Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics Part 19

The strangely unsettled condition of the great tract whose fate was pending, is no better ill.u.s.trated than by a second election which was held on the upper Missouri. One Hadley D. Johnson, sometime member of the Iowa legislature, hearing of the proposal of the Wyandots to send a territorial delegate to Congress, invited his friends in western Iowa to cross the river and hold an election. They responded by choosing their enterprising compatriot for their delegate, who promptly set out for Was.h.i.+ngton, bearing their mandate. Arriving at the capital, he found Thomas Johnson already occupying a seat in the House in the capacity of delegate-elect. Not to be outdone, the Iowa Johnson somewhat surrept.i.tiously secured his admission to the floor.

Subsequently, "the two Johnsons," as they were styled by the members, were ousted, the House refusing very properly to recognize either.

Thomas Johnson exhibited some show of temper, but was placated by the good sense of his rival, who proposed that they should strike for two Territories instead of one. Why not; was not Nebraska large enough for both?[437]

Under these circ.u.mstances, the question of Nebraska seemed likely to recur. Certain Southern newspapers were openly demanding the removal of the slavery restriction in the new Territory.[438] Yet the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, who had just returned from Europe, seems to have been unaware of the undercurrents whose surface indications have been pointed out. He wrote confidentially on November 11th:[439] "It [the administration] has difficulties ahead, but it must meet them boldly and fairly. There is a surplus revenue which must be disposed of and the tariff reduced to a legitimate revenue standard. It will not do to allow the surplus to acc.u.mulate in the Treasury and thus create a pecuniary revulsion that would overwhelm the business arrangements and financial affairs of the country. The River and Harbor question must be met and decided. Now in my opinion is the time to put those great interests on a more substantial and secure basis by a well devised system of Tonnage duties. I do not know what the administration will do on this question, but I hope they will have the courage to do what we all feel to be right. The Pacific railroad will also be a disturbing element. It will never do to commence making railroads by the federal government under any pretext of necessity. We can grant alternate sections of land as we did for the Central Road, but not a dollar from the National Treasury. These are the main questions and my opinions are foreshadowed as you are ent.i.tled to know them."

In the same letter occurs an interesting personal allusion: "I see many of the newspapers are holding me up as a candidate for the next Presidency. I do not wish to occupy that position. I do not think I will be willing to have my name used. I think such a state of things will exist that I shall not desire the nomination. Yet I do not intend to do any act which will deprive me of the control of my own action. I shall remain entirely non-committal and hold myself at liberty to do whatever my duty to my principles and my friends may require when the time for action arrives. Our first duty is to the cause--the fate of individual politicians is of minor consequence. The party is in a distracted condition and it requires all our wisdom, prudence and energy to consolidate its power and perpetuate its principles. Let us leave the Presidency out of view for at least two years to come."

These are not the words of a man who is plotting a revolution. Had Nebraska and the Missouri Compromise been uppermost in his thoughts, he would have referred to the subject, for the letter was written in strict confidence to friends, from whom he kept no secrets and before whom he was not wont to pose.

Those better informed, however, believed that Congress would have to deal with the territorial question in the near future. The Was.h.i.+ngton _Union_, commonly regarded as the organ of the administration, predicted that next to pressing foreign affairs, the Pacific railroad and the Territories would occupy the attention of the administration.[440] And before Congress a.s.sembled, or had been long in session, the chairman of the Committee on Territories must have sensed the situation, for on December 14, 1853, Senator Dodge of Iowa introduced a bill for the organization of Nebraska, which was identical with that of the last session.[441] The bill was promptly referred to the Committee on Territories, and the Nebraska question entered upon its last phase. Within a week, Douglas's friends of the Illinois State _Register_ were sufficiently well informed of the thoughts and intents of his mind to hazard this conjecture: "We believe they [the people of Nebraska] may be safely left to act for themselves.... The territories should be admitted to exercise, as nearly as practicable, all the rights claimed by the States, and to adopt all such political regulations and inst.i.tutions as their wisdom may suggest."[442] A New York correspondent announced on December 30th, that the committee would soon report a bill for three Territories on the basis of New Mexico and Utah; that is, without excluding or admitting slavery. "Climate and nature and the necessary pursuits of the people who are to occupy the territories," added the writer complacently, "will settle the question--and these will effectually exclude slavery."[443]

