The Life of Lyman Trumbull Part 12

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

Trumbull's own opinions about compromise were set forth in a correspondence with E. C. Larned, an eminent lawyer of Chicago. Under date January 7, Larned sent him a series of resolutions written by himself which were pa.s.sed at a great Union meeting composed of Republicans and Democrats in Metropolitan Hall. One of these resolutions suggested "great concessions" to the South without specifying what they should be. Larned asked Trumbull to read them and advise him whether they met his approval. Trumbull replied under date January 16, at considerable length, saying:

In the present condition of things it is not advisable, in my opinion, for Republicans to concede or talk of conceding anything. The people of most of the Southern States are mad and in no condition to listen to reasonable propositions. They persist in misrepresenting the Republicans and many of them are resolved on breaking up the Government before they will consider what guarantees they want. To make or propose concessions to such a people, only displays the weakness of the Government. A Union which can be destroyed at the will of any one state is hardly worth preserving. The first question to be determined is whether we have a Government capable of maintaining itself against a state rebellion. When that question is effectually settled and the Republicans are installed in power, I would willingly concede almost anything, not involving principle, for the purpose of overcoming what I regard the misapprehension and prejudice of the South, but to propose concessions in advance of obtaining power looks to me very much like a confession in advance that the principles on which we carried the election are impracticable and wrong. Had the Republican party from the start as one man refused to entertain or talk compromises and concessions, and given it to be understood that the Union was to be maintained and the laws enforced at all hazards, I do not believe secession would ever have obtained the strength it now has.

The pages of the _Congressional Globe_ of 1860-61 make the two most intensely interesting volumes in our country's history. They embrace the last words that the North and South had to say to each other before the doors of the temple of Ja.n.u.s were thrown open to the Civil War. As the moment of parting approached, the language became plainer, and its most marked characteristic was not anger, not hatred between disputants, but failure to understand each other. It was as though the men on either side were looking at an object through gla.s.ses of different color, or arguing in different languages, or wors.h.i.+ping different G.o.ds. Typical of the disputants were Davis and Trumbull, men of equally strong convictions and high breeding, and moved equally by love of country as they understood that term. Davis made three speeches, two of which were on the general subject of debate, and one his farewell to the Senate.

The first, singularly enough, was called out by a resolution offered by a fellow Southerner and Democrat, Green, of Missouri (December 10, 1860), who proposed that there should be an armed police force provided by Federal authority to guard, where necessary, the boundary line between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding states, to preserve the peace, prevent invasions, and execute the Fugitive Slave Law. This scheme Davis considered a quack remedy, and he declared that he could not give it his support because it looked to the employment of force to bring about a condition of security which ought to exist without force.

The present want of security, he contended, could not be cured by an armed patrol, but only by a change of sentiment in the majority section of the Union toward the minority section. Upon this test he argued in a dispa.s.sionate way for a considerable s.p.a.ce, ending in these words:

This Union is dear to me as a Union of fraternal states. It would lose its value to me if I had to regard it as a Union held together by physical force. I would be happy to know that every state now felt that fraternity which made this Union possible; and if that evidence could go out, if evidence satisfactory to the people of the South could be given, that _that_ feeling existed in the hearts of the Northern people, you might burn your statute books and we would cling to the Union still. But it is because of their conviction that hostility and not fraternity now exists in the hearts of the Northern people, that they are looking to their reserved rights and to their independent powers for their own protection. If there be any good, then, which we can do, it is by sending evidence to them of that which I fear does not exist--the purpose in your const.i.tuents to fulfill in the spirit of justice and fraternity all their const.i.tutional obligations. If you can submit to them that evidence, I feel confidence that with the evidence that aggression is henceforth to cease, will terminate all the measures for defense. Upon you of the majority section it depends to restore peace and perpetuate the Union of equal states; upon us of the minority section rests the duty to maintain our equality and community rights; and the means in one case or the other must be such as each can control.[40]

This was the explicit confirmation of what Lincoln had said, in his Cooper Inst.i.tute speech a year earlier, was the chief difficulty of the North: "We must not only let them (the South) alone, but we must somehow convince them that we do let them alone."

