Part 21

The passage of this measure showed the vast political advance of the slave power in the country, and how greatly it had corrupted the political conscience of the nation. It also showed, to those who had eyes, that slavery was the wedge which was to split the Union asunder. But there were in the North many persons who still thought that danger to the Union came rather from the _discussion_ of slavery than from slavery itself. They supposed that if all opposition to slavery should cease, then there would be no more danger. The Abolitionists were the cause of all the peril; and the way to save the Union was to silence the Abolitionists. That, however, had been tried ineffectually when they were few and weak; and now it was too late, as these Union-savers ought to have seen.

Mr. Douglas and his supporters defended their cause by maintaining that the Missouri Compromise was not a contract, but a simple act of legislation, and they tauntingly asked, "Why, since antislavery men had always thought that Compromise a bad thing, should they now object to its being repealed?" Even this sophism had its effect with some, who did not notice that Douglas's resolutions only repealed that half of the Compromise which was favorable to freedom, while letting the other half remain. One part of the Act of 1820 was that Missouri should be admitted as a slave State; the other part was that all the rest of the Territory should be forever free. Only the last part was now repealed. Missouri was left in the Union as a slave State.

The political advance now made by slavery will appear from the following facts:--

In 1797 the slave power asked for only life; it did not wish to extend itself; it united with the North in prohibiting its own extension into the Northwest Territory.

In 1820 it did wish to extend itself; it refused to be shut out of Missouri, but was willing that the rest of the Territory should be always free.

In 1845 it insisted on extending itself by annexing Texas, but it admitted that it had no right to go into any Territory as far north as Missouri.

In 1850 it refused to be shut out of any of the new territory, and resisted the Wilmot Proviso; but still confessed that it had no right to go into Kansas or Nebraska.

Five years after, by the efforts of Stephen A. Douglas and Franklin Pierce, it refused to be shut out of Kansas, and repealed the part of the Missouri Compromise which excluded it from that region. But, in order to accomplish this repeal, it took the plausible name of "popular sovereignty," and claimed that the people should themselves decide whether they would have a slave State or a free State.

One additional step came. The people decided or were about to decide for freedom; and then the slave power set aside its own doctrine of popular sovereignty and invaded the Territory with an army of Missourians, chose a legislature for the people of Kansas composed of Missourians, who passed laws establishing slavery and punishing with fine and imprisonment any who should even speak against it.

The people of Kansas refused to obey these laws. They would have been slaves already if they had obeyed them. Then their own governor, appointed by our President, led an army of Missourians to destroy their towns and plunder and murder their people. Nothing was left them but to resist. They did resist manfully but prudently, and by a remarkable combination of courage and caution the people of the little Free-State town of Lawrence succeeded in saving themselves from this danger without shedding a drop of blood. Men, women, and children were animated by the same heroic spirit. The women worked by the side of the men. The men were placed on the outposts as sentinels and ordered by their general not to fire as long as they could possibly avoid it. And these men stood on their posts, and allowed themselves to be shot at by the invaders, and did not return the fire. One man received two bullets through his hat, and was ready to fire if the enemy came nearer, but neither fired nor quitted his post. The men were brave and obedient to orders; the women were resolute, sagacious, and prudent. So they escaped their first great danger.

But slavery does not give up its point so easily after one defeat. Preparations were made along the Missouri frontier for another invasion, conducted in a more military manner and by troops under better discipline. The Free-State people of Kansas were to be exterminated. From week to week they were expecting an attack, and had to watch continually against it. After having worked all day the men were obliged to do military duty and stand guard all night. Men who lived four and five miles out from Lawrence got wood and water for their wives in the morning, left them a revolver with which to defend themselves, and went to Lawrence to do military duty, returning at night again.

If we had a writer gifted with the genius of Macaulay to describe the resistance of Kansas to the Federal authorities on one side and the Missouri invaders on the other, it would show as heroic courage and endurance as are related in the brilliant pages which tell of the defense of Londonderry. The invaders were unscrupulous, knowing that they had nothing to fear from the government at Washington. Senator Atchison, formerly the presiding officer of the United States Senate, openly advised the people of Missouri to go and vote in Kansas. General Stringfellow told them to take their bowie-knives and exterminate every scoundrel who was tainted with Free-soilism or Abolitionism. The orders were obeyed. The first legislature was elected by armed invaders from Missouri, and Buford with a regiment of Southern soldiers entered the Territory in 1856, and surrounded Lawrence. These troops, under Atchison, Buford, and Stringfellow, burned houses and hotels, and stole much property. Osawatomie was sacked and burned, Leavenworth invaded and plundered, and Free-State men were killed. A proslavery constitution formed by Missouri slaveholders was forced through Congress, but rejected by the people of Kansas, who at last gained possession of their own State by indomitable courage and patience. Four territorial governors, appointed by the President, selected from the Democratic party and favorable to the extension of slavery, were all converted to the cause of freedom by the sight of the outrages committed by the Missouri invaders.