These rumors foreshadowed the report of the committee. The problem was to find a mode of overcoming the opposition of the South to the organization of a Territory which would not only add eventually to the number of free States, but also open up a northern route to the Pacific. The price of concession from the South on the latter point must be some apparent concession to the South in the matter of slavery. The report of January 4, 1854, and the bill which accompanied it, was Douglas's solution of the problem.[444] The principles of the compromise measures of 1850 were to be affirmed and carried into practical operation within the limits of the new Territory of Nebraska. "In the judgment of your committee," read the report, "those measures were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring effect than the mere adjustment of the difficulties arising out of the recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to establish certain great principles ... your committee have deemed it their duty to incorporate and perpetuate, in their territorial bill, the principles and spirit of those measures. If any other consideration were necessary, to render the propriety of this course imperative upon the committee, they may be found in the fact that the Nebraska country occupies the same relative position to the slavery question, as did New Mexico and Utah, when those Territories were organized."[445]

Just as it was a disputed point, the report argued, whether slavery was prohibited by law in the country acquired from Mexico, so it is questioned whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country by _valid_ enactment. "In the opinion of those eminent statesmen, who hold that Congress is invested with no rightful authority to legislate upon the subject of slavery in the Territories, the 8th section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void; while the prevailing sentiment in large portions of the Union sustains the doctrine that the Const.i.tution of the United States secures to every citizen an inalienable right to move into any of the Territories with his property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanction of law. Your committee do not feel themselves called upon to enter upon the discussion of these controverted questions. They involve the same grave issues which produced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 1850." And just as Congress deemed it wise in 1850 to refrain from deciding the matter in controversy, so "your committee are not prepared now to recommend a departure from the course pursued on that memorable occasion either by affirming or repealing the 8th section of the Missouri act, or by any act declaratory of the meaning of the Const.i.tution in respect to the legal points in dispute." The essential features of the Compromise of 1850, which should again be carried into practical operation, were stated as follows:

"First: That all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein, by their appropriate representatives, to be chosen by them for that purpose.

"Second: That 'all cases involving t.i.tle to slaves,' and 'questions of personal freedom,' are referred to the adjudication of the local tribunals, with the right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

"Third: That the provision of the Const.i.tution of the United States, in respect to fugitives from service, is to be carried into faithful execution in all 'the organized Territories,' the same as in the States."

The subst.i.tute reported by the committee followed the Dodge bill closely, but contained the additional statement. "And when admitted as a State or States, the said Territory, or any part of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their Const.i.tution may prescribe at the time of their admission."[446] This phraseology was identical with that of the Utah and New Mexico Acts.

The bill also made special provision for writs of error and appeals from the territorial court to the Supreme Court of the United States, in all cases involving t.i.tle to slaves and personal freedom. This feature, too, was copied from the Utah and New Mexico Acts. As first printed in the Was.h.i.+ngton _Sentinel_, January 7th, the bill contained no reference to the Missouri Compromise and no direct suggestion that the territorial legislature would decide the question of slavery. The wording of the bill and its general tenor gave the impression that the prohibition of slavery would continue during the territorial status, unless in the meantime the courts should declare the Missouri Compromise null and void. Three days later, January 10th, the _Sentinel_ reprinted the bill with an additional section, which had been omitted by a "clerical error." This twenty-first section read, "In order to avoid all misconstruction, it is hereby declared to be the true intent and meaning of this act, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, to carry into practical operation the following propositions and principles, established by the compromise measures of one thousand eight hundred and fifty, to wit:" then followed the three propositions which had accompanied the report of January 4th. The last of these three propositions had been slightly abbreviated: all questions pertaining to slavery were to be left to the decision of the people through their appropriate representatives, the clause "to be chosen by them for that purpose" being omitted.

This additional section transformed the whole bill. For the first time the people of the Territory are mentioned as the determining agents in respect to slavery. And the unavoidable inference followed, that they were not to be hampered in their choice by the restrictive feature of the Missouri Act of 1820. The omission of this weighty section was certainly a most extraordinary oversight. Whose was the "clerical error"? Attached to the original draft, now in the custody of the Secretary of the Senate, is a sheet of blue paper, in Douglas's handwriting, containing the crucial article. All evidence points to the conclusion that Douglas added this hastily, after the bill had been twice read in the Senate and ordered to be printed; but whether it was carelessly omitted by the copyist or appended by Douglas as an afterthought, it is impossible to say.[447] After his report of January 4th, there was surely no reason why Douglas should have hesitated to incorporate the three propositions in the bill; but it is perfectly obvious that with the appended section, the Nebraska bill differed essentially from its prototypes, though Douglas contended that he had only made explicit what was contained implicitly in the Utah bill.

Two years later Douglas replied to certain criticisms from Trumbull in these words: "He knew, or, if not, he ought to know, that the bill in the shape in which it was first reported, as effectually repealed the Missouri restriction as it afterwards did when the repeal was put in express terms. The only question was whether it should be done in the language of the acts of 1850, or in the language subsequently employed, but the legal effect was precisely the same."[448] Of course Douglas was here referring to the original bill containing the twenty-first section.

It has commonly been a.s.sumed that Douglas desired the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in order to open Nebraska to slavery. This was the pa.s.sionate accusation of his anti-slavery contemporaries; and it has become the verdict of most historians. Yet there is ample evidence that Douglas had no such wish and intent. He had said in 1850, and on other occasions, that he believed the prairies to be dedicated to freedom by a law above human power to repeal. Climate, topography, the conditions of slave labor, which no Northern man knew better, forbade slavery in the unoccupied areas of the West.[449] True, he had no such horror of slavery extension as many Northern men manifested; he was probably not averse to sacrificing some of the region dedicated by law to freedom, if thereby he could carry out his cherished project of developing the greater Northwest; but that he deliberately planned to plant slavery in all that region, is contradicted by the incontrovertible fact that he believed the area of slavery to be circ.u.mscribed definitely by Nature. Man might propose but physical geography would dispose.

The regrettable aspect of Douglas's course is his attempt to nullify the Missouri Compromise by subtle indirection. This was the device of a s.h.i.+fty politician, trying to avert suspicion and public alarm by clever ambiguities. That he really believed a new principle had been subst.i.tuted for an old one, in dealing with the Territories, does not extenuate the offense, for not even he had ventured to a.s.sert in 1850, that the compromises of that year had in any wise disturbed the status of the great, unorganized area to which Congress had applied the restrictive proviso of 1820. Besides, only so recently as 1849, he had said, with all the emphasis of sincerity, that the compromise had "become canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred thing, which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb." And while he then opposed the extension of the principle to new Territories, he believed that it had been "deliberately incorporated into our legislation as a solemn and sacred compromise."[450]

By this time Douglas must have been aware of the covert purpose of Atchison and others to secure the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, though he hoped that they would acquiesce in his mode of doing it. He was evidently not prepared for the bold move which certain of the senators from slave States were contemplating.[451] He was therefore startled by an amendment which Dixon of Kentucky offered on January 16th, to the effect that the restrictive clause of the Act of 1820 should not be so construed as to apply to Nebraska or any other Territory; "but that the citizens of the several States or territories shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the territories of the United States or of the States to be formed therefrom," as if the Missouri Act had never been pa.s.sed. Douglas at once left his seat to remonstrate with Dixon, who was on the Whig side of the Senate chamber. He disliked the amendment, not so much because it wiped out the Missouri Compromise as because it seemed "affirmatively to legislate slavery into the Territory."[452] Knowing Dixon to be a supporter of the compromise measures of 1850, Douglas begged him not to thwart the work of his committee, which was trying in good faith to apply the cardinal features of those measures to Nebraska. The latter part of Dixon's amendment could hardly be harmonized with the principle of congressional non-intervention.[453]

There seems to be no reason to doubt that Dixon moved in this matter on his own initiative;[454] but he was a friend to Atchison and he could not have been wholly ignorant of the Missouri factional quarrel.[455]

To be sure, Dixon was a Whig, but Southern Whigs and Democrats were at one in desiring expansion for the peculiar inst.i.tution of their section. Pressure was now brought to bear upon Douglas to incorporate the direct repeal of the compromise in the Nebraska bill.[456] He objected strongly, foreseeing no doubt the storm of protest which would burst over his head in the North.[457] Still, if he could unite the party on the principle of non-intervention with slavery in the Territories, the risk of temporary unpopularity would be worth taking.