The best speech made on the Republican side of the chamber during this momentous session of Congress was made by Trumbull on the night of March 2. It was a speech adverse to the Crittenden Compromise, and was a reply to Crittenden's final speech in support of it. This measure was a joint resolution proposing certain amendments to the Const.i.tution, the first of which proposed to apply the old Missouri Compromise line, of 36 30'

north lat.i.tude, to all the remaining territory of the United States, so that in all territory north of it, then owned or thereafter acquired, slavery should be prohibited, and that in all south of it, then owned or thereafter acquired, slavery should be recognized as existing, and that the right of property in slaves there should be protected by Federal law. It was offered on the 18th of December, 1860, and debated till the 2d of March following, when it was defeated by yeas 19, nays 20, all the Republicans voting against it except Seward, who did not vote and was not paired.[41]

Just before the vote was taken, Crittenden tried to amend his measure by striking out the words "hereafter acquired" as to the territory south of 36 30', which he said was giving great offense in some parts of the North. This was not in the measure as originally proposed by him, but he had accepted it as an amendment offered by his colleague, Senator Powell. It was then too late to amend except by unanimous consent, and Hunter, of Virginia, objected. In this last debate, Mason drew attention to the minimum demands of Virginia as expressed by her legislature.

These were the Crittenden Compromise, including territory "hereafter acquired," and the right of slaveholders to pa.s.s with their slaves through the free states with protection to their slave property in transit. Mason intimated pretty plainly that even this would not satisfy him, for which he received some castigation at the hands of Douglas. The latter was a steady supporter of the Crittenden Compromise, but he maintained throughout the debate that no cause for disunion would exist, even if the measure were defeated, and that none would exist if the Federal Government should attempt to compel a state or any number of states to obey the Federal law.

Simultaneously with the rejection of the Crittenden Compromise, the Senate, by a two-thirds majority, pa.s.sed a joint resolution to amend the Const.i.tution by adding to it the following article:

Article XIII. No amendment shall be made to the Const.i.tution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any state, with the domestic inst.i.tutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said state.

This was a resolution introduced by Corwin, of Ohio. It had already pa.s.sed the House by a two-thirds majority, but it fell into the limbo of forgotten things before sunrise of the 4th of March.

During this crisis Trumbull was receiving hundreds of letters from his const.i.tuents, nearly all exhorting him to stand firm. The only ones counseling compromise were from the commercial cla.s.ses in Chicago, and of these there were fewer than might have been expected in view of the threatened danger to trade and industry. The dwellers in the small towns and on the farms were almost unanimously opposed to the Crittenden Compromise. A few letters are here cited from representative men in their respective localities:

A. B. Barrett (Mount Vernon, January 5) has taken pains to gather the opinions of Republicans in his neighborhood in reference to the secession movement and finds them, without a single exception, in favor of enforcing the laws and opposed to any concession on the part of Congress which would recognize slavery as right in principle, or as a national inst.i.tution.

J. H. Smith (Bushnell, January 7) contends that the Chicago platform was a contract between the Republican voters and the men elected to office by them, and the voters expect them to live up to it, to the very letter. "If the South wants to fight let them pitch in as soon as they please; we would rather fight than allow slavery to go into any more territory." Encloses resolutions to this purport pa.s.sed by a public meeting of citizens of his town.

A. C. Harding (Monmouth, January 12) is pained to hear a rumor that some Republicans in Was.h.i.+ngton are considering a bill to make a slave state south of 36 30', thus sanctioning a slave code by Congress. Any concessions that shall violate the pledges of the Republican party will instantly turn the guns of our truest friends upon those who thus give strength to the Southern rebels. Neither Adams nor Seward nor Lincoln can for a moment escape the fatal consequences if they yield their principles at the threat of disunion.

Wait Talcott (Rockford, January 17) has just finished reading Seward's speech. It leads him to fear that yielding to the South, and calling a national convention under their threat, will embolden them, whenever the result of an election does not suit them, to insist that the victors shall take the place of the vanquished.

G. Koerner (Belleville, January 21): The Democratic Convention at Springfield has done some mischief by inflaming the lower order of the Democracy and confirming them in their seditious views. On the other hand, it has disgusted the better cla.s.s of Democrats. It was a sort of indignation meeting of all the disappointed candidates, office-seekers, and losers of bets. A few Republicans are giving way under the pressure, but upon the whole the party stands firm. "Has secession culminated or is worse to come? I am prepared for the application of force. In fact, a collision is inevitable. Why ought not we to test our Government instead of leaving it to our children?"

H. G. McPike (Alton, January 24): "Our people believe the Const.i.tution to be good enough. Let it alone. A compromise of any principle dissolves the Republican party, takes the great moral heart out of it, and will in so far bring ruin on the Government."

