Part 16

_Resolved_, That while the Constitution of the United States was ordained and established by the people in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, and secure the blessings of liberty, and contains ample provision for the protection of the life, liberty, and property of every citizen, the dearest constitutional rights of the people of Kansas have been fraudulently and violently taken from them; their territory has been invaded by an armed force; spurious and pretended legislative, judicial, and executive officers have been set over them, by whose usurped authority, sustained by the military power of the Government, tyrannical and unconstitutional laws have been enacted and enforced; the rights of the people to keep and bear arms have been infringed; test oaths of an extraordinary and entangling nature have been imposed as a condition of exercising the right of suffrage and holding office; the right of an accused person to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury has been denied; the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures has been violated; they have been deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law; that the freedom of speech and of the press has been abridged; the right to choose their representatives has been made of no effect; murders, robberies, and arsons have been instigated and encouraged, and the offenders have been allowed to go unpunished; that all these things have been done with the knowledge, sanction, and procurement of the present administration; and that for this high crime against the Constitution, the Union, and humanity, we arraign the administration, the President, his advisers, agents, supporters, apologists, and accessories, either before or after the fact, before the country and before the world, and that it is our fixed purpose to bring the actual perpetrators of these atrocious outrages, and their accomplices, to a sure and condign punishment hereafter.

_Resolved_, That Kansas should be immediately admitted as a State of the Union, with her present free Constitution, as at once the most effectual way of securing to her citizens the enjoyment of the rights and privileges to which they are entitled, and of ending the civil strife now raging in her territory.

_Resolved_, That the highwayman’s plea, that “might makes right,” embodied in the Ostend circular, was in every respect unworthy of American diplomacy, and would bring shame and dishonor upon any government or people that gave it their sanction.

_Resolved_, That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean, by the most central and practical route, is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country, and that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction; and, as an auxiliary thereto, the immediate construction of an emigrant route on the line of the railroad.

_Resolved_, That appropriations by Congress for the improvement of rivers and harbors, of a national character, required for the accommodation and security of our existing commerce, are authorized by the Constitution, and justified by the obligation of Government to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

The American or Know-Nothing party had become the leading factor of the opposition elements to Democracy in the elections of 1854–55. In some sections the Whig party was entirely obliterated, and in the South there was no organization opposed to Democracy but the American. The cardinal principle of its faith was that “Americans must rule America,” and its opposition to the Catholic Church was positive and pronounced. It had gravitated from the original Native Americans of 1844 into the Order of United Americans, and it coalesced with the remnants of the Whig party and with the antiadministration Democrats in most of the Northern States. It had reached about its highest measure of strength in 1855, chiefly because of its strong hold in the South. In New England and the far Western States the Americans had been very generally absorbed in the Republican organization when the battle opened for the Presidency in 1856.

The American National Council was called to meet in Philadelphia on the 19th of February, 1856, and nearly all the States were represented. The Council was a secret body, in accordance with the usages of the party. After three days of animated discussion it adopted a party platform, and on the 22d of February the Council adjourned and organized the American National Nominating Convention. Ephraim Marsh, of New Jersey, was made president. An earnest effort was made in the convention to antagonize the right of the National Council to make the platform for the party. Mr. Killinger, of Pennsylvania, offered a resolution, declaring that the Council had no authority to prescribe a platform of principles, and that the convention should nominate no man for President or Vice-President “who is not in favor of interdicting the introduction of slavery into territory North 36° 30´ by Congressional action,” but his proposition failed by a vote of 141 to 59. The failure of this resolution led to the retirement from the convention of the more pronounced antislavery delegates or North Americans, as they were called. The convention then proceeded to ballot for President as follows:

═══════════════════════════════╤═════════╤════════ │ 1st │ 2d │ Ballot. │ Ballot. ───────────────────────────────┼─────────┼──────── M. Fillmore, New York │ 71 │ 179 George Law, New York │ 27 │ 24 Garrett Davis, Kentucky │ 13 │ 10 John McLean, Ohio │ 7 │ 13 R. F. Stockton, New Jersey │ 8 │ ―― Sam. Houston, Texas │ 6 │ 3 John Bell, Tennessee │ 5 │ ―― Kenneth Raynor, North Carolina │ 2 │ 14 Erastus Brooks, New York │ 2 │ ―― Lewis D. Campbell, Ohio │ 1 │ ―― John M. Clayton, Delaware │ 1 │ ―― ═══════════════════════════════╧═════════╧════════

