A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (61 page)

By the 1850s, slavery had managed to corrupt almost everything it touched, ultimately even giving Abraham Lincoln pause—but only for a brief few years. He was, to his eternal credit, one politician who refused to shirk his duty and to call evil, evil. Virtually alone, Lincoln refused to hide behind obscure phrases, as Madison had, or to take high-minded public positions, as had Jefferson, while personally engaging in the sin.

Lincoln continually placed before the public a moral choice that it had to make. Although he spoke on tariffs, temperance, railroads, banks, and many other issues, Lincoln perceived that slavery alone produced a giant contradiction that transcended all sectional issues: that it put at risk
both
liberty and equality for all races, not just equality as is often presumed. He perceived politically that the time soon approached when a Northern man of Northern principles would be elected president, and through his appointment power could name federal judges to positions in the South where they would rule in favor of runaway slaves, uphold slaves’ rights to bring suits or to marry, and otherwise undermine the awful institution.

Lincoln, again nearly alone, understood that the central threat to the Republic posed by slavery lay in its corruption of the law. It is to that aspect of the impending crisis that we now turn.

The Crisis of Law and Order

Questions such as those posed by Lincoln in the debates, or similar thoughts, weighed heavily on the minds of an increasing number of Americans, North and South. In the short term, Douglas and the Buchanan Democrats in Illinois received enough votes to elect forty-six Democratic legislators, while the Republicans elected forty-one. Douglas retained his seat. In an ominous sign for the Democrats, though, the Republicans won the popular vote.

Looking back from a vantage point of more than 140 years, it is easy to see that Douglas’s victory was costly and that Lincoln’s defeat merely set the stage for his presidential race in 1860. At the time, however, the biggest losers appeared to be James Buchanan, whose support of Lecompton had been picked clean by Douglas’s Freeport Doctrine, and Abraham Lincoln, who now had gone ten years without holding an elected office. But the points made by Lincoln, and his repeated emphasis on slavery as a moral evil on the one hand, and the law as a moral good on the other, soon took hold of a growing share of public opinion. Equally important, Douglas had been forced into undercutting
Dred Scott
—had swung the pendulum back away from the South yet again. This swing, destroying as it did the guts of the Supreme Court’s ruling, took on a more ominous tone with John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry raid in October 1859.

John Brown illustrated exactly what Lincoln meant about respect for the laws, and the likelihood that violence would destroy the nation if Congress or the courts could not put slavery on a course to extinction. Lincoln, who had returned to his legal work before the Urbana circuit court, despised Brown’s vigilantism.
¹⁵²
Mob riots in St. Louis had inspired his Lyceum Address, and although Lincoln thought Brown courageous and thoughtful, he also thought him a criminal. Brown’s raid, Lincoln observed, represented a continuing breakdown in law and order spawned by the degrading of the law in the hands of the slave states. More disorder followed, but of a different type.

When the Thirty-fifth Congress met in December, only three days after Brown had dangled at the end of a rope, it split as sharply as the rest of the nation. The Capitol Building in which the legislators gathered, had nearly assumed its modern form after major construction and remodeling between 1851 and 1858. The physical edifice grew in strength and grandeur at the same time that the invisible organs and blood that gave it life—the political parties—seemed to crumble more each day. Democrats held the Senate, but in the House the Republicans had 109 votes and the Democrats 101. To confuse matters even more, more than 10 percent of the Democrats refused to support any proslavery Southerner. Then there were the 27 proslavery Whigs who could have held the balance, but wishing not to be cut out of any committees, treaded carefully. When the election for Speaker of the House took place, it became clear how far down the path of disunion the nation had wandered.

It took 119 votes to elect a Speaker, but once the procedures started, it became obvious that the Southern legislators did not want to elect a Speaker at all, but to shut down the federal government. Acrimony characterized floor speeches, and Senator James Hammond quipped that “the only persons who do not have a revolver and a knife are those who have two revolvers.”
¹⁵³
Republicans wanted John Sherman of Ohio, whereas the fragmented Democrats continued to self-destruct, splitting over John McClernand of Illinois and Thomas Bocock of Virginia. Ultimately, Sherman withdrew in favor of a man who had recently converted from the Whig Party to the Republican, William Pennington of New Jersey, widely viewed as a weak, if not incompetent, Speaker. He won just enough votes for election, thanks to a few Southerners who supported him because of his strong stand in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law eight years earlier. It would not be long until Congress either shut down entirely or operated with utterly maladroit, ineffectual, and politically disabled men at the top.