J. M. Sturtevant, president of Illinois College (Jacksonville, January 30), protests against the tone of Mr. Seward's speech.

Says that the solid phalanx of thoughtful, conscientious, earnest, religious men who form the backbone of the Republican party will never follow Mr. Seward, or any other man, in the direction in which he seems to be leading. "We want the Const.i.tution as it is, the Union as the Fathers framed it, and the Chicago platform. And we will support no man and no party that surrenders these or any portion of them."

Grant Goodrich (Chicago, January 31) is convinced by his intercourse with the ma.s.s of Republicans, and with many Democrats, that any concessions by which additional rights are given to slavery will end the Republican party. There will be a division of the Republicans; a new party will arise, which will include the entire German element and which will be as hostile to the "Union-saving" Republicans as to the Democrats, and much more intolerant to their former allies.

E. Peck (Springfield, February 1) says that the proposition to send commissioners to Was.h.i.+ngton was pa.s.sed by the legislature as a matter of necessity, because, if the Republicans had not taken the lead, the Democrats would have done so, and would have obtained the help of a sufficient number of weak-kneed Republicans to make a majority. Mr. Lincoln would have preferred that commissioners be not appointed.

W. H. Herndon (Springfield, February 9): "Are our Republican friends going to concede away dignity, Const.i.tution, Union, laws, and justice? If they do, I am their enemy now and forever. I may not have much influence, but I will help tear down the Republican party and erect another in its stead.

Before I would buy the South, by compromises and concessions, to get what is the people's due, I would die, rot, and be forgotten, willingly."

Samuel C. Parks (Lincoln, Logan County, February 11) is opposed to the Crittenden Compromise, because the integrity of the Republican party and the salvation of the country require that this grand drama of secession, disunion, and treason be played out entirely. Either slavery or freedom must rule this country, or there must be a final separation of the free and the slave states. No compromise will do any permanent good. On the contrary, if the territorial question is compromised now, it will but postpone, aggravate, and prolong the contest.

Considers it mean and cowardly to leave to our children a great national trouble that we might settle ourselves.

January 2, 1861, Trumbull wrote to Governor Yates advising that some steps be taken in the way of military preparations, saying:

The impression is very general here that Buchanan has waked up at last to the sense of his condition and will make an effort to enforce the laws and protect the public property. That this was his determination two days ago, I have the best reasons for knowing, but he is so feeble, vacillating, and irresolute, that I fear he will not act efficiently; and some even say that he has again fallen into the hands of the disunionists. This I cannot believe. If he does his duty with tolerable efficiency, even at this late day, there will be no serious difficulty. The states which resolved themselves out of the Union would be coming back before many months. But if he continues to side with the disunionists, we cannot avoid serious trouble, for in that event I think the traitors would be encouraged to attempt to take possession here, and most of the public property and munitions of war would be placed in the hands of the disunionists before the 4th of March. In view of the present condition of affairs and the uncertainty as to the future, I think it no more than prudent that our state should be making some preparations to organize its military, or get up volunteer companies, so as to be ready to come to the support of the Const.i.tution and the laws if the occasion should require. I think that there will be no occasion for troops here, and that the inauguration will probably take place. But take place it must, and at Was.h.i.+ngton, even though a hundred thousand men have to come here to effect it. The Government is a failure unless this is done.

Governor Yates's reply, if any, is not found in the Trumbull papers, but a letter from him dated Springfield, January 22, says that Frank P.

Blair, Jr., had just arrived from St. Louis with information that the secessionists in Missouri had formed a plot to seize the United States a.r.s.enal at St. Louis, which was the only depot of arms west of Pittsburg. If this should be attempted, Yates said it would lead to serious complications and perhaps a collision between Illinois and Missouri, since it could not be permitted that this great a.r.s.enal, intended for the use of the entire West, should fall into the hands of enemies of the Union. He asked Trumbull to see General Scott at once and insist that something be done which would obviate the necessity of action on the part of the state of Illinois.

Some letters from Mrs. Trumbull to her son Walter, who was on a wars.h.i.+p in foreign parts during the month of January, 1861, supply a few items of interest.

January 21 she says:

The Senators of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida yesterday took formal leave of the Senate. The speech of Clay, of Alabama, was very ugly, but that of Davis was pathetic, and even Republican ladies were moved to tears. Gov. Pickens of S.

