The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (33 page)

Hammond had also told his Northern colleagues that every society had a “mud-sill” class to do the menial work and that the South had found a people ideally suited to such work in its black slaves. The North, he insisted, also had a “mud-sill” class. “Yours are white, of your own race, you are brothers of one blood. They are equals in natural endowment of intellect and feel galled by their degradation.” Moreover, they have the right to vote, and if they ever made good use of it, think of the consequences. “Where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government reconstructed, your property divided.”
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The next day Broderick responded to Hammond’s long lecture, especially to his characterization of Northern laborers as “white slaves” and the “mud-sills” of Northern society. He first supposed that Hammond didn’t mean to insult him or any other senator. He then pointed out that he was the second-youngest senator, that he was the son of an artisan, and that he had been a stonemason’s apprentice for five years.

Then he said: “I am not proud of this. I am sorry it is true. I would that I could have enjoyed the pleasure of life in my boyhood’s days…I have not the admiration for the men of the class from whence I sprang that might be expected; they submit too tamely to oppression, and are too prone to neglect their rights and duties as citizens. But, sir, the class to whose toil I was born, under our form of government, will control the destinies of this nation. If I were inclined to forget my connection with them, or to deny that I sprang from them, this Chamber would not be the place in which I could do either. While I hold a seat here, I have but to look at the beautiful capitals adorning the pilasters that support this roof, to be reminded of my father’s talent, and to see his handiwork.”

Broderick also defended Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, arguing that in a free contest the slave states had no chance against Northern freemen. Said Broderick: “How foolish for the South to hope to contend with success in such an encounter. Slavery is old, decrepit, and consumptive; freedom is young, strong, and vigorous. The one is naturally stationary and loves ease; the other is migratory and enterprising. There are six millions of people interested in the extension of slavery; there are twenty millions of free men to contend for these territories, out of which to carve themselves homes where labor is honorable.”

Broderick also ridiculed Hammond’s “King Cotton” argument. “Why, Sir, the single free State of California exports the product for which cotton is raised, to an amount of more than one half in value of the whole exports of the cotton of the slave States. Cotton king! No, sir. Gold is king. I represent a State, sir, where labor is honorable; where the judge has left his bench, the lawyer and doctor their offices, and the clergyman his pulpit, for the purpose of delving in the earth; where no station is so high, and no position so great, that its occupant is not proud to boast that he has labored with his hands.”

Finally, Broderick once again savaged James Buchanan. In his last salvo, he said: “I hope, sir, that the historian, when writing the history of these times, will ascribe the attempt of the executive to force this constitution on an unwilling people to the fading intellect, the petulant passion, and trembling dotage of an old man on the verge of the grave.”
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The harsh words, even though they further distanced Broderick from the president and his men, had only limited impact. For in the Senate, Buchanan always had the votes he needed—and then some. He prevailed easily in the Senate, 33 to 25. His problem was the House, where he needed another fifteen to twenty votes.

To get those votes, Buchanan had plenty of weapons and used every one of them to the limit. He made conspicuous examples of those who crossed him, firing several of Douglas’s allies, including the Chicago postmaster, the state mail agent in Illinois, and the federal marshal of northern Illinois, and replacing them with “good” Lecompton Democrats. At the same time, he had his underlings work the halls of Congress, promising patronage awards to the faithful, supply contracts for firms tied to House members, shipbuilding contracts for firms in which congressmen owned shares, an overseas appointment for a close friend of Garnett Adrain of New Jersey, a similar appointment for a friend of John Hickman of Pennsylvania. And then for some there were less traceable favors—wine, women, and cash. All of these enticements came into play again and again in the battle to get Lecompton through the House.
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Cartoon of Buchanan administration pushing slavery down a free-soiler’s throat. Library of Congress.

Yet, in the end, Buchanan failed to get the votes he needed. Indeed, his opponents introduced a substitute motion to resubmit the entire Lecompton constitution to a popular vote in Kansas. The amended bill passed the House, 120 to 112, on April 1, 1858. For the first time in memory, the South had suffered a crushing defeat.

To mask defeat and deny the anti-Lecompton forces outright victory, the administration scrambled and came up with a “compromise” bill. That measure deliberately subordinated the Lecompton constitution and highlighted a secondary issue, the fact that Kansas had asked for twenty-three million acres of public land grants, about six times the norm for new states. The administration proposed cutting the land grant to about four million acres and asking the voters if they would accept statehood with the reduction. If they ratified this proposal, then Kansas would immediately be admitted as a slave state under the Lecompton constitution. If they rejected it, then Kansas would have to wait until it had a population of ninety thousand before it could become a state. In short, rejection meant the death of the Lecompton constitution and the postponement of statehood for several years.

Republicans railed against these pro-slavery stipulations, said they amounted to a bribe and a threat. Broderick and several other Democrats agreed. But Douglas wavered. He still had presidential aspirations. And he knew that no Democrat could get the party’s nomination without the support of its Southern wing. Under the party’s two-thirds rule, he had to somehow get two-thirds of the delegates to the next national convention to support his candidacy. He couldn’t afford to alienate one-third of the delegates. Needing to make amends, he decided to go along with the administration.