At the very moment when, to save slavery, the South should have mended fences with discordant Northern Democrats, many Southerners searched frantically for a litmus test that would force a vote on some aspect of slavery. This mandatory allegiance marked the final inversion of Van Buren’s grand scheme to keep slavery out of the national debate by creating a political party: now some in the Democratic Party combed legislative options as a means to bring some aspect of slavery—
any aspect
—up for a vote in order to legitimize it once and for all. Their quest led them to argue for reopening the African slave trade.
¹⁵⁴
Leading Southern thinkers analyzed the moral problem of a ban on the slave trade. “If it was right to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Africa and carry them here?” asked William Yancey.
¹⁵⁵
Lincoln might have reversed the question: if it is wrong to enslave free people in Africa and bring them to Virginia, why is it acceptable to keep slaves in either Virginia or New Orleans?

In fact, 90 percent of Southerners, according to Hammond’s estimate, disapproved of reopening the slave trade. Reasoning that slaves already here were content, and that the blacks in Africa were “cannibals,” according to one writer, provided a suitable psychological salve that prevented Southerners from dealing with the contradictions of their views.

Debates over reopening the slave trade intensified after the case of the
Wanderer
, a 114-foot vessel launched in 1857 from Long Island that had docked in Savannah, where it was purchased (through a secret deal in New York) by Southern cotton trader Charles A. L. Lamar. The new owner made suspicious changes to the ship’s structure before sailing to Southern ports. From Charleston, the
Wanderer
headed for Africa, where the captain purchased six hundred slaves and again turned back to the South, specifically, a spot near Jekyll Island, Georgia. By that time, only about three hundred of the slaves had survived the voyage and disease, and when rumors of the arrivals of new slaves circulated, a Savannah federal marshal started an investigation. Eventually, the ship was seized, and Lamar indicted and tried. During the court proceedings, it became clear how thick the cloud of obfuscation and deceit was in Southern courts when it came to legal actions against slavery. Judges stalled, no one went to trial, and even the grand jurors who had found the indictments in the first place publicly recanted. And in the ultimate display of the corruption of the legal system in the South, Lamar was the only bidder on the appropriated
Wanderer
when it was put up for auction, announcing that the episode had given him good experience in the slave trade that he would apply in the future.
¹⁵⁶

Federal officials realized from the case of the
Wanderer
and a few other similar cases that no Southern court would ever enforce any federal antislavery laws, and that no law of the land would carry any weight in the South if it in any way diminished slaveholding. Lamar had lost most of his investment—more than two thirds of the slaves died either en route or after arrival—but the precedent of renewing the slave trade was significant. It was in this context that the Civil War began. Two sections of the nation, one committed to the perpetual continuation of slavery, one committed to its eventual extinction, could debate, compromise, legislate, and judge, but ultimately they disagreed over an issue that had such moral weight that one view or the other had to triumph. Their inability to find an amicable solution gives lie to modern notions that all serious differences can yield to better communication and diplomacy. But, of course, Lincoln had predicted exactly this result.

Lurching Toward War

D
espite a remarkable, and often unimaginable, growth spurt in the first half of the nineteenth century, and despite advances in communication and transportation—all given as solutions to war and conflict—the nation nevertheless lumbered almost inexorably toward a final definitive split. No amount of prosperity, and no level of communication could address, ameliorate, or cover up the problem of slavery and the Republicans’ response to it. No impassioned appeals, no impeccable logic, and no patriotic invocations of union could overcome the fact that, by 1860, more than half of all Americans thought slavery morally wrong, and a large plurality thought it so destructive that it had to be ended at any cost. Nor could sound reasoning or invocations of divine scripture dissuade the South from the conviction that the election of any Republican meant an instant attack on the institution of slavery.

What made war irrepressible and impending in the minds of many was that the political structure developed with the Second American Party system relied on the continuation of two key factors that were neither desirable nor possible to sustain. One was a small federal government content to leave the states to their own devices. On some matters, this was laudable, not to mention constitutional. On others, however, it permitted the South to maintain and perpetuate slavery. Any shift in power between the federal government and the states, therefore, specifically threatened the Southern slaveholders more than any other group, for it was their constitutional right to property that stood in conflict with the constitutional right of due process for all Americans, not to mention the Declaration’s promise that all men are created equal. The other factor, closely tied to the first, was that the South, tossed amid the tempest and lacking electoral power, found itself lashed to the presidential mast requiring a Northern man of Southern principles. That mast snapped in November 1860, and with it, the nation was drawn into a maelstrom.