C. sent for $300 due him as Minister to Russia, and the Treasurer sent him a draft on the sub-treasury at Charleston which the Rebels had seized.

January 24:

Called at Dr. Sunderland's[42] yesterday. He said that in talking with a disunionist a few days ago he asked what the South demanded and what would satisfy them. He replied that the North must be uneducated, or educated differently; their sentiments must be changed, and it can't be done in this generation.

Just before starting home, Toombs's coachman, strange to say, deserted his kind master for a trip on the Underground Railroad, greatly to the disgust of Mrs. Toombs. She was met by Mrs. Judge McLean, who said to her, "Mrs. Toombs, are you going to leave us?" "Yes," she replied, "I am glad enough to go; here I am riding in a hack!" It was very hard, very disgusting, and Mrs. McLean, instead of trying to hunt up her fugitive for her, told her that when the South had all seceded, they would have Canada right on their borders, and where one now escaped, there would then be a hundred.

January 26:

The city begins to present a warlike appearance. Two companies are stationed quite near us on E St. and others are placed in Judiciary Square near the Capitol, and at the President's, about 700 in all. A company of light artillery arrived yesterday morning, soon after which cannonading was heard, volley after volley. I supposed the thunder of the cannon was meant to convey wholesome instruction to the revolutionists, but I learned this evening that it was a salute for Kansas, which is now a state. Thirty-four guns were fired. I understood that some of the ladies at the National Hotel were so alarmed that they began to pack their trunks so as to retreat promptly with all their luggage. I believe that Gen. Scott intends to have more troops here, but the O. P. F.[43] countermands most of his orders. The Cabinet find him very troublesome even now; he still listens to Slidell and others.

A set of compromisers came here a few days since from New York with a string of resolutions and explained them to Senator King, hoping he would endorse them. Mr. King read them and handed them back silently. Said the spokesman: "I trust they meet your approval, they are good resolutions; you approve them, do you not, Mr. King?" He answered in his good-humored, laughing way, but withal very firmly: "I would resign my seat first and I think I would rather die." The same men went to your father urging him to support them, and stated that New York would not defend the public property within her limits unless Congress adopted some such action. Your father told them that if that was to be the course of New York, we might as well know it now as ever, and refused to have anything to do with their resolutions.

In the same letter she writes:

Mrs. McLean called yesterday. She said they dined at the White House once while the President was making up his mind whether or not to recall Major Anderson. The judge took the President aside to make some inquiries about the Major. Buchanan replied that he had exceeded his instructions and must be recalled. The Judge raised his hand with vehemence, almost in the President's face, and a.s.serted with emphasis: "You dare not do it, sir, you dare not do it." And he did not.

Probably this is the only instance on record where a Judge of the Supreme Court shook his fist in the face of the President after dining with him at the White House. It is not improbable that the vehemence of the venerable Judge was one of the potent reasons deterring Buchanan from ordering Anderson to return from Fort Sumter to Fort Moultrie.[44]

TRUMBULL'S SPEECH AGAINST THE CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE

[In the Senate, March 2, 1861.]

MR. TRUMBULL. Mr. President, the long public service of the Senator from Kentucky, his acknowledged patriotism and devotion to the Union, give great importance to whatever he says; and in all he has said in favor of the Union and its preservation, and the maintenance of the Const.i.tution, I most heartily concur. No man shall exceed me in devotion to the Const.i.tution and the Union. But, while this is so, what the Senator says of those of us who disagree with him as to the mode of preserving the Union and maintaining the peace of the country is well calculated, in consequence of the position he occupies, to mislead and prejudice the public mind as to our true position. Does he expect, or can he expect, that compromises will be made and concessions yielded when he talks of the great party of this country, const.i.tuting a majority of its people, as being wedded to a dogma set up above the Const.i.tution; when he talks of us as usurping all the territories, as ostracizing all the people of the South, and denying them their rights? Is that the way to obtain compromises? Instead of turning his denunciation upon those who violate the Const.i.tution and trample the flag of the country in the dust, he turns to us and talks to us of usurpations, of our dogmas; tells us that for a straw we are willing to dissolve the Union and involve the country in blood.

Why are not these appeals made and these rebukes administered to the men who are involving the country in blood? If it is a straw for us to yield, is it anything more than a straw for them to demand? If it is a trifle for us to concede, is it any larger than a trifle which the South demands, and to obtain which it is willing to destroy this Union, which he has so beautifully and so highly eulogized?

