THE FIRST ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION.

45 sition to slavery was by no means the controlling motive in opposing the admission of Louisiana as a state.

The first great anti-slavery agitation arose in connection with the measures looking to the admission of Missouri as a state of the Union. The American emigrants to that country had gone chiefly from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee; many took with them their slaves. They were preceded by the French, who early in the eighteenth century had made settlements at St. Louis and other points. The French had introduced slavery. When application was made by the people of the territory for admission into the Union as a state, the constitution presented by them contained a clause which recognized the existence of the institution. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North, backed by the political or sectional jealously which had begun to be aroused by diversity of interests, was inflamed. This attempt to establish slavery in the vast region beyond the Mississippi was a provocation and an incentive. The South became wildly intolerant of opposition. It became keenly alive to the greatness of the issue. Whatever of sentimental opposition to slavery there was in that region was crushed. Even Mr. Jefferson, in his quiet retreat at Monticello, was deeply agitated. He sounded the note of warning. He declared in letters to his friends that the news of the violent opposition to the admission of Missouri fell upon his ears like a fire-bell in the night. Mr. Clay, then comparatively a young man, but never wedded to slavery, resisted the Northern attempt to prohibit the expansion of the institution.

The support of the claims of slavery to recognition by the Constitution thus became, in the South, the political touchstone.

It was not so easy to unite the North in opposition to this claim. The opposition proposed to sectionalize, or localize the institution, by prohibiting it in the territories. A succession of events, of great importance, all tended to this result. This Missouri question was the first of the great disturbing elements. After a long and bitter controversy upon the admission of that young state, a compromise was agreed upon. The North and the South may be said to have been parties to this compact, though it was repealable like all laws. The state was admitted with its pro-slavery constitution. The same act prohibited slavery in all the territories north and west of it, down to the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. There was no provision for the admission or exclusion of slavery south of that line.

This Missouri question gave rise to the first heated and extended agitation on the subject of slavery. It laid the foundation for future controversies. It ultimately led to war.

The second great agitation on slavery, as a political, moral, and social question, arose in connection with the annexation of Texas. That vast Mexican province was thinly peopled by an ignorant and feeble race. began to be overrun by planters with their slaves from our Southern States.

It

This movement occurred about the close of the first quarter of the present century. In the course of ten years they became its masters. In 1836 they declared independence. They set up a republican form of government, with slavery as an existing institution. From the first, there was a strong feeling in favor of annexation to the United States. This event was brought about in the spring of 1845, near the close of John Tyler's administration. To Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina, then Secretary of State, is due the chief merit of the acquisition. He hesitated not to avow that annexation was

necessary to the preservation of slavery.

This measure was the great issue between the parties in the Presidential canvass of 1844. It led to the overthrow of the leaders of both the great parties. Both President Van Buren and Mr. Clay, though differing widely upon other questions, agreed upon the question of annexation.

The former, in a public letter, said he opposed annexation on the ground that Texas had been a province of a country with which we were at peace; and that annexation would be an act of war, or lead to a declaration of war by Mexico.

Mr. Clay, in a public letter, said: "I consider the annexation of Texas at this time, without the assent of Mexico, as a measure compromising the national character, involving us certainly in war with Mexico, probably with other foreign powers, dangerous to the integrity of the Union, inexpedient in the present financial condition of the country, and not called for by any general expression of public opinion."

This expression of opinion on the part of Mr. Clay was afterwards July 1, 1844,-qualified by a letter to a Southern friend. It is thought by many that this led to his defeat. He said: "As to the idea of courting the abolitionists, it is perfectly absurd. No man in the United States has been half as much abused by them as I have been. Personally I could have no objection to the annexation of Texas; but I certainly would be unwilling to see the present Union dissolved, or seriously jeoparded, for the sake of acquiring Texas."

This expression of indifference to the acquisition of slave-holding territory lost to Mr. Clay thousands of Northern votes; while, as he retracted nothing of his original declaration, it gained him none in the South. He was nominated by the convention without opposition, and there can be no doubt that he had more warm personal friends than any man in America.