Amid this scene of tumult arose a warrior on the side of freedom destined to take his place with William Wallace and William Tell among the few names of patriots which are never forgotten. John Brown of Osawatomie was one of those who, in these later days, have reproduced for us the almost forgotten type of the Jewish hero and prophet. He was a man who believed in a God of justice, who believed in fighting fire with fire. He was one who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, an austere man, a man absorbed in his ideas, fixed as fate in pursuing them. Yet his heart was full of tenderness, he had no feeling of revenge toward any, and he really lost his own life rather than risk the lives of others. While in Kansas he become a leader of men, a captain, equal to every exigency. The ruffians from Missouri found to their surprise that, before they could conquer Kansas, they had some real fighting to do, and must face Sharpe's rifles; and as soon as they understood this, their zeal for their cause was very much abated. In this struggle John Brown was being educated for the last scene of his life, which has lifted up his name, and placed it in that body which Daniel O'Connell used to call "The order of Liberators."[53]

Out of these persecutions of Free-State men in Kansas came the assault on Charles Sumner, for words spoken in debate. Charles Sumner was elected to the United States Senate in 1851. He found in Congress some strong champions of freedom. John Quincy Adams was gone; but Seward was there, and Chase, and John P. Hale, in the Senate; and Horace Mann, Giddings, and other true men in the House. Henry Wilson himself, always a loyal friend to Sumner, did not come till 1855. These men all differed from one another, and each possessed special gifts for his arduous work. They stood face to face with an imperious majority, accustomed to rule. They had only imperfect support at home,--people and press at the North had been demoralized by slavery. They must watch their words, be careful of what they said, control their emotions, maintain an equal temper. Something of the results of this discipline we think we perceive in the calm tone of Mr. Wilson's volumes, and the absence of passion in his narration. These men must give no occasion to the enemy to blaspheme, but be careful of their lips and their lives. Their gifts, we have said, were various. Seward was a politician, trained in all the intricate ways of New York party struggles; but he was also a thinker of no small power of penetration. He could see principles, but was too much disposed to sacrifice or postpone them to some supposed exigency of the hour. In his orations, when he spoke for mankind, his views were large; but in his politics he sometimes gave up to party his best-considered convictions. Thought and action, he seemed to believe, belonged to two spheres; in his thought he was often broader in his range than any other senator, but in action he was frequently tempted to temporize. Mr. Chase was a man of a different sort. He had no disposition to concede any of his views. A cautious man, he moved slowly; but when he had taken his position, he was not disposed to leave it. John P. Hale was admirable in reply. His retorts were rapid and keen, and yet were uttered so good-naturedly, and with so much wit, that it was difficult for his opponents to take offense. But Charles Sumner was "the noblest Roman of them all." With a more various culture, a higher tone of moral sentiment, he was also a learned student and a man of implacable opinions. He never could comprehend Mr. Seward's diplomacy, and probably Mr. Seward could never understand Sumner's inability to compromise. He was deficient in imagination and in tact; therefore he could not enter into the minds of others, and imperfectly understood them. But the purity of his soul and life, the childlike simplicity of his purposes, and the sweetness of his disposition, were very charming to those who knew him well. Add to this the resources of a mind stored with every kind of knowledge, and a memory which never forgot anything, and his very presence in Washington gave an added value to the place. He had seen men and cities, and was intimate with European celebrities, but yet was an Israelite indeed in whom was no guile. Fond of the good opinions of others, and well pleased with their approbation, he never sacrificed a conviction to win their praise or to avoid their censure. Certainly, he was one of the purest men who ever took part in American politics.

It was such a man as this, so gifted and adorned, so spotless and upright, who by the wise providence of God was permitted to be the victim of a brutal assassin. It was this noble head, the instrument of laborious thought for the public welfare, which was beaten and bruised by the club of a ruffian, on May 22, 1856. Loud was the triumph through the South, great the joy of the slave power. They had disabled, with cruel blows, their chief enemy. Little did they foresee--bad men never do foresee--that Charles Sumner was to return to his seat, and become a great power in the land, long after their system had been crushed, and their proud States trampled into ruin by the tread of Northern armies. They did not foresee that he was to be the trusted counselor of Lincoln during those years of war; and that, after they had been conquered, he would become one of their best friends in their great calamity, and repay their evil with good.

