Part 15

"The existence of an uneradicable and insurmountable race difference is indisputable. The white man and the black man cannot flourish together, the latter being considerable in number, under the same system of government.... The negro squats at our hearthstone. We can neither assimilate nor expel him."[266]

We need not yield completely to Mr. Lincoln's perplexity, nor to Mr. Adams's despair in acknowledging the gravity of the situation which confronted the people of Virginia and the almost insuperable difficulties which attended its right solution.

Footnote 255:

_Adams's Diary_, August 11, 1835. Quoted in _Life of William Lloyd Garrison_, by his children, Vol. I, p. 487.

Footnote 256:

_William Lloyd Garrison_, by his children, Vol. I, p. 495.

Footnote 257:

_Memoir of Margaret Mercer_, Morris, p. 126.

Footnote 258:

_A South Side View of Slavery_, Adams, p. 108.

Footnote 259:

_Idem_, p. 108.

Footnote 260:

_Idem_, p. 110.

Footnote 261:

_The Origin of the Late War_, Lunt, p. 104.

Footnote 262:

_Idem_, p. 329.

Footnote 263:

_The Civil War and the Constitution_, Burgess, Vol. I, p. 35.

Footnote 264:

_The Civil War and the Constitution_, Burgess, Vol. I, pp. 42-44.

Footnote 265:

_Lincoln-Douglass Debates_, p. 74. See also _Abraham Lincoln, Letters, Speeches and State Papers_, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 187.

Footnote 266:

_Century Magazine_, March, 1906, p. 106.

XXVI

THE STATUS OF THE CONTROVERSY REGARDING SLAVERY AT THE TIME VIRGINIA SECEDED FROM THE UNION

In considering the status of the controversy with respect to slavery just prior to the Civil War, and whether Virginia in seceding was actuated by a desire to extend or perpetuate the institution, it will assist to a clearer understanding if we present in detail the several phases over which conflicts had arisen, and the parties to the same.

The right and obligation of the Federal Government to prevent, by legislation, slaveholders from emigrating into the territories with their slaves; the duty of the Federal Government to provide through its officials for the capture and return to their owners of fugitive slaves; and the existence or abolition of slavery in the Southern States—these constituted the three principal subjects of discussion and points of conflict.

Coupled with this three-fold aspect of the problem, Virginia was confronted by four factors, more or less potential in their relation to the subject—the Federal Government, the Republican Party, certain of the Northern States, and the Abolitionists.

With respect to the Federal Government, neither Virginia nor her slaveholders could lodge any complaint.

The compromise measures of 1850 had accorded slaveholders the right to carry their slaves into the territories of Utah and New Mexico (which embraced the present states of Nevada, Utah, a portion of Colorado, and the present territories of Arizona and New Mexico); while the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, enacted in 1854, repealed the restrictions imposed by the Missouri Compromise.

Independent of these measures the Supreme Court of the United States had, in 1857, in the Dred Scott case, decided that slaveholders possessed the right under the constitution, to carry their slaves into the territories, and that Congress could not deprive them of it. In like manner, the Federal Government had enacted a fugitive slave law with most efficient provisions for its enforcement by Federal officials, and, finally, the continued existence of slavery in Virginia found a sure defense from illegal assaults in the Federal Constitution and the power and obligation of the National Government to maintain its provisions.

ATTITUDE OF REPUBLICAN PARTY

With respect to the attitude of the Republican Party, the situation was not so simple. The Republican Party was organized in 1854 to maintain the tenet that Congress had the right, as it was its duty, to exclude slave owners with their slaves from the territories. The Supreme Court of the United States three years later decided that Congress possessed no such power, yet in its platform of 1860 the Republican Party reasserted its position and hence advanced the more portentous claim that Congress had a right to legislate upon the subject in disregard of the mandates of the highest court of the Republic. It must also be borne in mind that the Republican Party was sectional in its origin, membership and spirit. Even its National conventions were composed of representatives gathered practically from only one of the two great divisions of the Union. Its nominees for President and Vice-President in 1856 and 1860 were both taken from the same section. Electoral tickets bearing the names of its candidates were presented for the suffrages of the people only in the Northern and Border States; and, finally, by electoral votes coming exclusively from the North, its candidates were elected, though the majority in favor of their opponents aggregated nearly a million of the popular suffrage. These conditions may well have aroused the conviction that the rights and interests of Virginia and the South would receive scant recognition at the hands of the incoming administration, yet the fact remains that before the date of Virginia's secession, the Republican Party had, by legislative enactments and official pledges, given proof of its purpose to protect slaveholders in every right previously established by the laws of Congress and the decisions of the Federal Courts.