Mr. Van Buren, too, was the favorite of his party. A decided majority of the convention were his pronounced friends. They gave him 146 votes, against 120 for all others. But Mr. Hammond, in his valuable political history of New-York, charges that many delegates who were instructed to vote for him were his secret political foes, and conspired with his open opponents to defeat him by voting with them for the rule which required twothirds of the votes to effect a nomination. It was charged that Mr.

AGGRESSIVE PRO-SLAVERY POLICY.

47

Buchanan, and Mr. Cave Johnson, of Tennessee, were in the conspiracy. Under that rule it became apparent, after seven ballots, that Mr. Van Buren could not receive the requisite two-thirds of the ballots; when his friend, Benjamin F. Butler, of New-York, by his authority, withdrew his name.

Silas Wright, of New-York, might have been received in Mr. Van Buren's place; but he peremptorily declined to have his name used, for a two-fold and honorable reason. It might appear like bad faith to his friend, Mr. Van Buren; while it would mislead the public, inasmuch as he fully subscribed to the views expressed by Mr. Van Buren on the question of annexation. For like reasons Mr. Wright declined the nomination for the Vice-Presidency.

Some controversy ensued from these events.

Mr. Polk was nominated with the understanding that as the friend of General Jackson, he was also the friend of Mr. Van Buren. The Democrats of Tennessee were understood to be his friends. But when Mr. Polk came into office he appointed to high places the men who had conspired against Mr. Van Buren. At least, this is the statement of Mr. Hammond, who says:

"After Mr. Polk's election, Mr. Buchanan, who at the convention influenced the delegation of Pennsylvania against Mr. Van Buren, was appointed Secretary of State. Mr. Walker, a most zealous opponent in the convention of Mr. Van Buren, was made Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Cave Johnson, the confidential friend of the New-York delegation, received the office of Postmaster-General; and on General Saunders (the mover of the two-thirds rule) was conferred a foreign mission."

It has also been stated that Mr. Polk discarded Messrs. Blair and Rives, the friends of Mr. Van Buren, as editors and publishers of the party organ in Washington. An organ was in those days regarded as an indispensable institution to the party in power. Mr. Polk selected Mr. Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer for that confidential and lucrative post. Mr. Benton, in his Thirty Years' View, calls attention to this fact. He states that the change was made on the demand of the South Carolina delegation, as a condition of their support.

To return from this explanatory digression, the election of Mr. Polk was the triumph of the active, aggressive policy of the Southern friends of slavery extension in the Union, over the passive, evasive course of the Whigs, and of the Northern Democrats.

James G. Birney became the anti-slavery candidate for the Presidency. He received 62,300 votes in the entire Union. Of these, New-York gave him 15,812. This was enough to have turned the scale in favor of Mr. Clay, and to have made him President. Mr. Van Buren's plurality in NewYork was only 5,109. Mr. Polk's plurality over Mr. Clay in the Union was 38,175; while the combined votes of Messrs. Clay and Birney exceeded the vote of Mr. Polk by 24,125.

The annexation of Texas led to a war with Mexico. It was followed by the acquisition of vast territories. Further and greater controversies about slavery extension were aroused.

California was brought into the Union without an enabling act. The people assembled in convention without the authority of Congress. They framed a constitution which prohibited slavery. The state was admitted with this anti-slavery constitution. It involved a desperate struggle with the slave-holding interests. This result was planned, though not consummated, during the administration of General Taylor, a large Louisiana planter. He died July 11, 1850, and California was admitted as a state of the Union on September 9th of the same year.

In view of the ultimate results of these sectional struggles, how frail and pitiable appears our human wisdom! The South, in the interests of slavery, succeeded in annexing Texas. Other vast Mexican territories were acquired, over which it was hoped that slavery would be extended and perpetuated. The North, or a large party in the North, resisted the annexation and acquisition of Mexican territory. The resistance came solely from motives of opposition to slavery and its extension. But the triumphant party soon found that a large part of the golden prize was appropriated by their opponents; and in the end the institution of slavery itself tottered to its fall.