This murderous assault on Mr. Sumner cannot be considered as having strengthened the political position of the slave power. It was a great mistake in itself, and it was a greater mistake in being indorsed by such multitudes in the slave States. In thus taking the responsibility of the act, they fully admitted that brutality, violence, and cowardly attempts at assassination are natural characteristics of slavery. A thrill of horror went through the civilized world on this occasion. All the free States felt themselves outraged. That an attempt should be made to kill in his seat a Northern man, for words spoken in debate, was a gross insult and wrong to the nation, and deepened everywhere the detestation felt for the system.

But madness must have its perfect work. One more step remained to be taken by the slave power, and that was to claim the right, under the Constitution, and protected by the general government, to carry slaves and slavery into all the Territories. It was not enough that they were not prohibited by acts of Congress. They must not allow the people of the Territories to decide for themselves whether slavery should exist among them or not. It had a right to exist there, in spite of the people. A single man from South Carolina, going with his slaves into Nebraska, should have the power of making that a slave State, though all the rest of its inhabitants wished it to be free. And if he were troubled by his neighbors, he had a right to call on the military power of the United States to protect him against them. Such was the doctrine of the Dred Scott case, such the doctrine accepted by the majority of the United States Senate under the lead of Jefferson Davis in the spring of 1859. Such was the doctrine demanded by the Southern members of the Democratic Convention in Charleston, S. C., in May, 1860, and, failing to carry it, they broke up that convention. And it was because they were defeated in this purpose of carrying slavery into the Territories that they seceded from the Union, and formed the Southern Confederacy.

They had gained a long succession of political triumphs, which we have briefly traced in this article. They had annexed Texas, and made another slave State of that Territory. They had established the principle that slavery was not to be excluded by law from any of the Territories of the nation. They had repealed the Missouri Compromise, passed the Fugitive Slave Law, obtained the Dred Scott decision from the Supreme Court. In all this they had been aided by the Democratic party, and were sure of the continued help of that party. With these allies, they were certain to govern the country for a long period of years. The President, the Senate, the Supreme Court, were all on their side. As regarded slavery in the States, there was nothing to threaten its existence there. The Republicans proposed only to restrict it to the region where it actually existed, but could not and would not meddle with it therein. If the slave power had been satisfied with this, it seems probable that it might have retained its ascendency in the country for a long period. An immense region was still open to its colonies. Cotton was still king, and the slaveholders possessed all the available cotton-growing regions. They were wealthy, they were powerful, they governed the nation. They threw all this power away by seceding from the Union. Why did they do this?

The frequent answer to this question is contained in the proverb, "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." No doubt this act was one of madness, and no doubt it was providential. But Providence works not by direct interference, but by maintaining the laws of cause and effect. Why did they become so mad? Why this supreme folly of relinquishing actual enormous power, in order to set their lives and fortunes on the hazard of a die?

It seems to be the doom of all vaulting ambition to overleap itself, and to fall on the other side. When Macbeth had gained all his ends, when he had become Thane of Cawdor and Glamis, and king, he had no peace, because the succession had been promised to Banquo:--

"Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, For _Banquo's_ issue have I filed my mind, For _them_ the gracious Duncan have I murthered, Put rancors in the vessel of my peace. ... To make _them_ kings, the seed of Banquo kings! Rather than so, come fate into the list, And champion me to the utterance."

When Napoleon the First was master of nearly all Europe, he could not be satisfied while England resisted his power, and Russia had not submitted to it. So _he_ also said,--

"Rather than so, come fate into the list, And champion me to the utterance."

He also threw away all his immense power because he could not arrest his own course or limit his own demands on fate. Such ambitions cannot stop, so long as there is anything unconquered or unpossessed. "All this avails me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate." The madness which seizes those greedy of power is like the passion of the gamester, who is unable to limit his desire of gain. By this law of insatiable ambition Providence equalizes destinies, and power is prevented from being consolidated in a few hands.

The motive which actuates these ambitions, and makes them think that nothing is gained so long as anything remains to be gained, seems to be a secret fear that they are in danger of losing all unless they can obtain more.

