The Middle Period 1817-1858 Part 31

{359} [Sidenote: Mr. Webster's March 7th speech.]

On March 7th, Mr. Webster made his famous speech, giving his great influence to pacification and compromise, and to the preservation of the Const.i.tution. He told the Northerners that they were bound by the agreement with Texas to admit four new Commonwealths from Texan territory, under the usual conditions; that they were bound by the Const.i.tution to deliver up fugitive slaves; and that since nature had made slavery impossible in California and New Mexico, they ought not to irritate the Southerners by demanding a Congressional prohibition of slavery therein. He told the Southerners, on the other hand, that they should desist from denying to citizens from Northern Commonwealths, temporarily within the jurisdiction of Southern Commonwealths, the rights of citizens. And he told the Abolitionists that they should measure their ideas of right, in some degree at least, by the standard of the common consciousness of the country, and modify them, in some degree, thereby. His words were received with great satisfaction by all moderate and prudent men. Of course, they did not satisfy the extremists, either in the North or the South, but they settled the minds of many who were wavering, and moved the work of temporary pacification, at least, several stages onward.

[Sidenote: Mr. Bell's proposition.]

During the course of the debate upon Mr. Clay's resolutions, and before the great efforts either of Mr. Calhoun or Mr. Webster, Mr.

Bell, of Tennessee, had offered some propositions, looking to the admission of California as a Commonwealth, and to the formation of Territorial government for New Mexico. On the day after Mr. Webster's great speech, Mr. Foote moved the reference of Mr. Bell's resolutions to a select committee of thirteen members. No vote, however, was immediately taken, but the debate upon {360} both sets of resolutions dragged on from day to day, and was made more complicated by the introduction of a bill from the committee on Territories, providing for the immediate admission of California, and the formation of Territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah.

[Sidenote: The death of Mr. Calhoun.]

On March 31st, Mr. Calhoun pa.s.sed away. The announcement of his death, the eulogies p.r.o.nounced upon his memory, and the funeral rites, were most solemn and impressive occasions. The influence of the sad event seemed, for the moment, to soften the hearts of those who had a.s.sociated with him toward one another. It seemed as if political foes would be willing to join hands across his bier.

[Sidenote: Mr. Foote's motion and the Committee of Thirteen.]

On April 11th, Mr. Mangum, of North Carolina, moved to refer the resolutions of Mr. Clay, along with those of Mr. Bell, to the committee suggested by Mr. Foote. Mr. Foote accepted Mr. Mangum's motion as an amendment to his own. After a most determined opposition by Senator Benton to Mr. Foote's motion, during which temper rose so high that Mr. Benton threatened to cudgel Mr. Foote, and Mr. Foote actually drew a pistol upon Mr. Benton, both in the course of the debate in the Senate chamber, Mr. Foote's motion was pa.s.sed. On the next day, April 19th, the members of the committee were chosen by ballot. They were Mr. Clay, Mr. Bell, Mr. Berrien, Mr. Bright, Mr.

Ca.s.s, Mr. Cooper, Mr. d.i.c.kinson, Mr. Downs, Mr. King, Mr. Mason, Mr.

Mangum, Mr. Phelps, and Mr. Webster. Seven members, including the chairman, Mr. Clay, were from the South and six from the North.

[Sidenote: The report and recommendations of the committee.]

On May 8th, Mr. Clay made the report, and offered the bills, from the grand committee, covering all the {361} subjects referred. The first bill provided for the admission of California, with the Commonwealth organization formed by her people the preceding autumn; for the Territorial organization of Utah and New Mexico, without any slavery restriction, and with restrictions upon the Territorial legislatures against pa.s.sing any acts in regard to slavery; for fixing the northern boundary of Texas upon a line drawn from a point on the Rio Grande twenty miles above El Paso to the point on the Red River where the line of the one hundredth degree of longitude intersects this river; for quit-claiming, so to speak, to Texas the claims of the United States to the country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande; and for paying Texas a sum of money, in consideration of the discharge of the United States from all obligations to pay the Texan debt, and of the surrender of all claims by Texas to country north of the northern boundary as fixed in the bill.