SLAVEHOLDERS' RIGHTS IN TERRITORIES

It is difficult at this distance from the event to appreciate how the question of the right of slaveholders to introduce slaves into the territories could have been the subject of such profound and peace-destroying controversy. That few slaves would ever be carried into the territories was a conclusion easily deducible from the character of slave labor, and the climatic and soil conditions of most of the Western prairies—especially after Southern California, which would have furnished them a congenial home, had been admitted into the Union as part of a free state.

EFFECTS OF DISPERSING SLAVES

In like manner while we may appreciate the position of slaveholders who insisted upon their constitutional right to carry slaves into the territories, though they might never expect to exercise the privilege, yet it is difficult to realize the reasonableness of objection when coming from friends of emancipation not themselves citizens of the locality which was thus to be burdened. The problem of emancipation was largely a question of the relative numbers of whites and blacks in any given state. With few blacks and many whites, there was no problem worthy of the name. With many blacks and few whites, the problem assumed its maximum of difficulty and danger. Every slave, therefore, who went from the congested slave centres of the South to the Western prairies not only ameliorated his own condition and enhanced his hopes of emancipation, but, in like manner, augmented the chances of improvement and ultimate freedom to those he left behind. Mr. Jefferson had, as far back as 1820, crystallized the thought in terms so clear and reasonable that it seems difficult to controvert.

"Of one thing I am certain," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "that as the passage of slaves from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionately facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation by dividing the burden upon a greater number of coadjutors."[267]

The force of these observations will still further appear when we recall that slavery might be abolished upon the adoption by a territory of its constitution preliminary to statehood, or the new state might at any time in the future so decree—a result most probable because of the small number of slaves and the ever increasing white population within its borders.

Mr. Seward in a speech before the United States Senate, in the winter of 1861, pointed out that in the decade during which the territories of Utah and New Mexico had been open to slavery, only twenty-four slaves had been carried into that vast dominion.[268]

"The whole controversy," says Mr. Blaine, "over the territories, as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to an imaginary negro in an impossible place."[269]

CONGRESS ORGANIZES TERRITORIES

But despite these considerations, an acrimonious controversy had continued with growing bitterness for years. The Republican Party had at length been organized to maintain the tenet that Congress could and must exclude slaves from the territories; and, finally, its candidates for President and Vice-President had been elected to office. By the withdrawal from Congress of the Senators and Representatives from the Cotton States, the party found itself in January, 1861, controlling both branches of the National Legislature. Despite, however, the history and platform of the party, statutes were passed organizing the territories of Colorado, Dakota and Nevada, without any provision prohibiting slavery therein. Thus months before the date of Virginia's secession, the Republican Party gave this unequivocal assurance of its purpose to accord slaveholders the right to carry slaves into the territories.

The Hon. James G. Blaine, writing twenty-five years after the happening, thus characterizes the action of his party:

"When the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the territories of the United States north of the line 35 degrees, 30 minutes were left without slavery inhibition or restriction, the agitation began which ended in the overthrow of the Democratic Party and the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States. It will, therefore, always remain as one of the singular contradictions in the political history of the country, that after seven years of almost exclusive agitation on this question, the Republicans, the first time they had the power as a distinctive political organization, to enforce the cardinal article of their political creed, quietly and unanimously abandoned it. And they abandoned it without a word of explanation."[270]

Mr. Blaine, in asserting that the Republican Party "unanimously abandoned" this cardinal article of its political creed, probably overstates the case. There were thousands of the party, and many of its foremost leaders, who had not surrendered their contention. At all events, the abandonment had not been made in such an authoritative and formal way as to commend itself to men yearning for peace and desiring an end of the controversy over the territories. This action, however, of the Republican Congress, in organizing the territories of Colorado, Dakota and Nevada without prohibitions as to slavery, constituted such a recognition of the constitutional rights of the slaveholders and a determination to abide by the decision of the Supreme Court, as to render baseless the charge that Virginia seceded in order to establish the right of her citizens to carry their slaves into the territories. As we shall hereafter see, Virginia was willing to re-enact the Missouri Compromise; make it a part of the constitution and thus forever exclude slavery from all the territory north of the historic line established by that settlement.

REPUBLICANS AND FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

The position of the Republican Party, with reference to the Fugitive Slave Law, presented some striking contradictions. Thus, in those Northern States where statutes had been enacted to nullify the law, the dominant political forces constituted the controlling element in the membership of the party; yet the party itself, in its national platform, demanded neither the repeal nor amendment of the Federal statute. Again, there were men, prominent in its counsels, who, like Salmon P. Chase, frankly acknowledged that the provision of the constitution requiring the return of fugitive slaves, and the statute of the Federal Government carrying this clause into effect, would not be respected by one great element of the party and of the Northern people. On the other hand, Mr. Lincoln, who defeated him for the nomination to the Presidency, had counselled compliance with the requirements of the constitution and the law. Time and again he pointed out that it was the duty of citizens, and above all of public officials, to observe the obligations of the constitution with respect to this matter. "Stand with the Abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law," was his declaration at Peoria, Illinois, October 16th, 1858.[271]

ATTITUDE OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

While a member of Congress, Mr. Lincoln had, on the 16th of January, 1849, introduced a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, with the consent of its voters and with compensation to the slaveholders. The fifth section of this bill provided:

"The municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to provide active and efficient means to arrest and deliver up to their owners all fugitive slaves escaping into said district."[272]

It was because of the authorship of this proposed Fugitive Slave Law, that, upon his nomination to the Presidency, Wendell Philips denounced him, through the columns of _The Liberator_, as "the Slave Hound of Illinois."[273]

In his inaugural address, after alluding to what he terms "the plainly written" clause of the constitution relating to fugitive slaves, he declared:

"It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call 'fugitive slaves' and the intention of the law giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole constitution—to this provision as much as any other. To the proposition then that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause 'shall be delivered up' their oaths are unanimous....

"There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by National or by state authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath should go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?"[274]

Footnote 267:

_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. VII, p. 159.

Footnote 268:

_Life of W. H. Seward_, Lathrop, p. 220.

Footnote 269:

_Twenty Years of Congress_, Blaine, Vol. I, p. 272.

Footnote 270:

_Idem_, p. 270.

Footnote 271:

_Abraham Lincoln, Speeches, Letters and State Papers_, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 202.

Footnote 272:

_Abraham Lincoln, Speeches, Letters and State Papers_, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 148.

Footnote 273:

_William Lloyd Garrison_, by his children, Vol. III, p. 503.

Footnote 274:

_Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, Vol. VI, p. 6.

XXVII

STATUS OF THE CONTROVERSY REGARDING SLAVERY, AT THE TIME VIRGINIA SECEDED FROM THE UNION (Concluded)

With respect to the institution of slavery, itself, in the Southern States, the position of the Republican Party, as a party, was even more reassuring. The platform of the party, upon which Mr. Lincoln was elected President, gave the most explicit assurance of the purpose of the incoming Administration to refrain from any interference with slavery, in the states where it was recognized by law. "The maintenance inviolate," declared that platform, "of the rights of the states, and especially of each state, to order and control its own domestic institutions, according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to the balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend."[275]

Mr. Lincoln was nominated chiefly because of his conservative position with respect to slavery, over his more conspicuous opponents, Seward and Chase, who were defeated because of their more radical anti-slavery utterances.