Sir, I have heard this charge against the people of the North, of a desire to usurp the whole of the common territories, till I am tired of the accusation. It has been made and refuted ten thousand times. Not a man in the North denies to every citizen of the South the same right in a territory that he claims for himself. And who are the people of the South? Slaveholders? Not one white citizen in twenty of the population in the South owns a slave. The nineteen twentieths of the non-slaveholding population of the South are forgotten, while the one twentieth is spoken of as "the South." The man who owns a slave in the South has just as much right in the territory as a man in the North who owns no slave. If the Southerner cannot take his negro slave to the territory, neither can the Northern man.

Again, sir, the Senator talks of the rights of the States to the common territories. The territories do not belong to the States; they are the property of the General Government; and the state of Kentucky has no more right in a territory than has the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, or any county in the state of Maryland.

As a state, Kentucky has no right in a territory, nor has Illinois; but the territories belong to the Federal government, and are disposed of to the citizens of the United States, without regard to locality.

But, sir, I propose to inquire what it is that has brought the country to its present condition; what it is that has occasioned this disruption, this revolution in a portion of the country. Many years ago an attempt was made in the state of South Carolina to disrupt this Government, at that time on account of the revenue system. It failed. The disunionists of 1832 were put down by General Jackson; and from that day to this there have been secessionists _per se_, men who have been struggling continuously and persistently to propagate their doctrine wherever they could find followers; and, I am sorry to say, they seem to have impressed the public mind of the South, to a great extent, with their notions. In 1850, the effort to break up the Government was renewed. It was then settled by what were known as the compromise measures of that year. The great men of that day--Clay, Webster, Ca.s.s, and others--took part in that settlement, and it was then supposed that the settlement would be permanent. The controversy of 1850 was not in regard to a tariff, but in regard to the negro question; the very question which General Jackson had prophesied, in the nullification times, would be the one upon which the next attempt would be made to destroy the Government. After a long struggle, the compromise measures of 1850 were pa.s.sed. Quiet was given to the country; all parties in all sections of the country acquiesced in the settlement then made. Resolutions were offered in this body denouncing any person who should attempt again to introduce the question of slavery into Congress. Speeches were made, in which Senators declared that they would never again speak upon the subject in the Congress of the United States. It was said that the slavery question was forever removed from the halls of Congress, and we then supposed that the country would continue quiet on this exciting subject. But, sir, in 1854, notwithstanding the pledges which had been given in 1850, notwithstanding the quiet of the country, when no man was agitating the slavery question; when no pet.i.tions came from the states, counties, cities, or towns, from villages or individuals, asking a disturbance of former compromises; when all was quiet, of a sudden a proposition was sprung in this chamber to unsettle the very questions which had been put to rest by the compromises of 1850. A proposition was then introduced to repeal one of the compromises which had been recognized by the acts of 1850; for the Missouri Compromise, which excluded slavery from Kansas and Nebraska, was, by reference, directly and in express terms, reaffirmed by the compromises of 1850. But, sir, in the beginning of 1854, that fatal proposition was introduced and embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which declared that the eighth section of the act for the admission of Missouri into the Union, which had pa.s.sed in 1820, and which excluded slavery from Kansas and Nebraska, should be repealed, it being declared to be "the true intent and meaning of the act not to introduce slavery into any state or territory, 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"--a little stump speech, as Colonel Benton denominated it, introduced into the body of the bill, which has since become as familiar to all the children of the land, from its frequent repet.i.tion, as Mother Goose's stories. That was the fatal act which brought about the agitation of the slavery question; and on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise followed the disturbances in the settlement of Kansas. That act led to civil war in Kansas, to the burning of towns, to the invasion from Missouri, to all the horrors and anarchy which reigned in that ill-fated territory for several years, all of which is too fresh in the recollection of the American people to require repet.i.tion. And, sir, from that day to this, the doctrine which it is pretended was enunciated in 1854 in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, of non-intervention, of popular sovereignty, for it is known under various names, has been preached all over the country, until in the election of 1860, it was repudiated and scouted, North and South, by a majority of the people in every state in the Union; and even at this session, it has been thrust in here upon almost every occasion, as the grand panacea that was to give peace to the country; whereas it was the very thing which gave rise to all the difficulties. The disunionists per se have seized hold of the disturbances growing out of the slavery question, all occasioned by this fatal step in 1854, to inflame the public mind of the South, and bring about the state of things which now exists.