but the constitution they must take.

These were the points elaborated in that discussion. Differing with Mr. Buchanan, I was constrained afterwards to differ with Judge Douglas on the Compromise bill reported by a Committee of Conference. I voted for the latter on the ground that it returned for a fair election the fraudulent constitution to the people, and that there were people enough for a State in Kansas. I was fully justified by the subsequent action of the people under that bill. Subsequently I voted to receive the free State of Kansas; and after justifying my former vote, scarcely exaggerated the campaign I had undergone, when I said that

For voting for this Conference bill, even after I was justified by the popular vote of Kansas in the summer of 1858, I was compelled to meet from Republicans at home a campaign unexampled for its unprovoked fierceness, its base and baseless charges of personal corruption, its conceit, its ignorance, its impudence, its poltroonery, its billingsgate, its brutality, its moneyed corruption, its fanatical folly, its unflagging slang, its drunken saturnalia, and its unblushing libels and pious hypocrisy ! At the capital of Ohio, in its most noble and intelligent precincts, the people, ashamed of and indignant at the audacious falsehood and brazen clamor from the presses of the State, and from the little penny-a-liners and pettifoggers, who echoed the libels of members fresh from this floor -in spite of all this the people doubled my majority of 1856. I had the satisfaction-prouder than a temporary victory-of seeing the policy I had voted for with earnest conviction of duty, and with the sustaining advice of such a statesman as Robert J. Walker, vindicated by time, and sustained by its practical operation. As the crowning act of this triumph, I shall vote for the admission of Kansas under this constitution. In doing this, I court all criticism, defy all menace, and truly represent almost every man, woman, and child in my district.

Inasmuch as my vote for the Conference bill was greatly impugned and as it seemed to be a departure from the original position of Judge Douglas, I was solicitous to have the Judge explain our relations to this question. This he did during the campaign of 1860. On the 20th of September he spoke to an immense meeting at Columbus, Ohio, in which he thus explained the differences between himself and other Democrats:

"I made the first speech in the Senate against the Lecompton Constitution, and without consulting Mr. Cox or any one else, and Mr. Cox made the first speech against it in the House, without consultation or dictation from me. We fought it through on our own responsibility until Lecompton was dead; and when Lecompton was defeated, its friends got up the English bill to cover its retreat. Hon. Robert J. Walker, then Governor of Kansas, advised Mr. Cox and myself to go for it, giving assurance that when presented to the people of Kansas, they would kill it, ten to one. Under these circumstances, some of our men felt it their duty

16

to go for the bill. I did not think it a fair submission to the will of the people, and determined to fight it too. Mr. Cox said he had consulted,

the members of the Ohio delegation, that they all agreed to vote for it, and that under the circumstances he should vote with them. I told him I had no quarrel with those of my friends who differed with me honestly on that point, and afterwards I wrote letters in favor of the election of some of those who had voted for the English bill. The Judge concluded by urging his friends in the District to nail the slander by reëlecting Mr. Cox."

Had Judge Douglas yielded his resolution on this subject, and voted for the Conference bill, the territorial question would not have been mooted at Charleston, with so marked a personal application. His nomination would have been made without division. For a time, at least, secession would have been prevented, and war averted. The political battles of 1860 were fought on the question of slavery in the territories. The election of Mr. Lincoln, which took place in November, 1860, not only settled the question against the South, but against the friends and doctrine of Judge Douglas. Congress met in December following; then arose for desperate debate all the varied questions involving human servitude. It was to the composition of these questions that the good men of that time addressed themselves. That Congress was one of marked ability. The South especially was ably represented. The hidden facts, the inner life, the scenes and incidents which never appear on public record, and seldom appear even in the newspaper, when they shall transpire will give to that Congress the graphic interest of a battle picture. Out of its discussions, devices, and seditions, arose the bloody spectre of war! It is my hope in the following pages to illustrate some of these incidents and scenes. not design to reproduce the public record; that is done. Nor do I expect to I do change men's minds as to the merit or demerit of its men and measures. But there is much of interest as yet unwritten clinging to the actors in that drama―a drama whose last act has had its tragical dénouement in the assassination of a kind Chief Magistrate, whose pall, like that of the last day, still hangs over our newly-resurrected nation.

XXXVI. CONGRESS--SESSION 1860-'61.

ITS MEMBERS-THEIR CHARACTERISTICS, OPINIONS, AND VOTES THE CRITTENDEN AND OTHER COMPROMISES.

It was my intention, in this volume, to have prefixed to the speeches such recollections connected with the rise and progress of our civil war as would illustrate its motive and life. Especially did I intend to sketch those inner political facts and scenes which my position enabled me to observe. But the volume would be too much enlarged by their elaboration. It would require a volume by itself to connect with the recorded facts such a memorabilia. Their recital would give personal interest and piquancy to these historic events; but that labor must be reserved. It would scarcely be kind, now that the leaders of the rebellion are under the ban, and many of them incarcerated, to add any thing to the reprobation which they have received, or to the fetters which weigh them down. Is it Ossian, or some other writer (the sentiment hardly belongs to our own times), who says that while we should be a tide of many streams against the enemies of our country, we should be as a zephyr upon the grass toward a fallen foe? I would emulate that Christian philosophy, not only in writing but in acting. While recalling much that occurred during the winter of 1860-'61, it would be generous now only to record the inclinations and efforts of those under condemnation who then endeavored to stay the madness of secession.

One thing is remarkable as connected with that Congress. For weeks, nay months, the Southern leaders in the Senate and House openly proclaimed their doctrine of secession, argued the abstract and practical questions connected with such movements, with great formality and solemnity, presented their ordinances of secession, and under their sanc tions withdrew. This was done in the presence of excited and awe-struck audiences. It was done with all the graces of impassioned and polished eloquence.