After the 2d ballot, Mr. Fillmore was unanimously declared the nominee, and on the 1st ballot Andrew Jackson Donelson, of Tennessee, who was the adopted son of General Jackson, was nominated for Vice-President, receiving 181 votes to 8 for Governor Gardner, of Massachusetts, 8 for Percy Walker, of Alabama, and 8 for Kenneth Raynor, of North Carolina. The following platform was then unanimously adopted:

1. An humble acknowledgment of the Supreme Being, for his protecting care vouchsafed to our fathers in their successful Revolutionary struggle, and hitherto manifested to us, their descendants, in the preservation of their liberties, the independence and the union of these States.

2. The perpetuation of the Federal Union and Constitution, as the palladium of our civil and religious liberties and the only sure bulwark of American independence.

3. Americans must rule America; and to this end native-born citizens should be selected for all State, Federal and municipal offices of Government employment, in preference to all others. Nevertheless,

4. Persons born of American parents residing temporarily abroad should be entitled to all the rights of native-born citizens.

5. No person should be selected for political station (whether of native or foreign birth) who recognizes any allegiance or obligation of any description to any foreign prince, potentate, or power, or who refuses to recognize the Federal and State Constitutions (each within its sphere) as paramount to all other laws as rules of political action.

6. The unqualified recognition and maintenance of the reserved rights of the several States, and the cultivation of harmony and fraternal good-will between the citizens of the several States, and, to this end, non-interference by Congress with questions appertaining solely to the individual States, and non-intervention by each State with the affairs of any other State.

7. The recognition of the right of native-born and naturalized citizens of the United States, permanently residing in any Territory thereof, to frame their constitution and laws, and to regulate their domestic and social affairs in their own mode, subject only to the provisions of the Federal Constitution, with the privilege of admission into the Union whenever they have the requisite population for one representative in Congress; _provided, always_, that none but those who are citizens of the United States, under the Constitution and laws thereof, and who have a fixed residence in any such Territory, ought to participate in the formation of a constitution or in the enactment of laws for said Territory or State.

8. An enforcement of the principle that no State or Territory ought to admit others than citizens to the right of suffrage, or of holding political offices of the United States.

9. A change in the laws of naturalization, making a continued residence of twenty-one years, of all not heretofore provided for, an indispensable requisite for citizenship hereafter, and excluding all paupers and persons convicted of crime from landing upon our shores; but no interference with the vested rights of foreigners.

10. Opposition to any union between Church and State; no interference with religious faith or worship, and no test oaths for office.

11. Free and thorough investigation into any and all alleged abuses of public functionaries, and a strict economy in public expenditures.

12. The maintenance and enforcement of all laws constitutionally enacted, until said laws shall be repealed or shall be declared null and void by competent judicial authority.

13. Opposition to the reckless and unwise policy of the present administration in the general management of our national affairs, and more especially as shown in removing “Americans” (by designation) and conservatives in principle from office, and placing foreigners and ultraists in their places; as shown in a truckling subserviency to the stronger, and an insolent and cowardly bravado toward the weaker powers; as shown in reopening sectional agitation, by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; as shown in granting to unnaturalized foreigners the right of suffrage in Kansas and Nebraska; as shown in its vacillating course on the Kansas and Nebraska question; as shown in the corruptions which pervade some of the departments of the Government; as shown in disgracing meritorious naval officers through prejudice or caprice; and as shown in the blundering mismanagement of our foreign relations.

14. Therefore, to remedy existing evils, and to prevent the disastrous consequences otherwise resulting therefrom, we would build up the “American party” upon the principles hereinbefore stated.

15. That each State Council shall have authority to amend their several constitutions, so as to abolish the several degrees, and substitute a pledge of honor, instead of other obligations, for fellowship and admission into the party.

16. A free and open discussion of all political principles embraced in our platform.

The seceding delegates, consisting of the antislavery wing of the party and small in number, organized a convention of their own, and without the formality of a ballot, nominated John C. Fremont, of California, for President, and Ex-Governor William F. Johnston, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President, but they finally supported Fremont and Dayton.