The second bill provided that a fugitive from labor must be delivered up on the order of any judge or commissioner of the United States authorized by the laws of the United States so to act, and that such judge or commissioner was authorized to issue such order on presentation to him, by the claimant of the fugitive, of a copy of the record of a competent court in the Commonwealth, Territory, or District from which the fugitive was said to have escaped, before which the facts of owners.h.i.+p, ident.i.ty, and escape had been satisfactorily proven. The judge or commissioner issuing such order was required, in case the fugitive declared himself to be a free man, to demand of the claimant of the fugitive a bond, with surety, for $1,000, pledging the claimant to accord the fugitive a trial by jury of the question of his freedom, in a competent court of the Commonwealth, {362} Territory, or District from which he was said to have escaped.

The third bill provided for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and for the liberation of any slave brought into the District for the purposes of sale or depot.

[Sidenote: The debate upon the bills proposed by the committee, and the failure to pa.s.s them.]

The debate began immediately upon the first bill, and the opposition to it from both sections advanced about the same arguments as were employed against these same subjects when presented in the form of Mr.

Clay's resolutions. The discussion continued through May, June, and July, until, at the end of July, nothing remained of the bill but that part of it which provided for the Territorial organization of Utah.

The general plan of the compromise was lost.

[Sidenote: The temper of the country.]

The whole country was amazed, disappointed, and angry. The Senators were quickly and decidedly made to feel that they dare not separate without doing something to heal the distractions of the land.

[Sidenote: The succession of Fillmore and his message of August 6th.]

The death of President Taylor, on July 9th, and the accession of Mr.

Fillmore, made the Administration more favorable to the measures included in the compromise plan. On August 6th, he communicated to Congress the fact that the Governor of Texas, P. H. Bell, in execution of an act of the Texas legislature, was extending the jurisdiction of Texas over the disputed territory on the eastern border of New Mexico, and that the President, as military Governor, in highest instance, of New Mexico, felt obliged to resist the movement, and that he had informed the Governor of Texas of his purpose. He besought Congress to avert the calamity which now threatened, by attending at once {363} to the matter of the boundary between Texas and New Mexico.

[Sidenote: The pa.s.sage of bills, separately, covering all the questions contained in Mr. Clay's compromise measures.]

Under this pressure, the Senate took up the Texan boundary bill, introduced by Mr. Pierce, of Maryland, which provided that the northern boundary of Texas should be the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes from the one hundredth degree of longitude to the one hundred and third degree; that the western and southwestern boundary should be the one hundred and third parallel of longitude from the northern line to lat.i.tude thirty-two degrees, thence along this parallel westward to the Rio Grande, thence the Rio Grande to the Gulf; and that ten millions of dollars should be paid Texas for agreeing to this boundary, and for relinquis.h.i.+ng all claims on the United States in regard to the payment of her public debt. On August 9th, the bill pa.s.sed the Senate.

On the 13th, the Senate took up the bill for the immediate admission of California, reported from the committee on Territories, and pa.s.sed it by a large majority.

On August 15th, the Senate pa.s.sed the bill from the committee on Territories for the Territorial organization of New Mexico, without any provision as to slavery. The bill for the organization of Utah had pa.s.sed, it will be remembered, on August 1st, as the remnant of the compromise plan.

The Senate then took up the Fugitive Slave Bill reported in March from the Judiciary committee. Inasmuch as the United States Supreme Court had given its opinion, in the case of Prigg versus Pennsylvania, that Commonwealth officers were not required by the Const.i.tution of the United States to render any a.s.sistance in the rendition of fugitive slaves, the Judiciary {364} committee had so constructed its bill as to make use of the machinery of the central Government alone in the execution of the proposed law. The bill was a somewhat more stringent measure than that proposed by Mr. Clay's committee. It did away with the right of a fugitive claiming to be a freeman to a trial by jury of the question of his freedom in a competent court of the Commonwealth, Territory, or District from which he was said to have escaped. It made it the duty of the marshals and deputy marshals of the United States courts to obey and execute all of the warrants and precepts issued under the provisions of the Act. It imposed a penalty of fine and imprisonment upon any person knowingly hindering the arrest of a fugitive, or attempting to rescue one from custody, or harboring one, or aiding one to escape. And it made the fee of the commissioner $10 in case he should issue the certificate of arrest to the claimant of the fugitive, and only $5 in case he should not. Otherwise it was substantially the same as the bill proposed by the Clay committee. The Senate pa.s.sed this bill, on August 26th.

At last, on September 16th, the Senate pa.s.sed the bill recommended by Mr. Clay's committee, for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia.

One after another, all these bills pa.s.sed the House of Representatives, against great opposition, but with no material alteration, except the connection of the bill for the organization of Territorial government in New Mexico with that for the adjustment of the Texan boundary, in which change the Senate acquiesced, and were all signed by the President; and before the first session of the Thirty-first Congress expired, on September 30th, 1850, the great work of pacification, as it was hoped and believed to be, had been accomplished.

{365}

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE EXECUTION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND THE ELECTION OF 1852

Change of Att.i.tude of the Slaveholders by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850--The First Cases Under the New Law--The Opposition to the Execution of the Law--Establishment of the "Underground"--The Support of the Law by the Political Leaders--The President's Support of the Law--Joshua R. Giddings--Pet.i.tions for the Repeal of the Law--The Shadrach Case--The Investigation of the Case by Congress--The Question of Increasing the Power of the President to Execute the Law--The Sims Case--Excitement in Boston Over the Rendition of Sims--The "Jerry Rescue"--The President's Rebuke--Mr. Foote's Finality Resolutions--The Failure of the Resolutions to Pa.s.s the Senate, but Their Success in the House--The National Conventions of 1852 and the Finality of the Compromise Measures--The Deaths of Clay and of Webster, and the Appearance of a Free-soil Candidate--The Overwhelming Democratic Victory of 1852--The True Policy of the Slaveholders, and Their Failure to Discern It.

[Sidenote: Change of att.i.tude of the slaveholders by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.]

Down to the time of the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, it may be said that the slaveholders were acting, in a certain sense, on the defensive. Before 1787, slavery had been regarded as a temporary relation, demanded by the moral and intellectual degradation of the Africans, and by the necessities of the social structure in which Anglo-Saxon and negro were brought together. It had been considered that the rise of the negro in civilization, by his contact with the white race, {366} would gradually change this relation in the direction of freedom. In fact it had done so, in a considerable degree. But the formation of the Const.i.tution of 1787, the invention and use of the cotton-gin, the acquisition of Louisiana, and the general subsidence of the revolutionary spirit of the eighteenth century, were all unfavorable to further progress in this only proper and correct direction. Between 1830 and 1840, a strong retrogressive movement set in, as we have seen, provoked indeed, in a considerable degree, by the Abolition propaganda; and in consequence of it, the slaveholders abandoned the only moral principle upon which slavery could be justified, and began to adopt the idea of the permanency of the relation, and to undertake the adjustment of the laws, customs, inst.i.tutions, and policies of the country to this idea. And, at last, by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, they committed the whole country to this course. In a word, they made slavery by this law a national matter, and they did it from the property point of view of slavery, the point of view which exhibits it in its most hateful light, and from which no moral justification whatsoever for its existence can be found.

