by H. W. Brands
Inconsistency aside, Lincoln taxed Douglas for treating the Dred Scott verdict as the final word on the question of slavery in the territories. “Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents, according to circumstances,” Lincoln said. Unanimous decisions commanded great respect, as did those that built on earlier decisions and were soundly rooted in historical fact. These conditions were absent in the Dred Scott case. The verdict was not unanimous but divided, 7 to 2. It continued no trend of decisions. And it was based on bad history—very bad history, Lincoln said. “Chief Justice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the majority of the Court, insists at great length that negroes were no part of the people who made, or for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States.” This was simply wrong. “In five of the then thirteen states, to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina, free negroes were voters, and, in proportion to their numbers, had the same part in making the Constitution that the white people had.” Taney inferred from the present disabilities imposed on Negroes that things had always been so, or worse. This, too, was plainly false. In the early days of the republic, manumission was straightforward and often applauded; by the present decade it had become nearly impossible. “In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him; ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry.” The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, had lent its weight to the oppression.
Lincoln didn’t intend to resist the ruling of the court in the case—not that there was anything he or anyone else might effectively resist. But he hoped the court would change its mind. It might do so after reflecting on the criticism he and others offered. More likely, it would do so as a result of a change in personnel. Justices grew old and left the bench. New justices, unbeholden to the slave power, would interpret the Constitution differently.
Lincoln was speaking this day to an audience preparing for the Fourth of July. He asked his listeners to reflect on the Declaration of Independence. Of course its promise that all men were created equal was not part of the Constitution; the two documents were separate. But Lincoln deemed the Declaration no less a part of America’s republican inheritance. Stephen Douglas had spoken shortly before Lincoln and had similarly taken the Declaration as his text. He had done so in defense of Roger Taney’s ruling, especially the part contending that America’s founders had not included Africans and their descendants among those to whom equality applied. Lincoln read from Douglas’s speech: “They referred to the white race alone, and not to the African, when they declared all men to have been created equal….They were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain….The Declaration was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother country.”
Lincoln asked his listeners to reflect on this interpretation. “Read that carefully over some leisure hour, and ponder well upon it,” he said. “See what a mere wreck, a mangled ruin, it makes of our once glorious Declaration.” In Douglas’s reading, “all men” didn’t mean anything close to all men. It exempted not only Negroes but white people living outside Britain and North America. “The French, Germans and other white people of the world are all gone to pot along with the Judge’s inferior races,” Lincoln said. “I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere.” Not so, said Douglas. It was merely a phrase of convenience, drafted for a narrow political objective. “Why, that object having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no practical use now—mere rubbish, old wadding left to rot on the battle-field after the victory is won,” Lincoln chaffed Douglas.
Lincoln again referred to the approaching Fourth. “I appeal to all, to Democrats as well as others. Are you really willing that the Declaration shall be thus frittered away?—thus left no more, at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past? thus shorn of its vitality, and practical value; and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?”
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LINCOLN CAUGHT himself. He realized he could fall into the trap Douglas had set when the senator, with most other Democrats, branded the Republicans as favoring entire equality between the races. Lurid images of white maidens compelled to marry hulking black men were often conjured in voters’ minds and ascribed to the “Black Republicans.”
Lincoln disavowed any such thing. “There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races,” he said. Lincoln didn’t criticize this view or disclaim it for himself. But Douglas had gone too far. “He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes all men, black as well as white; and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes! He will have it that they cannot be consistent else.” Lincoln rejected this reasoning. “I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.”
Lincoln elaborated on the equality identified in the Declaration. “I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created equal—equal in ‘certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ” The authors and signers of the Declaration were making a promise for the future as much as a claim on the present. “They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
Douglas had things precisely backward. “The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain,” Lincoln said. “It was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be—thank God, it is now proving itself—a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.”
Douglas had expressed horror at the mixing of races by marriage and procreation. Lincoln shared this negative view. “Agreed for once—a thousand times agreed,” Lincoln said. “There are white men enough to marry all the white wome
n, and black men enough to marry all the black women; and so let them be married. On this point we fully agree with the Judge.”
Yet Douglas didn’t really believe what he said, Lincoln suggested. If anything, his defense of slavery encouraged racial amalgamation. “Let us see, in 1850 there were in the United States, 405,751 mulattoes,” Lincoln said. “Very few of these are the offspring of whites and free blacks; nearly all have sprung from black slaves and white masters.” Obviously slavery produced exactly the race-mixing that Douglas decried. And the policy of Douglas and the Democrats, of facilitating the spread of slavery into Kansas and the other territories, would yield more of the same. The Republicans, not the Democrats, were the true defenders of racial purity, Lincoln said. “If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas. That is at least one self-evident truth.” Lincoln conceded that some free blacks might move to Kansas. But he repeated that free blacks weren’t the source of more than a slight fraction of the mixed-race offspring. Free blacks shared the disinclination to marry across race lines. Lincoln didn’t use the word “rape,” but his audience understood that it was the forcible relations between slave masters and slave women that produced the majority of mulattoes. “Slavery is the greatest source of amalgamation,” he repeated.
What was the most potent bar to amalgamation? “The separation of the races is the only perfect preventive,” Lincoln said. He cautioned that not all members of the Republican party favored separation. But most did. “I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it.” Lincoln didn’t distance himself from this group. “The chief plank in their platform, opposition to the spread of slavery,” he continued approvingly, “is most favorable to that separation.”
How would this be accomplished? “Separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization”—the transplanting of American Negroes to Africa or some other foreign land. The Republicans didn’t explicitly support colonization. “The enterprise is a difficult one,” Lincoln acknowledged. But he supported it, and he hoped he could bring his party around. “When there is a will there is a way, and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”
17
JOHN BROWN WOULDN’T have guessed it, but the Battle of Osawatomie marked the beginning of the end of the armed struggle for Kansas. The Pierce administration, while sympathetic toward the slavery side, was embarrassed by the breakdown in public order in a territory that was supposed to be under the control of the federal government. To calm things, the administration turned to John Geary, a no-nonsense engineer of Scots-Irish descent, a decorated hero of the Mexican War, the iron-fisted mayor who had brought order to gold-rush San Francisco, and a physical giant of six and a half feet and more than 250 pounds. Geary reached Fort Leavenworth ten days after the burning of Osawatomie and decreed that all militia groups be disbanded. He visited Lecompton, the pro-slavery capital, and then Lawrence, the free-state center. “I desire to know no party, no section, no North, no South, no East, no West, nothing but Kansas and my country,” he declared. By force of personality, and with the assistance of U.S. Army regulars, he gradually succeeded in imposing order on the troubled territory.
Yet order alone didn’t answer the question that had started the troubles: Would Kansas be slave or free? The administration of James Buchanan left the question to a convention of Kansans, called by the pro-slavery territorial legislature to draft a constitution for the state Kansas should become. The convention met at Lecompton in the fall of 1857 and was packed with pro-slavery delegates who produced a document that guaranteed the future of slavery in Kansas. The document was referred to voters, but the free-state advocates boycotted. The pro-slavery side won handily. A second referendum, with broader participation, rejected the constitution. Buchanan nonetheless accepted the first, positive vote and sent the Lecompton constitution to Congress with the recommendation that it be the basis for the admission of Kansas to the Union.
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STEPHEN DOUGLAS FELT skewered, and realized he had no one but himself to blame. In quiet moments, of which Douglas had few these days, he had to admit that his popular-sovereignty approach had blown up in his face. He had expected complaints from the likes of Abraham Lincoln, but he hadn’t expected the civil war that broke out in Kansas. Douglas was cannily smart in the fashion required for success in politics, but he lacked the imagination to see into the souls of extremists like John Brown. Murder, cold-blooded murder! With medieval broadswords! And the burning of towns, and pitched battles—was this what popular sovereignty came to? Douglas didn’t want to think so, but the evidence stared him in the face.
Nor had his policy prospered by even the most cynical standards. Douglas had hoped to unite the Democratic party—behind himself, naturally. Instead he had split the party almost as badly as the now-defunct Whigs had been split. Southern Democrats accepted the hijacking of Kansas politics by the Lecompton legislature and convention as slavery’s due, but many Northern Democrats, who had wanted nothing more than never to have to think about slavery again, blamed Douglas for the Kansas violence that forced slavery upon their attention. Even Illinois Democrats, until now as loyal to Douglas as could be, showed signs of restiveness. They wouldn’t forsake him for another Democrat, but they might stay away from the polls in sufficient numbers to allow his displacement by a Republican.
Douglas decided that strong measures were necessary. Since casting his lot with the Democrats in the days of Andrew Jackson, Douglas had made party loyalty an article of his political faith. Now he became an apostate. He broke with the Democratic president, Buchanan, over the Lecompton constitution, and he called on other Democrats to join him in his revolt.
“The Lecompton constitution is not the act of the people of Kansas,” he declared in a letter for publication. “It does not embody the popular will of that Territory.” The problem wasn’t with popular sovereignty per se but with its flawed implementation in Kansas—or, rather, with its flawed interpretation by the president. The second vote, the negative one ignored by Buchanan, was the one that should be heeded. “With what show of justice or fairness can it be contended, in the face of this vote, that the people of Kansas do not, and have not, in the most solemn manner known to the laws, repudiated the Lecompton constitution as a wicked fraud upon their rights and wishes?” With none whatsoever, which was why, against the demands of the president, the Lecompton constitution “should be repudiated by every Democrat who cherishes the time-honored principle of his party and is determined, in good faith, to carry out the doctrine of self-government and popular sovereignty.”
In private Douglas was even more scathing. He accused Buchanan of exploiting the Kansas question to discredit him personally. Douglas vowed to have his revenge. “By God, sir, I made Mr. James Buchanan,” he said. “And by God, sir, I will unmake him.” At a face-to-face meeting of the two men, Buchanan reminded Douglas of the precedent Andrew Jackson had established for dealing with opposition inside the Democratic party. “No Democrat ever yet differed from the administration of his own choice without being crushed,” Buchanan said.
Douglas glared coldly back. “Mr. President,” he replied, “I wish you to remember that Andrew Jackson is dead.”
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN OBSERVED the Democratic infighting with mixed emotions. “What think you of the probable ‘rumpus’ among the Democracy over the Kansas constitution?” he wrote to Lyman Trumbull as the rift was developing. Douglas’s stance had turned out to split both parties, with most Democrats adhering to the president out of party loyalty, and many Republicans joining Douglas on principle. Lincoln ch
ose party over principle, although he explained it to himself otherwise. “I think the Republicans should stand clear of it,” he told Trumbull of the Democratic fight. “Both the President and Douglas are wrong.” Buchanan was more wrong, for selling out Kansas. But Douglas was wrong for being wily. Lincoln thought Douglas was trying to seduce Republicans and thereby weaken the Republican party. “From what I am told here”—Lincoln was writing from Chicago—“Douglas tried, before leaving, to draw off some Republicans on this dodge, and even succeeded in making some impression on one or two.” Lincoln thought Republican solidarity was essential to the party’s success on the big issues facing the country.
Or perhaps he was thinking of his own success. Any Republican alliance with Douglas might be good for Kansas, but it wouldn’t be good for Lincoln. Douglas was coming up for reelection, and Lincoln hoped to unseat him. But to do so, he had to hold the antislavery vote. He needed to cast Douglas as the minion of the slaveholders and the enemy of freedom. All of a sudden Douglas was acting as though he had a conscience on the slave question. Lincoln doubted he had any such thing, but even if he did—especially if he did—Lincoln’s prospects were bleak. Douglas was a great man in Illinois and shrewd enough to have done favors for every powerful interest in the state. Absent a conscience-driven revolt over slavery, Douglas would coast to reelection. His stance on the Lecompton constitution couldn’t have been better calculated to forestall such a revolt.