The fragments of the old Whig party met in national convention at Baltimore on the 17th of September, in which 26 States were raggedly represented. Edward Bates, of Missouri, presided over the convention, and the proceedings were uneventful. Fillmore and Donelson, the candidates nominated by the American party, were unanimously nominated for President and Vice-President by resolution, and the following platform adopted:

_Resolved_, That the Whigs of the United States, now here assembled, hereby declare their reverence for the Constitution of the United States, their unalterable attachment to the national Union, and a fixed determination to do all in their power to preserve them for themselves and their posterity. They have no new principles to announce, no new platform to establish, but are content to broadly rest—where their fathers rested—upon the Constitution of the United States, wishing no safer guide, no higher law.

_Resolved_, That we regard with the deepest interest and anxiety the present disordered condition of our national affairs—a portion of the country ravaged by civil war, large sections of our population embittered by mutual recriminations; and we distinctly trace these calamities to the culpable neglect of duty by the present national administration.

_Resolved_, That the Government of the United States was formed by the conjunction in political unity of widespread geographical sections, materially differing not only in climate and products, but in social and domestic institutions; and that any cause that shall permanently array the different sections of the Union in political hostility and organized parties, founded only on geographical distinctions, must inevitably prove fatal to a continuance of the national Union.

_Resolved_, That the Whigs of the United States declare, as a fundamental rule of political faith, an absolute necessity for avoiding geographical parties. The danger so clearly discerned by the Father of his Country has now become fearfully apparent in the agitation now convulsing the nation, and must be arrested at once if we would preserve our Constitution and our Union from dismemberment, and the name of America from being blotted out from the family of civilized nations.

_Resolved_, That all who revere the Constitution and the Union must look with alarm at the parties in the field in the present Presidential campaign—one claiming only to represent sixteen Northern States, and the other appealing mainly to the passions and prejudices of the Southern States; that the success of either faction must add fuel to the flame which now threatens to wrap our dearest interests in a common ruin.

_Resolved_, That the only remedy for an evil so appalling is to support a candidate pledged to neither of the geographical sections now arrayed in political antagonism, but holding both in a just and equal regard. We congratulate the friends of the Union that such a candidate exists in Millard Fillmore.

_Resolved_, That, without adopting or referring to the peculiar doctrines of the party which has already selected Mr. Fillmore as a candidate, we look to him as a well-tried and faithful friend of the Constitution and the Union, eminent alike for his wisdom and firmness; for his justice and moderation in our foreign relations; for his calm and pacific temperament, so well becoming the head of a great nation; for his devotion to the Constitution in its true spirit; his inflexibility in executing the laws; but, beyond all these attributes, in possessing the one transcendant merit of being a representative of neither of the two sectional parties now struggling for political supremacy.

_Resolved_, That, in the present exigency of political affairs, we are not called upon to discuss the subordinate questions of administration in the exercising of the constitutional powers of the Government. It is enough to know that civil war is raging, and that the Union is imperilled; and we proclaim the conviction that the restoration of Mr. Fillmore to the Presidency will furnish the best if not the only means of restoring peace.

The campaign of 1856 was one of the most desperately fought conflicts in the history of American politics. In some of the Northern States, and particularly in Pennsylvania, that had to be carried against Buchanan in October to give promise of his defeat, the American party, or the supporters of Fillmore and Donelson, were nearly or quite as strong as the distinctive Republicans. Both were opposed to the election of Buchanan, but they were wide apart not only on the slavery issue, but on the questions of citizenship and religious proscription. As the contest warmed up the necessity for some sort of union between these elements was accepted on both sides, and in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and some other States the Americans, Republicans, and old Whigs united on State tickets. Illinois, while it gave its electoral vote to Buchanan, elected Colonel Bissell, an antislavery and anti-Buchanan Democrat, Governor, and in Pennsylvania the Democratic ticket was successful in October only by a very small majority.

In several of the States they harmonized on an electoral ticket. They did it by printing two electoral tickets for the two wings of the opposition. On one ticket the first candidate for elector was John C. Fremont, and on the other ticket was the name of Millard Fillmore. The understanding was that if the Union electoral ticket succeeded, the entire vote, less the one lost by using the names of Fillmore and Fremont, should be cast for either candidate if thereby he could be elected, and if such united vote would not elect either candidate the vote was to be divided between Fillmore and Fremont, as the voters indicated by the first name at the head of the ticket.