America’s Pivotal Election: 1860

The electoral college, and not a majority of voters, elected the president. For the South, based on the experience of 1848 and the near election of John Frémont in 1856, it was a good thing. Since 1840 the numbers had been running against slavery. The choice of electors for the electoral college was made by a general election, in which each state received electors equal to the number of its congressional and senatorial delegations combined. Generally speaking, states gave their electoral total to whichever candidate won the general election in its state, even if only by a plurality (a concept called winner-take-all). As has been seen several times, this form of election meant that a candidate could win the popular vote nationally and still lose the electoral college, or, because of third parties, win a narrow plurality in the popular vote, yet carry a large majority in the electoral college.

By 1860 two critical changes had occurred in this process. First, the two major parties, the Democrats and Republicans, held national conventions to nominate their candidates. Because of the absence of primaries (which are common today), the conventions truly did select the candidate, often brokering a winner from among several competing groups. After state legislatures ceased choosing the individual electors, the impetus of this system virtually guaranteed that presidential contests would be two-party affairs, since a vote for a third-party candidate as a protest was a wasted vote and, from the perspective of the protester, ensured that the least desirable of the candidates won. When several parties competed, as in 1856, the race still broke down into separate two-candidate races—Buchanan versus Frémont in the North, and Buchanan versus Fillmore in the South.

Second, Van Buren’s party structure downplayed, and even ignored, ideology and instead attempted to enforce party discipline through the spoils system. That worked as long as the party leaders selected the candidates, conducted most of the campaigning, and did everything except mark the ballot for the voters. After thirty years, however, party discipline had crumbled almost entirely
because of
ideology, specifically the parties’ different views of slavery. The Republicans, with their antislavery positions, took advantage of that and reveled in their sectional appeal. But the Democrats, given the smaller voting population in the South, still needed Northern votes to win. They could not afford to alienate either proslavery or free-soil advocates. In short, any proslavery nominee the Democrats put forward would not receive many (if any) Northern votes, but any Democratic free-soil candidate would be shunned in the South.

With this dynamic in mind, the Democrats met in April 1860 in Charleston, South Carolina. It was hot outside the meeting rooms, and hotter inside, given the friction of the pro-and antislavery delegates stuffed into the inadequately sized halls. Charleston, which would soon be ground zero for the insurrection, was no place for conciliators. And, sensibly, the delegates agreed to adjourn and meet six weeks later in Baltimore.

Stephen Douglas should have controlled the convention. He had a majority of the votes, but the party’s rules required a two-thirds majority to nominate. Southern delegates arrived in Baltimore with the intention of demanding that Congress pass a national slave code legitimizing slavery and overtly making Northerners partners in crime. Ominously, just before the convention opened, delegates from seven states announced that they would walk out if Douglas received the nomination. Northern Democrats needing a wake-up call to the intentions of the South had only to listen to the speech of William L. Yancey of Alabama, who berated Northerners for accepting the view that slavery was evil.
¹
On the surface, disagreements appeared to center on the territories and the protection of slavery there. Southerners wanted a clear statement that the federal government would protect property rights in slaves, whereas the Douglas wing wanted a loose interpretation allowing the courts and Congress authority over the territories. A vote on the majority report declaring a federal obligation to protect slavery failed, whereupon some Southern delegates, true to their word, walked out. After Douglas’s forces attempted to have new pro-Douglas delegations formed that would give him the nomination, other Southern delegations, from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, also departed. Remaining delegates finally handed Douglas the nomination, leaving him with a hollow victory in the knowledge that the South would hold its own convention and find a candidate, John Breckinridge of Kentucky, to run against him, further diluting his vote.

Where did sensible, moderate Southerners go? Many of them gravitated to the comatose Whigs, who suddenly stirred. Seeing an opportunity to revive nationally as a middle way, the Whigs reorganized under the banner of the Union Party. But when it came to actually nominating a person, the choices were bleak, and the candidates universally old: Winfield Scott, seventy-four; Sam Houston, sixty-seven; and John J. Crittenden, seventy-four. The Constitutional Union Party finally nominated sixty-four-year-old John Bell, a Tennessee slaveholder who had voted against the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The Republicans, beaming with optimism, met in Chicago at a hall called the Wigwam. They needed only to hold what Frémont had won in 1856, and gain Pennsylvania and one other Northern state from among Illinois, Indiana, and New Jersey. William H. Seward, former governor of New York and one of that state’s U.S. senators, was their front-runner. Already famous in antislavery circles for his fiery “higher law” and “irrepressible conflict” speeches, Seward surprised the delegates with a Senate address calling for moderation and peaceful coexistence. Seward’s unexpected move toward the middle opened the door for Abraham Lincoln to stake out the more radical position.

Yet the Republicans retreated from their inflammatory language of 1856. There was no reference to the “twin relics of barbarism,” slavery and polygamy, which had characterized Frémont’s campaign in 1856. The delegates denounced the Harper’s Ferry raid, but the most frequently used word at the Republican convention, “solemn,” contrasted sharply with the Charleston convention’s repeated use of “crisis.”
²
Despite his recent moderation, Seward still had the “irrepressible conflict” baggage tied around him, and doubts lingered as to whether he could carry any of the key states that Fremont had lost four years earlier. Lincoln, on the other hand, was from Illinois, although he went to the convention the darkest of dark horses. His name was not even listed in a booklet providing brief biographies of the major candidates for the nomination. He gained the party’s nod largely because of some brilliant backstage maneuvering by his managers and the growing realization by the delegates that he, not Seward, was likely to carry the battleground states.

When Abraham Lincoln emerged with the Republican nomination, he entered an unusual four-way race against Douglas (Northern Democrat), Bell (Constitutional Union) and Breckinridge (Southern Democrat). Of the four, only Lincoln stood squarely against slavery, and only Lincoln favored the tariff (which may have swung the election in Pennsylvania) and the Homestead Act (which certainly helped carry parts of the Midwest).
³
As in 1856, the race broke down into sectional contests, pitting Lincoln against Douglas in the North, and Bell against Breckinridge in the South. Lincoln’s task was the most difficult of the four, in that he had to win ouright, lacking the necessary support in the House of Representatives.

The unusual alignments meant that “the United States was holding two elections simultaneously on November 6, 1860,” one between Lincoln and Douglas, and a second between Breckinridge and Bell. On election day, Douglas learned from the telegraph that he had been crushed in New York and Pennsylvania. More sobering was the editorial in the Atlanta
Confederacy
predicting Lincoln’s inauguration would result in the Potomac’s being “crimsoned in human gore,” sweeping “the last vestige of liberty” from the American continent.
⁴
When the votes were counted, Lincoln had carried all the Northern states except New Jersey (where he split the electoral vote with Douglas) as well as Oregon and California, for a total of 160 electoral votes. Douglas, despite winning nearly 30 percent of the popular vote, took only Missouri and part of New Jersey; this was a stunning disappointment, even though he had known the Southern vote would abandon him. Breckinridge carried the Deep South and Maryland. Only Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky went to Bell, whose 39 electoral votes exceeded those of Douglas. The popular vote could be interpreted many ways. Lincoln received more than 1.86 million votes (almost 40 percent), followed by Douglas with 1.38 million. Lincoln did not receive a single recorded vote in ten slave states, but won every free state except New Jersey.

If one adds Lincoln’s and Douglas’s popular vote totals together, applying the South’s faulty logic that Douglas was a free-soiler, almost 69 percent voted against slavery. And even if one generously (and inaccurately) lumps together the votes for Bell and Breckinridge, the best case that the South could make was that it had the support of no more than 31 percent of the voters. The handwriting was on the wall: slavery in America was on the road to extinction. The key was that Lincoln did not need the South. When this realization dawned on Southerners, it was a shocking comeuppance, for since the founding of the nation, a Southern slaveholder had held the office of president for forty-nine out of seventy-two years, or better than two thirds of the time. Twenty-four of the thirty-six Speakers of the House and twenty-five of the thirty-six presidents pro tem of the Senate had been Southerners. Twenty of thirty-five Supreme Court justices had come from slave states, giving them a majority on the court at all times.
⁵

After the election, Lincoln found his greatest ally in preserving the Union in his defeated foe, Stephen Douglas. The Illinois senator threw the full force of his statesmanship behind the cause of the Union. His, and Lincoln’s, efforts were for naught, since the South marched headlong toward secession. Southern states recognized that it would only be a matter of months until a “black Republican” would have control over patronage, customs officials in Southern states, and federal contracts. A black Republican attorney general would supervise federal marshals in Mississippi and Louisiana, while Republican postmasters would have authority over the mails that streamed into Alabama and Georgia—“black Republicans” with purposes “hostile to slavery,” the South Carolina secession convention noted.

The Last Uneasy Months of Union

Democrat president James Buchanan presided over a nation rapidly unraveling, leading him to welcome emergency measures that would avoid a war. Lincoln agreed to a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit interference with slavery in states where it existed. Congress now attempted to do in a month what it had been unable to do in more than forty years: find a compromise to the problem of slavery.