No doubt personal ambition played its part in forming his purpose, but party considerations swayed him most powerfully.[458] He witnessed with no little apprehension the divergence between the Northern and Southern wings of the party; he had commented in private upon "the distracted condition" of the party and the need of perpetuating its principles and consolidating its power. Might this not be his opportunity?

On Sunday morning, January 22d, just before the hour for church, Douglas, with several of his colleagues, called upon the Secretary of War, Davis, stating that the Committees on Territories of the Senate and House had agreed upon a bill, for which the President's approval was desired. They pressed for an immediate interview inasmuch as they desired to report the bill on the morrow. Somewhat reluctantly, Davis arranged an interview for them, though the President was not in the habit of receiving visitors on Sunday. Yielding to their request, President Pierce took the proposed bill under consideration, giving careful heed to all explanations; and when they were done, both he and his influential secretary promised their support.[459]

What was this momentous bill to which the President thus pledged himself? The t.i.tle indicated the most striking feature. There were now to be two Territories: Kansas and Nebraska. Bedded in the heart of Section 14, however, was a still more important provision which announced that the prohibition of slavery in the Act of 1820 had been "superseded by the principles of the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the compromise measures," and was therefore "inoperative."

It has been commonly believed that Douglas contemplated making one free and one slave State out of the Nebraska region. His own simple explanation is far more credible: the two Johnsons had pet.i.tioned for a division of the Territory along the fortieth parallel, and both the Iowa and Missouri delegations believed that their local interests would be better served by two Territories.[460]

Again Pacific railroad interests seem to have crossed the path of the Nebraska bill. The suspicions of Delegate-elect Hadley Johnson had been aroused by the neglect of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to extinguish the claims of the Omaha Indians, whose lands lay directly west of Iowa. At the last session, an appropriation had been made for the purpose of extinguis.h.i.+ng the Indian t.i.tle to lands west of both Missouri and Iowa; and everyone knew that this was a preliminary step to settlement by whites. The appropriation had been zealously advocated by representatives from Missouri, who frankly admitted that the possession of these lands would make the Pacific railroad route available. Now as the Indian Commissioner, who had before shown himself an active partisan of Senator Atchison, rapidly pushed on the treaties with the Indians west of Missouri and dallied with the Omahas, the inference was unavoidable, that Iowa interests were being sacrificed to Missouri interests. Such was the story that the Iowa Johnson poured into the ear of Senator Douglas, to whom he was presented by Senator Dodge.[461] The surest way to safeguard the interests of Iowa was to divide the Territory of Nebraska, and give Iowa her natural outlet to the West.

Senator Dodge had also come to this conclusion. Nebraska would be to Iowa, what Iowa had been to Illinois. Were only one Territory organized, the seat of government and leading thoroughfares would pa.s.s to the south of Iowa.[462] Put in the language of the promoters of the Pacific railroad, one Territory meant aid to the central route; two Territories meant an equal chance for both northern and central routes. As the representative of Chicago interests, Douglas was not blind to these considerations.

On Monday, January 23d, Douglas reported the Kansas-Nebraska bill with a brief word of explanation. Next day Senator Dixon expressed his satisfaction with the amendment, which he interpreted as virtually repealing the Missouri Compromise. He disclaimed any other wish or intention than to secure the principle which the compromise measures of 1850 had established.[463] An editorial in the Was.h.i.+ngton _Union_ threw the weight of the administration into the balance: "The proposition of Mr. Douglas is a practical execution of the principles of that compromise [of 1850], and therefore, cannot but be regarded by the administration as a test of Democratic orthodoxy."[464]

While the administration publicly wheeled into line behind Douglas, the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States" summoned the anti-slavery elements to join battle in behalf of the Missouri Compromise. This memorable doc.u.ment had been written by Chase of Ohio and dated January 19th, but a postscript was added after the revised Kansas-Nebraska bill had been reported.[465]

It was an adroitly worded paper. History has falsified many of its predictions; history then controverted many of its a.s.sumptions; but it was colored with strong emotion and had the ring of righteous indignation.