In common with the great mass of conservative Whigs who were at first greatly disappointed in the nomination of Fremont and the radical attitude of the new Republican party, I gradually drifted into the contest because of the offensive deliverances on slavery made by the Cincinnati platform. I knew Mr. Buchanan personally, and if I could have obeyed my individual preferences as to a candidate, would have voted for him. The slavery issue soon became so sharply defined that the great mass of the Whigs of the North fell in to the support of Fremont. There was considerable defection of prominent Whigs in Buchanan’s State, embracing the Reeds, the Ingersolls, the Whartons, the Randalls, and others of Philadelphia, whose conservative Whig views, with their great personal respect for Buchanan, influenced them to support him. Buchanan was not a magnetic man, not a popular man in the common acceptation of the term, but he was respected by all not only for his ability, but for his integrity and generally blameless reputation. He was a very courteous gentleman, but the multitude did not rush into his arms as it did into the arms of Clay and Blaine, and it is quite probable that his bachelor life, a destiny given him by a devotion with tragic end, doubtless made him less genial than he might have been.

Pennsylvania was the pivotal State in the contest, and Colonel Forney was chairman of the Democratic State Committee. He was thoroughly familiar with the political situation, and greatly impaired his health by his exhaustive efforts to save Buchanan in his home State. His relations with Buchanan were of the closest and most confidential nature, and each implicitly trusted the other. Buchanan knew Forney’s ability in the management of a great political battle, and there was no concealment between them as to the reward Forney should receive if Buchanan succeeded. Forney’s ambition was to continue in journalism, and it was not only understood, but the assurance voluntarily given to Forney by Buchanan, that if Buchanan became President, Forney should conduct the national organ in Washington and receive the Senate printing. What was then known as the Senate printing was an abuse that had grown up from small to large proportions until it became a fortune to any man who received it during the period of an administration. Gales and Seaton, of the _National Intelligencer_, had enjoyed it for many years, and when Democratic administrations became more distinctly partisan the favoritism was continued and the profits magnified. It was deemed a necessity for each administration to have an organ, and it was accepted in those days as the Democratic oracle of the nation. By making Forney the editor of the administration organ at Washington with the Senate printing, his highest ambition in his journalistic career would have been gratified, with ample fortune added. So intimate were Buchanan and Forney, that Forney’s family spent part of the summer at Wheatland, where Forney would occasionally tarry for a day’s rest and to consult with his chief.

Both parties were very confident of carrying the State in October, but Forney outgeneralled the leaders of the Union ticket by his masterful manipulation of Philadelphia, and the Buchanan State ticket was successful in October by 3500 majority. Had the Buchanan State ticket been defeated, Buchanan’s defeat for President would have been clearly foreshadowed, as it would doubtless have made a successful union on the electoral tickets in New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois, as had already been done in Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding the loss of Pennsylvania in October, the friends of Fremont and Fillmore made desperate efforts to carry the State in November, and so well did they fight their battle that Buchanan’s majority in the State over the combined vote of Fremont and Fillmore was only 1025. The Fremont and Fillmore people believed that they had been defrauded out of the October election in Pennsylvania, and Forney was denounced with extreme bitterness that had lost none of its intensity in the Senatorial fight of 1857, when the resentments of the opposition made Forney’s defeat for Senator possible in a Democratic Legislature.

Buchanan, Fremont, and Fillmore each bore themselves with great dignity during the campaign. Fillmore was not in sympathy with Buchanan, but he had even less sympathy for Fremont and the radical Republican policy he represented. Fremont made his home during the contest in New York, under the strictest orders not to discuss any political question, either orally or by letter, with any outside of those in charge of his campaign. Along with several others, I called upon him at his home some time before the election, simply to pay our respects to the man we were supporting for President, and he was so extremely cautious that he evaded the most ordinary expressions relating to the conduct and prospects of the battle. He impressed me as possessing a stronger individuality than I had credited him with, and his enforced policy of silence made him appear as a severely dignified gentleman with strong intellectual possibilities. But considering the record he made in the early part of the war, when he had, for the first time, opportunity to display his abilities, there are few who will not feel that his election to the Presidency might have been equally disastrous to himself and to the country.

The battle ended by the election of Buchanan, although Fremont carried the New England States and New York and the Northwestern Democratic States with the whirl of the tempest. The following table exhibits the popular and electoral vote: