Part 2 (2/2)

The Speakers.h.i.+p was obviously the first question on which the slave power must be met in the Thirty-first Congress. No question could more completely have presented the entire controversy between the free and slave States which had so stirred the country during the previous eighteen months. In view of the well-nigh autocratic power of the Speaker over legislative measures, no honest Free Soiler could vote for a candidate who was not known to be sound on the great issue. We could not support Howell Cobb, of Georgia, the nominee of the Democratic party, however anxious our Democratic const.i.tuents might be to have us do so; nor could we vote for Robert C. Winthrop, of Ma.s.sachusetts, to please the Whigs and semi-Free Soilers who affiliated with them, since Giddings, Palfrey and others had demonstrated that he was wholly untrustworthy in facing the ragged issue of slavery. This had been proved by his acts as Speaker in the preceding Congress. We therefore united in the determination to vote for neither of these candidates. The contest was protracted till December 22d, when, on the sixty third ballot, Mr. Cobb was chosen. The result was effected, by adopting, at the instigation of the Whigs, what was called the ”plurality rule,”

the operation of which enabled a minority to choose the speaker.

The Whigs, when they entered upon this proceeding, well knew that the Free Soilers were willing and anxious to vote for Thaddeus Stevens, or any other reliable member of the party. They well knew that none of us would vote for Mr. Winthrop, under any circ.u.mstances, and for excellent reasons which we had announced. Further, they well knew that without Free Soil votes Mr. Cobb would certainly be chosen; and yet the angry cry went up from the Whigs in Congress and throughout the Northern States that the Free Soilers had elected a slave-holder to be speaker of the House! For a time the ridiculous charge served the purpose of its authors, but the subsequent career of Mr. Winthrop finally and entirely vindicated the sagacity of the men whose resolute opposition had thwarted his ambition.

In the further organization of the House Mr. Campbell, a Tennessee slave-holder, was chosen clerk on the twentieth ballot, by the help of Southern Democrats, over John W. Forney, who was then the particular friend of James Buchanan, and who had made himself so conspicuous by his abuse of anti-slavery men that the Free Soil members could not give him their support. On the eighth ballot Mr. Glossbrenner, of Pennsylvania, the nominee of the Democrats, was chosen sergeant-at-arms, and after fourteen ineffectual ballots for doorkeeper, Mr. Horner, the Whig inc.u.mbent in the preceding Congress, was continued by resolution of the House. This was on January 18th, and the organization of the House was not yet completed, but further proceedings in this direction were now postponed till the first of March.

In the meantime the slavery question had been receiving daily attention. The strife over the Speakers.h.i.+p had necessarily involved it, and constantly provoked its animated discussion. The great issue was the Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories, then popularly known as the ”Wilmot proviso”; and the first vote on it was taken December 31st, upon the motion to lay on the table Mr. Root's resolution which embodied it. The yeas were 83, nays 101; being a majority of only 18 in its favor. The Southern men seemed to gather hope and courage from this vote. On January 4th, the President sent in his special message relative to California and New Mexico, announcing his famous ”Non-action” policy, which was simply another name for the ”Non-intervention” dogma of Gen.

Ca.s.s. A year before he had declared that the new Territories must not be ”surrendered to the pistol and the bowie-knife”; but a new light now dawned upon him, and he advised Congress to leave the Territories to themselves till their people should be prepared to ask admission into the Union as States. He talked glibly about ”geographical parties” and the ”operation of natural causes” as any trained Whig politician, and seemed to have totally forgotten his repeated pledges not to interfere with the action of Congress respecting ”domestic questions.” While the hand of the Executive was thus at work, extreme men in both Houses led the way in violent and inflammatory speeches. ”When we ask for justice, and to be let alone,” said Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, ”we are met by the senseless and insane cry of Union, Union! Sir, I am disgusted with it. When it comes from Northern gentlemen who are attacking us, it falls on my ear as it would do if a band of robbers had surrounded a dwelling, and when the inmates attempted to resist, the a.s.sailants should raise the cry of peace, union, harmony!” He gave out the threat, that unless the slave-holders were allowed to extend their system over the virgin soil of our Territories, they would block the wheels of Government, and involve the nation in the horrors of civil war. He charged that the free States ”keep up and foster in the bosoms Abolition Societies, whose main purpose is to scatter fire-brands throughout the South, to incite servile insurrections, and stimulate by licentious pictures our negroes to invade the persons of our white women.” Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, said he regarded slavery ”as a great moral, social and _religious_ blessing,--a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master.”