It is true that the Const.i.tution commanded the return of fugitive slaves, and that the Supreme Court of the United States had interpreted the provision as vesting the power of executing this command in, and imposing the duty of its execution exclusively upon, the general Government, but it was a fatal policy for the slaveholders to insist upon the realization of this right through the general Government. In fact, it was a fatal policy to insist upon its realization at all. There was no way to effect it without requiring the aid of the North in the perpetuation of slavery. The attempt to effect it was, therefore, the a.s.sumption of an offensive att.i.tude on the part of the slaveholders, an att.i.tude which was bound to {367} provoke a general hostility to slavery throughout the North, instead of the indifference which had prevailed under the idea that slavery was an inst.i.tution of the Southern Commonwealths, with which the North and the general Government had no concern. Calhoun and Rhett and Davis had seen this danger, and they were not supporters of a national fugitive slave law. They preferred to consider the matter of the rendition of fugitive slaves as a special compact between the "States," and treat its non-fulfilment as a rupture of the Union.

Possibly, protected as their "States" were by the border slaveholding Commonwealths, they did not feel the necessity of such a law. At any rate, it was the border slaveholding Commonwealths which wanted the law.

[Sidenote: The first cases under the new law.]

The first apprehension of an escaped slave, under the new Act, was made in the city of New York. One James Hamlet, who had three years before left his mistress, Mary Brown, of Baltimore, was the victim. He had a wife and children in New York. He was surprised at his work, hastily tried, and delivered to Mrs. Brown's agent, who conducted him back to Baltimore. When the news of the event spread abroad it created great excitement among the negro population throughout the North, and great indignation on the part of the white citizens in many quarters.

[Sidenote: The opposition to the execution of the law.]

It was calculated that there were from fifteen to twenty thousand escaped slaves living at that time in the non-slaveholding Commonwealths who were liable to apprehension under the law; and every person having any negro blood, whether escaped from slavery or not, felt the insecurity created by the law. Meetings of persons belonging to these cla.s.ses were immediately held in Boston and New York, and resolutions were pa.s.sed at them, praying the white people to move for the repeal of the law.

{368} In answer, so to speak, to these appeals, ma.s.s-meetings of white people were held in Lowell, Syracuse, and Boston, at which the law was denounced, its repeal demanded, and aid pledged to the negroes in the North in resisting the execution of the law. Ministers of the Gospel, such as Beecher, Storrs, Furness, Spear, and Cheever, rained down denunciations upon the law from their pulpits, declared it to be in direct contravention of the law of G.o.d, and counselled resistance to its execution.

[Sidenote: Establishment of the "Underground."]

In the midst of this excitement two Georgia slaves, named William and Ellen Crafts, had succeeded in reaching Boston, and were concealed by some of the most high-toned people of that city, the Hillards, Lorings, and Parkers, from their pursuers, and aided in a successful escape to England. The first branch of the "Underground," established after the pa.s.sage of the law, ran through very respectable quarters.

[Sidenote: The support of the law by the political leaders.]

The lawyers, politicians, and statesmen now felt that it was high time for them to call the people back to the proper comprehension and observance of their const.i.tutional duties. Clay, Webster, Ca.s.s, Douglas, Buchanan, s.h.i.+elds, Curtis, Choate, and many others, instructed the people, both in speeches and written articles, in regard to the const.i.tutionality of the law, and their duty to obey its requirements. With this the tide of public opinion began to change, and the idea that it was the const.i.tutional duty of the North to the South to secure the execution of the law began to prevail. Such was the state of feeling when the Congressional session of 1850-51 opened, on December 2nd.

[Sidenote: The President's support of the law.]

In his message to Congress President Fillmore proclaimed his adherence to the Compromise Measures, as a {369} final settlement of the subjects to which they related, said that he believed the great ma.s.s of the American people sympathized with him, indicated that he would veto any measure for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and declared that he would execute the laws to the utmost of his ability and to the extent of the power vested in him.

This bold and determined language on the part of the President, who had been considered in the North as personally hostile to the Fugitive Slave Law, took the North somewhat by surprise, painfully so in some quarters, while it was highly approved at the South. It undoubtedly contributed, ultimately and in large degree, to the suppression of the resistance in the North to the execution of the law. At the moment, however, it drew out some of the bitterest denunciations of the law which were ever p.r.o.nounced.

[Sidenote: Joshua R. Giddings.]