This inward dread appears to have possessed the hearts of the Southern slaveholders. Since slavery has been abolished, many of them admit that they have more content in their present poverty than they formerly had in their large possessions. They were then sensitive to every suggestion which touched their institution. Hence their persecution of Abolitionists, hence their cruelty to the slaves themselves,--for cruelty is often the child of fear. Hence the atrocity of the slave laws. Hence the desire to secure more and larger guaranties from the United States for their institution. Every rumor in the air troubled them. The fact that antislavery opinion existed at the North, that it was continually increasing, that a great political party was growing up which was opposed to their system, that such men as Garrison and Wendell Phillips existed in Boston, that Seward and Sumner were in the Senate,--all this was intolerable. The only way of accounting for Southern irritability, for Southern aggressions, for its perpetual demand for more power, is to be found in this latent terror. They doubted whether the foundations of their whole system were not rotten; they feared that it rested on falsehood and lies; they secretly felt that it was contrary to the will of God; an instinct in their souls told them that it was opposed to the spirit of the age and the laws of progress; and this fear made them frantic.

When men's minds are in this state, they are like the glass toy called a Rupert's bubble. A single scratch on the surface causes it to fly in pieces. The scratch on the surface of the slave system which caused it to rush into secession and civil war was the attempt of John Brown on Harper's Ferry. It seemed a trifle, but it indicated a great deal. It was the first drop of a coming storm. When one man was able to lay down his life, in a conflict with their system, with such courage and nobleness, in a cause not his own, a shudder ran through the whole South. To what might this grow? And so they said, "Let us cut ourselves wholly off from these dreadful fanaticisms, from these terrible dangers. Let us make a community of our own, and shut out from it entirely all antislavery opinion, and live only with those who think as we do." And so came the end.

In reviewing Mr. Wilson's work, we have thus seen how it describes the gradual and simultaneous growth in the United States of two hostile powers,--one political, the other moral. The one continued to accumulate the outward forces which belong to the organization; the other, the inward forces which are associated with enthusiasm. The one added continually to its external strength by the passage of new laws, the addition of new territory, the more absolute control of parties, government, courts, the press, and the street. The other increased its power by accumulating an intenser conviction, a clearer knowledge, a firmer faith, and a more devoted consecration to its cause. The weapons of the one were force, adroitness, and worldly interest; those of the other, faith in God, in man, and in truth.

Great truths draw to their side noble auxiliaries. So it was with the antislavery movement. The heroism, the romance, the eloquence, the best literature, the grandest forms of religion, the most generous and purest characters,--all were brought to it by a sure affinity. As Wordsworth said to Toussaint l'Ouverture, so it might be declared here:--

"Thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exaltations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

The best poets of America, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, were in full sympathy with this cause, and their best poetry was their songs for freedom. Shall we ever forget the caustic humor of "Hosea Biglow" and "Birdofredum Sawin"? And how lofty a flight of inspiration did the same bard take, when he chanted in verses nobler, as it seems to us, than anything since Wordsworth's "Ode to Immortality," the Return of the Heroes who had wrought salvation for the dear land "bright beyond compare" among the nations! What heroism, what tenderness, what stern rebuke, what noble satire, have attended every event in this long struggle, from the lyre of Whittier! Nothing in Campbell excels the ring of some of his trumpet-calls, nothing in Cowper the pathos of his elegies over the martyrs of freedom. The best men and the best women were always to be found at the meetings of the Antislavery Society. There were to be seen such upright lawyers as Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel E. Sewall and John A. Andrew, such eminent writers as Emerson, such great preachers as Theodore Parker and Beecher, such editors as Bryant and Greeley. To this cause did William Ellery Channing devote his last years and best thoughts. If the churches as organizations stood aloof, being only "timidly good," as organizations are apt to be, the purest of their body were sure to be found in this great company of latter-day saints.

Antislavery men had their faults. They were often unjust to their opponents, though unintentionally so. They were sometimes narrow and bitter; and with them, as with all very earnest people, any difference of opinion as to methods seemed to involve moral obliquity. But they were doing the great work of the age,--the most necessary work of all,--and much might be pardoned to their passionate love of justice and humanity. In their meetings could be heard many of the ablest speakers of the time, and one, the best of all. He held the silver bow of Apollo, and dreadful was its clangor when he launched its shafts against spiritual wickedness in high places. Those deadly arrows were sometimes misdirected, and occasionally they struck the good men who were meaning to do their duty. Such errors, we suppose, are incident to all who are speaking and acting in such terrible earnest; in the great day of accounts many mistakes will have to be rectified. But surely among the goodly company of apostles and prophets, and in the noble army of martyrs there assembled, few will be found more free from the sins of selfish interest and personal ambition than those who in Congress, in the pulpit, on the platform, or with the pen, fought the great battle of American freedom.