He graciously admitted that Northern people thought slavery an evil; but he added, ”Very well, think so; _but keep your thoughts to yourselves_.” Jefferson Davis, then as ever afterward, the apostle of disunion, declared that ”slavery existed in the tents of the patriarchs, and in the households of His own chosen people”; that ”it was established by the decree of Almighty G.o.d,” and ”sanctioned in the Bible--in both Testaments--from Genesis to Revelations.” Southern members pointed to the battle-fields of the Revolution, and warned the people of the free States to beware; while the menace was uttered that if the representatives of the Northern States should vote California into the Union as a free State, without some compensating measures to the South, their numbers would be decimated by violence. Mr. Toombs, in referring to the exclusion of slavery from the common territory, said ”I will then, if I can, bring my children and my const.i.tuents to the altar of liberty, and like Hamilcar, I will swear them to eternal hostility to your foul domination.” On January 29th, Mr. Clay introduced his eight resolutions of compromise, which still further weakened the anti-slavery policy of Northern Whigs; and when, on February 4th, another vote was taken on the Wilmot proviso, it was laid on the table by yeas 104, noes 75;--showing a majority of 29, and a change of 47 votes in a little more than one month! Thus began the sickening career of political apostacy, which so gathered momentum during the spring and summer months that it became impossible to admit the free State of California into the Union until the pa.s.sage of the Texas Boundary Bill and the new Fugitive Slave Act had been made certain.

Early in the session I called on President Taylor with Mr. Giddings and Judge Allen. I had a very strong curiosity to see the man whose name I had used so freely in two exasperating political campaigns, and desired to stand corrected in my estimate of his character, if I should find such correction to be demanded by the truth. Our interview with the old soldier was exceedingly interesting and amusing. I decidedly liked his kindly, honest, farmer-like face, and his old-fas.h.i.+oned simplicity of dress and manners. His conversation was awkward and labored, and evinced a lack of self- possession; while his whole demeanor suggested his frontier life, and that he had reached a position for which he was singularly unfitted by training and experience, or any natural apt.i.tude. In the few remarks he addressed to me about farming in the West, he greatly amused us by saying, ”I would like to visit Indiana, and see your plows, hoes--and other reaping implements”; failing, as he often did, to find the word he wanted. He frequently misp.r.o.nounced his words, hesitated and stammered, and sometimes made a breakdown in the middle of a sentence. But although he seemed to be in the hands of the slave-holders, and was about to proclaim his policy of non-intervention with slavery in the Territories, he impressed me as being personally honest and patriotic. In this impression I was fully confirmed later in the session, when he sorrowfully but manfully resisted the attempt of Senator Davis, his son-in-law, and other extreme men, to bully him into their measures, and avowed his sympathy with the anti-slavery sentiment of the country. I believe his dying words in July, ”I have tried to do my duty,” were the key-note of his life, and that in the Presidential campaign of 1848, I did him much, though unintentional, injustice.

It was about the same time that I called with other Western members to see Mr. Clay, at the National Hotel. He received us with the most gracious cordiality, and perfectly captivated us all by the peculiar and proverbial charm of his manners and conversation. I remember nothing like it in the social intercourse of my life.