The gist of the appeal was contained in two clauses, one of which declared that the Nebraska bill would open all the unorganized territory of the Union to the ingress of slavery; the other arraigned the bill as "a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights." In ominous words, fellow citizens were besought to observe how the blight of slavery would settle upon all this land, if this bill should become a law. Christians and Christian ministers were implored to interpose. "Let all protest, earnestly and emphatically, by correspondence, through the press, by memorials, by resolutions of public meetings and legislative bodies, and in whatever other mode may seem expedient, against this enormous crime." In the postscript Douglas received personal mention. "Not a man in Congress or out of Congress, in 1850, pretended that the compromise measures would repeal the Missouri prohibition. Mr. Douglas himself never advanced such a pretence until this session. His own Nebraska bill, of last session, rejected it. It is a sheer afterthought. To declare the prohibition inoperative, may, indeed, have effect in law as a repeal, but it is a most discreditable way of reaching the object. Will the people permit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game, and destroyed by false facts and false inferences?"[466]

This attack roused the tiger in the Senator from Illinois. When he addressed the Senate on January 30th, he labored under ill-repressed anger. Even in the expurgated columns of the _Congressional Globe_ enough stinging personalities appeared to make his friends regretful.

What excited his wrath particularly was that Chase and Sumner had asked for a postponement of discussion, in order to examine the bill, and then, in the interval, had sent out their indictment of the author. It was certainly unworthy of him to taunt them with having desecrated the Sabbath day by writing their plea. The charge was not only puerile but amusing, when one considers how Douglas himself was observing that particular Sabbath.

It was comparatively easy to question and disprove the unqualified statement of the _Appeal_, that "the original settled policy of the United States was non-extension of slavery." Less convincing was Douglas's attempt to prove that the Missouri Compromise was expressly annulled in 1850, when portions of Texas and of the former Spanish province of Louisiana were added to New Mexico, and also a part of the province of Louisiana was joined to Utah. Douglas was in the main correct as to geographical data; but he could not, and did not, prove that the members of the Thirty-first Congress purposed also to revoke the Missouri Compromise restriction in all the other unorganized Territories. This contention was one of those _non-sequiturs_ of which Douglas, in the heat of argument, was too often guilty. Still more regrettable, because it seemed to convict him of sophistry, was the mode by which he sought to evade the charge of the _Appeal_, that the act organizing New Mexico and settling the boundary of Texas had reaffirmed the Missouri Compromise. To establish his point he had to a.s.sume that _all_ the land cut off from Texas north of 36 30', was added to New Mexico, thus leaving nothing to which the slavery restriction, reaffirmed in the act of 1850, could apply. But Chase afterward invalidated this a.s.sumption and Douglas was forced so to qualify his original statement as to yield the point. This was a damaging admission and prejudiced his cause before the country. But when he brought his wide knowledge of American colonization to bear upon the concrete problems of governmental policy, his grasp of the situation was masterly.

"Let me ask you where you have succeeded in excluding slavery by an act of Congress from one inch of American soil? You may tell me that you did it in the northwest territory by the ordinance of 1787. I will show you by the history of the country that you did not accomplish any such thing. You prohibited slavery there by law, but you did not exclude it in fact.... I know of but one territory of the United States where slavery does exist, and that one is where you have prohibited it by law, and it is in this very Nebraska Territory. In defiance of the eighth section of the act of 1820, in defiance of Congressional dictation, there have been, not many, but a few slaves introduced.... I have no doubt that whether you organize the territory of Nebraska or not this will continue for some time to come.... But when settlers rush in--when labor becomes plenty, and therefore cheap, in that climate, with its productions, it is worse than folly to think of its being a slave-holding country.... I do not like, I never did like, the system of legislation on our part, by which a geographical line, in violation of the laws of nature, and climate, and soil, and of the laws of G.o.d, should be run to establish inst.i.tutions for a people."[467]

The fate of the bill was determined behind closed doors. After all, the Senate chamber was only a public clearing-house, where senators elucidated, or per-chance befogged, the issues. The real arena was the Democratic caucus. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Douglas, those high in the party conclaves met, morning after morning, in the endeavor to compose the sharp differences between the Northern and the Southern wings of the party.[468] On both sides, there was a disposition to agree on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, though grave misgivings were felt.