The deep fracture in the Democratic ranks caused by the defeat of Mr. Van Buren's nomination in 1844 was never healed. It led to the candidacy of Mr. Van Buren on the "Free Soil" ticket, and to the defeat of the party under the leadership of General Cass, in 1848. Mr. Van Buren led a forlorn hope. He had the splendors of his son's rhetoric, which aroused a dormant sentiment. The votes of a majority of the party in the State of New-York were given to him. The vote for General Taylor, the Whig candidate, was 218,603; Mr. Van Buren received 120,510; and General Cass, the regular candidate of the party, only 114,318. In the Union, Mr. Van Buren, who was cordially supported by the, anti-slavery party, or that portion of it which voted at all, received 291,263 votes.

In 1852, the anti-slavery candidate, John P. Hale, received only 156,149. This result shows that the merely personal following of Mr. Van Buren returned to the Democratic fold when he was no longer in the field.

In 1850, a sort of compromise of the slavery controversy was effected. It was far from being satisfactory to the abolitionists, and the extreme proslavery party. It served, however, to remove from prominent view any question calculated to arouse popular feeling.

It is true that the fugitive-slave act of 1850 was well calculated to keep up and did foster agitation. It produced almost daily causes of irritation. and excitement. Anti-slavery sentiment fed upon this food. It became the subject, and furnished the incidents of the most exciting story of the age, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Millions of copies were circulated. It was

THE DOCTRINE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.

49

translated into every language of Christendom. It awakened a sentiment against slavery, akin in degree and intensity to that which Peter the Hermit aroused against the Moslem occupants of the Holy Land - the defilers of the Holy Sepulchre.

In December, 1853, Senator Douglas, of Illinois, introduced a bill to organize the vast Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. He desired them to be under one government, and on the basis of the existing Missouri Compromise. These territories all lay north of 36°, 30', and slavery had been prohibited throughout its extent, by the act which admitted the State of Missouri into the Union. Mr. Dixon, a Whig Senator from the State of Kentucky, moved to amend the bill by declaring the repeal of the anti-slavery provision. This startling proposition from a Whig emboldened the Southern Senators and Representatives to take, almost in a body, similar ground. It is within the author's personal knowledge that Mr. Douglas was averse to the Dixon proposition. Reluctantly he amended his bill by adopting Dixon's proposition. He undertook to defend it on a principle. He decided to divide the territory into two governments. He thought to make one slave, and one free state. He proposed, but events disposed of his

scheme.

In connection with this measure he enunciated his doctrine of popular sovereignty. This doctrine assumed that the citizens of each separate community had the right to shape their institutions to suit themselves; and to admit or exclude slavery as they should see fit. It denied that the Constitution by its own vigor, carried slavery to the territories.

For a time this theory of the Constitution appeared to be acceptable to the South. But it failed to secure the admission of Kansas with slavery, as it had failed in California. The Southern politicians thereupon rebelled against it. The position was boldly assumed by them, that the Constitution established and guaranteed the right of slave-holding in all the territories of the Union; and that an act of Congress, or an act of a territorial legislature providing for the exclusion of slavery, would be an invasion of the constitutional rights of the South, a spoliation of property, and an infraction of a settled compact.

These pretensions of the pro-slavery school of politicians tended greatly to strengthen and augment the anti-slavery party. It divided the old parties The Democracy lost some of its most brilliant defenders. The struggle for the possession of Kansas, between the "Free-soilers" and the pro-slavery party, enlisted the Northern people on one side, and the Southern on the other. There never was such a political conflict. It was the precursor of war. The effect was to intensify the anti-slavery and the pro-slavery sentiment of the country. It did more. It nearly crushed out the Democratic party. It arrayed its members against each other. The conflict in Kansas involved, for a time, physical force rather than reason.