One of our party was Hon. L. D. Campbell, then a prominent Whig politician of Ohio, and an old friend of Mr. Clay, who seemed anxious to explain his action in supporting Gen. Scott in the National Convention of 1848. He failed to satisfy Mr. Clay, whose eye kindled during the conversation, and who had desired and counted on the nomination himself. Mr. Clay, addressing him, but turning to me, said: ”I can readily understand the position of our friend from Indiana, whose strong opinions on the slavery question governed his action; but your position was different, and, besides, General Scott had no chance for the nomination, and you were under no obligation to support him.” He spoke in kindly terms of the Free Soil men; said they acted consistently in supporting Van Buren in preference to Taylor, and that the election of the latter would prove the ruin of the Whigs. I heard Mr. Clay's great speech in the Senate on the Compromise Measures, and although I believed him to be radically wrong, I felt myself at times drawn toward him by that peculiar spell which years before had bound me to him as my idolized political leader. I witnessed his princ.i.p.al encounters with Col. Benton during this session, in which I thought the latter had the better of the argument; but his reply to Mr. Barnwell, of South Carolina, on July 22d, in which he said: ”I owe a paramount allegiance to the whole Union, a subordinate one to my State,” and denounced the treasonable utterances of Mr. Rhett, was altogether inimitable and unsurpa.s.sed. In the same speech he showed as little quarter to the Abolitionists. Turning to Mr. Hale, he said, ”They live by agitation. It is their meat, their bread, the air which they breathe; and if they saw in its incipient state, a measure giving them more of that food, and meat, and bread, and air, do you believe they would oppose themselves to its adoption? Do you not believe that they would _hail_ [Hale] it as a blessing? * * *

They see their doom as certain as there is a G.o.d in heaven, who sends his providential dispensations to calm the threatening storm, and to tranquilize agitated men. As certain as G.o.d exists in heaven, your business, your vocation, is gone.” His devotion to the Union was his ruling pa.s.sion, and in one of his numerous speeches during this session he held up a fragment of Was.h.i.+ngton's coffin, and with much dramatic effect pleaded for reconciliation and peace between the warring sections.

His scheme of compromise, or ”omnibus bill,” was the darling child of his political ambition and old age; and when, after lovingly nursing it and gallantly fighting for it through seven or eight weary months, he saw it cruelly dismembered on July 31st, and his sovereign remedy for our national troubles insulted by the separate pa.s.sage of the bill providing a Territorial Government for Utah, I could not help feeling a profound personal sympathy with him.

Beaten at last on every point, deserted by some senators in whom he had trusted implicitly, crushed and exhausted by labors which few young and vigorous men could have endured, he bowed to the inevitable, and retired from the Senate Chamber. But in the next morning, prior to his departure for the sea-sh.o.r.e, he was in his seat; and with lightning in his eye, and figure erect as ever, he paid his respects to the men whose work of political havoc he deplored. His impa.s.sioned arraignment of the disunionists was loudly applauded by the galleries, and clearly indicated the part he would have played in the late Rebellion had his life been spared to witness that direful event. ”So long,” said he, ”as it pleases G.o.d to give me a voice to express my sentiments, or an arm, weak and enfeebled as it may be by age, that voice and that arm will be on the side of my country, for the support of the general authority, and for the maintenance of the powers of this Union.”

I heard the famous ”Seventh of March Speech” of Mr. Webster. To me his oratory was a perfect surprise and curiosity. He not only spoke with very unusual deliberation, but with pauses having no relation whatever to the sense. His sentences were broken into the oddest fragments, and the hearer was perplexed in the endeavor to gather his meaning. In declaring, for example, that he ”would put in no Wilmot proviso for the purpose of a taunt,” etc., he made a long pause at ”Wilmot,” perhaps half a minute, and finally, having apparently recovered his breath, added the word ”proviso”; and then, after another considerable pause, went on with his sentence.