While never concealing his strong antipathy to the institution, Mr. Lincoln always declared his regard for the constitutional rights of slaveholders, in the states where slavery existed. Time and again, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."[276]

After his election, Mr. Lincoln, under date of December 22, 1860, wrote to Alexander H. Stephens, "Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with the slaves, or with them about the slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and I still hope not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears."[277]

REPUBLICAN PARTY AND SLAVERY

The charge is often made that, despite the platform of the Republican Party and the ante-election pledges of its candidate, the people of the South were convinced that, with its advent to power, a movement for the abolition of slavery would be inaugurated; and that, because of this fear, the Cotton States seceded from the Union. No such charge can be made with respect to Virginia. Over two months before her secession, the Republican Party, as we have seen, acquired control of both branches of Congress, and immediately proceeded to allay any such apprehensions by the adoption of resolutions and the enactment of laws of the most ultra pro-slavery type.

In January, 1861, a series of resolutions was adopted by the Senate and the House of Representatives, among which was one declaring that Congress recognized,

"Slavery as now existing in fifteen of the United States, by the usages and laws of those states, and we recognize no authority, legal or otherwise, outside of a state where it exists, to interfere with slaves or slavery in such states."[278]

PRO-SLAVERY ATTITUDE OF CONGRESS

In February, 1861, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution with but four dissenting votes wherein it was declared, "that neither the Federal Government, nor the people, have a purpose or a constitutional right to legislate upon or interfere with slavery in any of the states of the Union."

"Resolved, That those persons in the North who do not subscribe to the foregoing propositions are too insignificant in numbers and influence to excite the serious attention or alarm of any portion of the people of the Republic."[279]

Following these resolutions both Houses of Congress adopted by the necessary two-thirds vote, a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Federal Constitution, as follows:

Article 13. "No amendment shall be made to the constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish, or to interfere within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said state."

This amendment passed the House of Representatives February 28, 1861, by a vote of one hundred and thirty-three to sixty-five, and the Senate on the 2nd of March, 1861, by a vote of twenty-four to twelve. Ohio and Maryland promptly ratified this proposed amendment to the constitution, but the outbreak of the Civil War brought the movement to a close.[280]

In his inaugural address, President Lincoln reiterated his previous pledges and expressed his approval of the movement to adopt the amendment to the constitution above referred to. Alluding to his oft quoted declaration that he had neither the legal right nor the inclination to interfere with slavery in the Southern States, he said:

"I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace and security of no section are to be any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration."

PRO-SLAVERY AMENDMENT TO CONSTITUTION

Continuing, he said,

"I understand a proposed amendment to the constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconception of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional Law, I have no objection to its being made expressed and irrevocable."

Even after the conflict of arms had occurred, the position of the Administration was reiterated in the most solemn form. On the 22nd of April, 1861, Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, in an official communication to Mr. Dayton, Minister to France, wrote:

"The territories will remain in all respects the same, whether the revolution shall succeed or shall fail. The condition of slavery in the several states will remain just the same, whether it succeed or fail.... The rights of the states and the condition of every being in them will remain subject to exactly the same laws and forms of administration, whether the revolution shall succeed or whether it shall fail. In one case the states would be federally connected with the new Confederacy; in the other, they would, as now, be members of the United States; but their constitutions and laws, customs, habits and institutions, in either case, will remain the same."[281]

PLEDGE OF CONGRESS AS TO OBJECT OF WAR

On the 22nd of July, 1861, both houses of Congress, with but few dissenting votes, adopted a joint resolution which declared:

"This war is not waged, on our part, in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states; but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; that, as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease."[282]

Such were the attitude of the Republican Party, the avowals and pledges of President Lincoln and the enactments of Congress, with respect to slavery, at the time of Virginia's secession.

It is not, however, to be concluded that the Republican Party had renounced its hostility to slavery. The pledges referred to were simply assurances of the purpose of the Federal administration to respect the constitutional rights of states where the institution existed, and of their slave-holding citizens. Nor is it claimed that slavery itself had acquired, in Virginia, or elsewhere, in the Union, an indefinite lease of life. The forces which had destroyed slavery in other lands were ever at work. They were dynamic, and gathered ever increasing influence from the economic, political and ethical conditions of the times.

REPUBLICANS AND ABOLITIONISTS