Upon learning of Douglas’s decision, Congressman John Hickman of Pennsylvania fumed. The Little Giant had betrayed him. He went to see Broderick. Thunderstruck, Broderick ordered Hickman to bring Douglas to his room. When Douglas arrived, Broderick exploded: “Mr. Douglas, I hear you propose to abandon the fight.” Said Douglas: “I see no hope of success; they will crush us; and if they do there is no future for any of us, and I think we can agree upon terms that will virtually sustain ourselves.” Said Broderick: “You had better, sir, go into the street and blow your damn brains out. You came to me of your own accord and asked me to take this stand. I have committed myself against this infernal Lecompton constitution. Now, if you desert me, God damn you, I will make you crawl under your chair in the Senate.”
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Visibly shaken, Douglas subsequently reversed himself and condemned the administration’s proposal. Meanwhile, Buchanan and his Southern cronies went all out to save face and win a procedural victory. There was an army contract for the brother of John Ahl of Pennsylvania, $5,000 for the roommate of Lawrence Hall of Ohio, a township of land for Joseph McKibbin of California, which he refused, the same township for John Haskin of New York, which he also refused. Then there was the threat to fire McKibbin’s father from his job as a Philadelphia naval agent. As a result, a handful of anti-Lecompton Democrats joined forces with the administration, and on the last day of April the face-saving “compromise” passed the House, 112 to 103, and the Senate, 31 to 22.

A few months later the voters of Kansas did what everyone had expected. They rejected Lecompton by a six-to-one margin.

Meanwhile, William Gwin was riding high. In California, his men had regained control of state politics and now had the lion’s share of state patronage to go along with their continuous monopoly of federal patronage. Gwin thus had ground troops in every district of the state, men who had government jobs largely because of him, and thus men who on Election Day would round up the faithful, provide them with ballots, and march them to the polls.

In Washington, Gwin was also doing well. He had the full support of the dominant wing of the Democratic Party. Often labeled a “doughface,” the term was a misnomer in his case. Unlike James Buchanan, he had never been a Northern man with Southern principles. He had always been a Southern man, first in Tennessee, then in Mississippi, then in California. And, like any good Southern Democrat, he voted consistently with the Southern wing of his party. Accordingly, he had supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, the U.S. annexation of Cuba, the Henry Crabb invasion of Sonora, and the William Walker invasions of lower California and Nicaragua. In 1858 he also voted for the Lecompton constitution—as well as against Broderick’s resolution to provide free government land for “actual settlers not possessed of other lands.”

Not only was Gwin in 1858 riding high in his party. On April 9, his wife, Mary, put on a fancy-dress ball that made him the toast of the town. The ball cost $12,000 and lasted from dusk to dawn. The guests came in costume, as Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, a matador, a gypsy girl, a milkmaid, a Queen of the Night, Red Riding Hood, Byron’s “Maid of Athens,” and so forth. At the door to greet them was Mary Gwin, dressed as a regal lady, the “Queen of Louis Quatorze.” At her side was none other than President James Buchanan. Once all the guests had arrived, the president then escorted Mary out onto the ballroom floor for the first dance of the evening. “All Washington was agog,” noted one commentator. Fifty years later the ball was still being hailed as “one of the most brilliant episodes in the annals of ante-bellum days in the capital,” and as “far above any similar entertainment ever given at Washington.”
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By the time of the ball, the Democratic hierarchy knew they could count on Gwin. In most respects, he thought and voted like a typical Deep South senator. Accordingly, they chose him to chair the caucus committee that organized the Senate. From that position, he played a central role in the party’s decision to punish the administration’s critics. Under his guidance, the committee kicked Broderick off the Committee on Public Lands and stripped Douglas of his chairmanship of the Committee on Territories.

Not only had both men run afoul of Buchanan and Southern Democrats in the Lecompton battle, but Douglas had taken a stance in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates that had further infuriated Southern Democrats. In his campaign for reelection to the Senate, Douglas had told an audience at Freeport, Illinois, that the people of Kansas could nullify the Dred Scott decision by simply refusing to pass the “police” legislation that slavery needed to exist. Since then, Southern senators had demanded a federal slave code to protect slavery in the territories. At the same time, they had also demanded that immediate action be taken against Douglas for his assertions in the Freeport speech.

From his post as caucus chair, Gwin led the fight. It was Douglas’s duty, said Gwin, “to give his reasons to the Senate and to the country” for the tenets that he adopted in the Illinois Senate campaign. And since Douglas had not done so, at least to the satisfaction of Senate Democrats, he should be stripped of power. He should no longer serve as chairman of the Committee on Territories. And so it came to pass that the Little Giant, the most powerful Northern Democrat and the one that many regarded as the party’s best choice for president, was reduced to a mere cog in the party hierarchy.
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Gwin also chaired the committee on the Pacific railroad. From that position, he continued to push for multiple roads across the country, even though it was evident that many senators were unwilling to support one road, let alone three or four. At the same time, he made it clear that he was willing to leave the question of routes up to the president and the railroad financiers. And since Buchanan had said that he favored the Gila River route, and the Chivs had touted the plans of Robert Walker’s Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company, that was widely interpreted to mean that Gwin favored a Southern route.