His speaking seemed painfully laborious. Great drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead and face, notwithstanding the slowness of his utterance, suggesting, as a possible explanation, a very recent and heavy dinner, or a greatly troubled conscience over his final act of apostasy from his early New England faith. The latter was probably the truth, since he is known to have long and seriously pondered the question of his ultimate decision; and with his naturally great and n.o.ble traits of character he could not have announced it without manifest tokens of uneasiness. I was greatly interested in the brief dialogue between him and Mr. Calhoun, which followed this speech. Reference was made to their famous pa.s.sage- at-arms twenty years before; and Mr. Calhoun, while taking exception to some of Mr. Webster's positions, congratulated him on his strong deliverance in the interest of slavery. The great Carolinian was then wrestling with the disease which soon afterward terminated his life, and was thin, pale, and feeble of step; but his singularly intellectual face, and the peculiar light which flashed from his eye while speaking, made him the most strikingly picturesque figure in the Senate. No man can compute the evils wrought by his political theories; but in private life he was thoroughly upright and pure, and no suspicion of political jobbery was ever whispered in connection with his name. In his social relations he was most genial and kindly, while he always welcomed the society of young men who sought the aid of his friendly counsel. Politically, he has been singularly misunderstood. He was not, as has been so generally thought, a disunionist. He was the champion of State Sovereignty, but he believed that this was the sure basis and bond of Union. He thought the right of State nullification, if recognized, would hold the central power in check, and thus cement the Union; while his devotion to African slavery as a defensible form of society, and a solution of the conflict between capital and labor, was doubtless as sincere as it was fanciful.

During the first months of this session my spare time was devoted to the preparation of a speech on the slavery question. My const.i.tuents expected this, and so did my anti-slavery and Free Soil friends generally. It was my darling purpose, and I resolved to do my best upon it. I not only meant that they should not be ashamed of it, but that, if possible, it should stand the test of criticism, both as to matter and diction. I re-examined the question in its various aspects, and more thoroughly than I had been able to do before, giving special attention to the speeches of Southern members in both Houses, and carefully noting their vulnerable points. I overhauled the question of ”Northern aggression” pretty thoroughly, and endeavored to expose the absurdity of that complaint, while crowding into my task such facts and arguments as would help educate the people in right thinking. I had my task completed in March, and now anxiously waited the opportunity for its delivery.

I was very curious to know how it would sound, and what would be thought of it, while my const.i.tutional self-distrust made me dread the experiment unspeakably. My scuffle for the floor was a sore trial of patience, and it was not until the fourteenth of May that the compet.i.tive contest was ended. I got through with the work better than I antic.i.p.ated, was handsomely listened to, and went home in triumph. A great burden of anxiety had been lifted, while I received letters from the leading Abolitionists of New England and elsewhere, very cordially complimenting the speech, which was copied into the princ.i.p.al anti-slavery newspapers, and quite favorably noticed. I was flattered beyond measure, and found my self-esteem germinating into new life under these fertilizing dews.

CHAPTER V.

REMINISCENCES OF THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS (CONTINUED).

Fracas between Col. Benton and Senator Foote--Character of Benton --Death of Gen. Taylor--The funeral--Defeat of the ”Omnibus Bill”

--Its triumph in detail--Celebration of the victory--”Lower law”

sermons and ”Union-saving” meetings--Slave-holding literature-- Mischievous legislation--Visit to Philadelphia and Boston--Futile efforts to suppress agitation--Andrew Johnson and the homestead law--Effort to censure Mr. Webster--Political morality in this Congress--Temperance--Jefferson Davis and other notable men--John P. Hale--Thaddeus Stevens--Extracts from speeches--The famous men in both Houses--The Free Soilers and their vindication.

I happened to be in the Senate on April 17th, just before the memorable fracas between Foote, of Mississippi, and Col. Benton.

They had had an unfriendly encounter not long before, and it was well understood that Benton had made up his mind that Foote should not henceforward name him or allude to him in debate. Foote had said: ”I do not denounce him as a _coward_--such language is unfitted for this audience--but if he wishes to be blackguarded in the discharge of his duty, and the culprit go unpunished? Is language to be used here which would not be permitted to be used in the lowest pot-house, tavern, or oyster cellar, and for the use of which he would be turned out of any tavern by a decent landlord?”