There were Southern men who believed that the repeal would be "an unavailing boon"; and there were Northern politicians who foresaw the storm of popular indignation that would break upon their heads.[469]

Southern Democrats were disposed to follow the South Carolina theory to its logical extreme: as joint owners of the Territories the citizens of all the States might carry their property into the Territories without let or hindrance; only the people of the Territory in the act of framing a State const.i.tution might exclude slavery.

Neither Congress nor a territorial legislature might take away property in slaves. With equal pertinacity, Douglas and his supporters advocated the right of the people in their territorial status, to mould their inst.i.tutions as they chose. Was there any middle ground?

Prolonged discussion made certain points of agreement clear to all. It was found that no one questioned the right of a State, with sufficient population and a republican const.i.tution, to enter the Union with or without slavery as it chose. All agreed that it was best that slavery should not be discussed in Congress. All agreed that, whether or no Congress had the power to exclude slavery in the Territories, it ought not to exercise it. All agreed that if Congress had such power, it ought to delegate it to the people. Here agreement ceased. Did Congress have such power? Clearly the law of the Const.i.tution could alone determine. Then why not delegate the power to control their domestic inst.i.tutions to the people of the Territories, subject to the provisions of the Const.i.tution? "And then," said one of the partic.i.p.ants later, "in order to provide a means by which the Const.i.tution could govern ... we of the South, conscious that we were right, the North a.s.serting the same confidence in its own doctrines, agreed that every question touching human slavery or human freedom should be appealable to the Supreme Court of the United States for its decision."[470]

While this compromise was being reached in caucus, the bill was under constant fire on the floor of the Senate. The _Appeal of the Independent Democrats_ had bitterly arraigned the declaratory part of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, where the Missouri Compromise was said to have been superseded and therefore inoperative. Even staunch Democrats like Ca.s.s had taken exception to this phraseology, preferring to declare the Missouri Compromise null and void in unequivocal terms. To Douglas there was nothing ambiguous or misleading in the wording of the clause. What was meant was this: the acts of 1850 rendered the Missouri Compromise _inoperative_ in Utah and New Mexico; but so far as the Missouri Compromise applied to territory not embraced in those acts, it was _superseded_ by the great principle established in 1850.

"Superseded by" meant "inconsistent with" the compromise of 1850.[471]

The word "supersede," however, continued to cause offense. Ca.s.s read from the dictionary to prove that the word had a more positive force than Douglas gave to it. To supersede meant to set aside: he could not bring himself to a.s.sent to this statement.[472]

By this time agreement had been reached in the caucus, so that Douglas was quite willing to modify the phraseology of the bill. "We see,"

said he, "that the difference here is only a difference as to the appropriate word to be used. We all agree in the principle which we now propose to establish." As he was not satisfied with the phrases suggested, he desired some time to consult with friends of the bill, as to which word would best "carry out the idea which we are intending to put into practical operation by this bill."[473]

On the following day, February 7th, Douglas reported, not merely "the appropriate word," but an entirely new clause, the product of the caucus deliberations.

The eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union is no longer said to be superseded, but "being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, (commonly called the Compromise Measures) is hereby declared inoperative and void, it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions in their own way, subject only to the Const.i.tution of the United States."[474]

This part of the bill had now a.s.sumed its final form. _Subject only to the Const.i.tution of the United States_. The words were clear; but what was their implication? A few days later, Douglas wrote to his Springfield confidant, "The Democratic party is committed in the most solemn manner to the principle of congressional non-interference with slavery in the States and Territories. The administration is committed to the Nebraska bill and will stand by it at all hazards.... The principle of this bill will form the test of parties, and the only alternative is either to stand with the Democracy or rally under Seward, John Van Buren & Co.... We shall pa.s.s the Nebraska bill in both Houses by decisive majorities and the party will then be stronger than ever, for it will be united upon principle."[475]