Benton's wrath had not in the least cooled since this altercation.

Foote was on the floor, and in speaking of the late ”Southern address,” referred to Benton in terms which everybody understood.

In an indirect way he became more and more personal as he proceeded.

Col. Benton finally arose from his seat with every appearance of intense pa.s.sion, and with a quick pace moved toward Foote, who was addressing the Senate from his desk near the main aisle. The Vice President demanded ”order,” and several senators tried to hold Benton back, but he broke loose from his keepers, and was moving rapidly upon his foe. When he saw Benton nearing him, Foote sprang into the main aisle, and retreated toward the Vice President, presenting a pistol as he fled, or, as he afterward expressed it, ”advanced backward.” In the meantime Benton had been so obstructed by the sergeant-at-arms and others that Foote, if disposed to shoot, could not have done so without firing through the crowd. But Benton, with several senators hanging to him, now proceeded round the lobby so as to meet Foote at the opposite side of the Chamber.

Tearing himself away from those who sought to hold him, and throwing open his bosom, he said: ”Let him shoot me! The cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin has come here to shoot me; let him shoot me if he dares! I never carry arms, and he knows it; let the a.s.sa.s.sin fire!” He was an embodied fury, and raged and raved, the helpless victim of his pa.s.sions. I had never seen such an uproar in a legislative body; but the sergeant-at-arms at last restored order, when Mr. Clay suggested that both parties should voluntarily enter into bonds to keep the peace, upon which Benton instantly rose and said: ”I'll rot in jail, sir, before I will do it! No, sir! I'll rot in jail first. I'll rot, sir!” and he poured forth a fresh torrent of bitter words upon the man who was then so well known throughout the Northern States as ”Hangman Foote.”* Benton was not only a man of tremendous pa.s.sion, but unrivalled as a hater. Nor did his hatred spend itself entirely upon injustice and meanness. It was largely personal and unreasoning. He was pre-eminently unforgiving.

He hated Calhoun with a real vengeance, styling him ”John Cataline Calhoun,” and branding him as a ”coward cur that sneaked to his kennel when the Master of the Hermitage blew his bugle horn.” He seemed to relent a little, however, when he saw the life of the great Carolinian rapidly ebbing away, and on one occasion declared that, ”When G.o.d lays his hand on a man, I take mine off.” His wit was sometimes as pungent as his invective. In his famous speech on the Compromise measures, he gave Mr. Clay a telling hit by comparing the boasted panacea of his ”Omnibus Bill,” or ”five old bills tacked together,” to ”old Dr. Jacob Townsend's sarsaparilla,”

and contrasting it with the alleged worthlessness of the same measures when separately proposed, which he likened to ”young Dr.

Samuel Townsend's” extract from the same vegetable. ”Sarsaparilla”

was thus more widely advertised than ever before, but it aided the triumph of the ”young Dr.,” and the defeat of Mr. Clay's pet scheme.

[* So named because of his declaration in the Senate the year before, that if John P. Hale would come to Mississippi he would be hung to ”one of the tallest trees of the forest,” and that he (Foote) would himself ”a.s.sist in the operation.”]

The sudden death of Gen. Taylor, July 9, 1850, produced a very profound impression. The shock to the people of the Northern States was felt the more keenly because of the peculiarly threatening aspect of public affairs, and of the unexpectedly manly course of the President in withstanding the imperious and insolent demands of the extreme men of his own section. Millard Fillmore then stood well before the country, and was quite as emphatically committed to the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the Free States as Gov.

Seward himself; but he was now to be severely tried, and no one could tell whether he would be true to the policy of his predecessor in resisting the ultra demands of the South, or repeat the perfidy of John Tyler by flagrantly turning his back on his past life.

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