Yet there were dissentient opinions. What was in the background of Southern consciousness was expressed bluntly by Brown of Mississippi, who refused to admit that the right of the people of a Territory to regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions, including slavery, was a right to destroy. "If I thought in voting for the bill as it now stands, I was conceding the right of the people in the territory, during their territorial existence, to exclude slavery, I would withhold my vote.... It leaves the question where I am quite willing it should be left--to the ultimate decision of the courts."[476] Chase also, though for widely different reasons, disputed the power of the people of a Territory to exclude slavery, under the terms of this bill.[477] And Senator Clayton pointed out that non-interference was a delusion, so long as it lay within the power of any member of Congress to move a repeal of any and every territorial law which came up for approval, for the bill expressly provided for congressional approval of territorial laws.[478]

Douglas was irritated by these aspersions on his cherished principle.

He declared again, in defiant tones, that the right of the people to permit or exclude was clearly included in the wording of the measure.

He was not willing to be lectured about indirectness. He had heard cavil enough about his amendments.[479]

In the course of a debate on March 2d, another unforeseen difficulty loomed up in the distance. If the Missouri Compromise were repealed, would not the original laws of Louisiana, which legalized slavery, be revived? How then could the people of the Territories be free to legislate against slavery? It was a knotty question, testing the best legal minds in the Senate; and it was dispatched only by an amendment which stated that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise should not revive any antecedent law respecting slavery.[480]

The objection raised by Clayton still remained: how was it possible to reconcile congressional non-intervention with the right of Congress to revise territorial laws? Now Douglas had never contended that the right of the people to self-government in the Territories was complete as against the power of Congress. He had never sought to confer upon them more than a relative degree of self-government--"the power to regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions." He could not, and he did not, deny the truth and awkwardness of Clayton's contention. Where, then, demanded his critics, was the guarantee that the Kansas-Nebraska bill would banish the slavery controversies from Congress? This challenge could not go unanswered. Without other explanation, Douglas moved to strike out the provision requiring all territorial laws to be submitted to Congress.[481] But did this divest Congress of the power of revision? On this point Douglas preserved a discreet silence.

Recognizing also the incongruity of giving an absolute veto power to a governor who would be appointed by the President, Douglas proposed a suspensive, in place of an absolute, veto power. A two-thirds vote in each branch of the territorial legislature would override the governor's negative.[482] Chase now tried to push Douglas one step farther on the same slippery road. "Can it be said," he asked, "that the people of a territory will enjoy self-government when they elect only their legislators and are subject to a governor, judges, and a secretary appointed by the Federal Executive?" He would amend by making all these officers elective.[483] Douglas extricated himself from this predicament by saying simply that these officers were charged with federal rather than with territorial duties.[484] The amendment was promptly negatived. Yet seven years later, this very proposition was indorsed by Douglas under peculiar circ.u.mstances. At this time in 1854, it would have effected nothing short of a revolution in American territorial policy; and it might have altered the whole history of Kansas.

Despite a.s.severations to the contrary, there were Southern men in Congress who nourished the tacit hope that another slave State might be gained west of the Missouri. There was a growing conviction among Southern people that the possession of Kansas at least might be successfully contested.[485] At all events, no barrier to Southern immigration into the Territory was allowed to remain in the bill.

Objection was raised to the provision, common to nearly all territorial bills, that aliens, who had declared their intention of becoming citizens, should be permitted to vote in territorial elections. In a contest with the North for the possession of the territorial government, the South would be at an obvious disadvantage, if the homeless aliens in the North could be colonized in Kansas, for there was no appreciable alien population in the Southern States.[486]

So it was that Clayton's amendment, to restrict the right to vote and to hold office to citizens of the United States, received the solid vote of the South in the Senate. It is significant that Douglas voted with his section on this important issue. There can be no better proof of his desire that freedom should prevail in the new Territories. The Clayton amendment, however, pa.s.sed the Senate by a close vote.[487]