It was the general understanding at the time that this was a permanent adjustment of the dividing line between free and slave territories for the future, and it was continued, although with some opposition from the free States, upon the annexation of Texas in 1845. Many in the North, however, rebelled against such a settlement, and subsequent attempts were made by their representatives to disregard it, especially when the Wilmot Proviso,12 which affected the land subsequently acquired from Mexico, was proposed and nearly adopted.13 the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." 11 5 St. at L., 798; Stephens, Constitutional View of the War between the States, vol. ii, p. 164; citing Congressional Globe, 28th Congress, 2d sess., p. 193. 12 It is said that this proviso was originated by Prince John Van Buren at a weekly dining-club of politicians in New York City. According to the story, Samuel J. Tilden then suggested that each of the free-soil representatives in Congress should have a copy of the resolution in his pocket, and at the first opportunity should claim the floor in order to present it. The Speaker recognized David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, the most moderate of the crowd, and thus his name secured a permanent place in history. (Ben. Perley Poore, in the Boston Budget, 1885.) 13 The legislatures of New York and Vermont passed resolutions which were sent to the next session of Congress after the admission of Missouri, denying that any compact was then made between the North and South for a permanent settlement of the question of slavery. (See Stephens, Constitutional View of the War between the States, vol. ii, p. 162, citing Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 2d Session, pp. 23, 78.) In 1838, upon the application for admission into the Union of Arkansas, which The Missouri Compromise was was formed south of the Compromise line out of a part of the Louisiana purchase, John Quincy Adams and a number of other Northern members voted against its admission as a slave State. (Stephens, Constitutional View of the War between the States, pp. 163, 161.) In 1846, upon the consideration of the bill appropriating $2,000,000 for use by the President in purchasing territory from Mexico, the Wilmot Proviso was moved and supported by most of the Northern Whigs and a number of the Northern Democrats. This declared it to be "an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from Mexico that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist therein." At the next session, January 15th, 1847, when the bill to organize a territorial government for Oregon was under consideration, Burke of South Carolina, to test the views of the Northern members, moved an amendment to that clause of the bill excluding slavery from the Territory in the following words: "Inasmuch as the whole of said territory lies North of 36° 30′ latitude, known as the line of the Missouri Compromise." This was voted down by 113 against 82. The negative votes were all from the North. All the Southern members, and only six from the North including Stephen A. Douglas, voted for the amendment. (Ibid. pp. 165, 166.) The Wilmot Proviso, which in 1846 had passed the House and failed in the Senate, and with its failure defeated the $2,000,000 bill, was renewed and only finally abrogated by the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill in 1854.14 It was the contention of the North that the clause in the Constitution which gave Congress power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territories or other property belonging to the United States, 15 included absolute power to regulate their domestic institutions. The South, on the other hand, maintained that the guaranty in the Fifth Amendment of pro defeated by a majority in the Senate of ten and five in the House, upon the consideration of the $3,000,000 bill for the same purpose in 1847. All the votes in its favor were from the free States, except that of Senator Clayton of Delaware; and all of the negatives were from the slave States, except five in the Senate, including Cass of Michigan and Dickinson of New York, and thirteen in the House, including Douglas as before. In 1848, upon the bill for organizing a territorial government for Oregon, Douglas, who was then in the Senate, moved to strike out the general restriction against slavery, and to insert the following: "That the line of 36° 30′ of north latitude, known as the Missouri Compromise Line, as defined by the eighth section of an act entitled 'An act to authorize the people of Missouri Territory to form a Constitution and State Government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to prohibit slavery in certain territories,' approved March 6th, 1820, be and the same is hereby declared to extend to the Pacific Ocean, and the said eighth section, together with the Compromise therein affected, is hereby revived and declared to be in full force and binding for the future organization of the territories of the United States in the same sense and with the same understanding with which it was originally adopted." The amendment was carried in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 21, but defeated by a vote of 82 to 121 in the House. The Senate receded from their amendment, and passed the House Bill, with an unconditional restriction against slavery, by a vote of 29 to 25. Every Southern senator present voted for the amendment in the Senate, and but seven Northern members, including Douglas and Dickinson from New York and Campbell of Pennsylvania, joined it. All those votes against it in the Senate were from the North. When the amendment was before the House, on Aug. 11th, all of the eightytwo votes in its favor were from the South, except four. Every one of the 121 against it was from the North, except that of Houston of Delaware. On the final vote in the Senate, every Northern senator voted yea, and every Southern senator nay, except Benton of Missouri. It was claimed by the South that "this was a complete and total abandonment of the Missouri Compromise so-called by both Houses of Congress. It met its final doom on the 12th of August, 1848. On that day it fell and was buried in the Senate, where it had originated twenty-eight years before, but had never quieted the abo litionists a day. It fell, too, not by Southern but by Northern men. The very States to which it owed its paternity struck the last decisive blow." (Stephens, Constitutional View of the War between the States, vol. ii, pp. 172, 173.) 14 Act of May 30, 1854; 10 St. at L., 283. 15 Constitution, Article IV, Section 3. tection to private property forbade the enactment of a law which took away a man's property in slaves when he removed them to the Territories; and that the clause in the Constitution upon which the North relied merely conferred power to make regulations concerning the use and disposition of the property which the United States had in lands and chattels, and gave no power of general legislation. A compromise was the doctrine of squatter sovereignty formulated by Stephen A. Douglas, according to which the people of each Territory had the absolute right to determine whether slavery should be allowed or forbidden, and Congress had no power to interfere with them.16 The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott Case, decided by a majority of six to two that Congress had no power to forbid slavery in the Territories. The dissenting opinion of Judge Curtis, however, was claimed by the North to be correct; and it was, in accordance with his views, asserted that this ruling was no part of the decision of the Court, since by sustaining a plea to the jurisdiction, the case had been decided before the question arose.17 Abraham Lincoln had vigorously repudiated the decision; and there was little doubt but that the North would refuse to respect it and seek to have it overruled. Thus stood the question at the time of the election of Lincoln to the presidency. § 36. History of Secession. The election by the Northern States, for President, of a northern man who had said that the Union could not "endure permanently half slave, half free," and had publicly declared his refusal to acquiesce in the opinion in the Dred Scott Case, that slavery could not be constitutionally excluded from the Territories, convinced the South that new safeguards were necessary for the preservation of their peculiar institution. Renewed threats of a dissolution of the Union were received in such a manner by the North as to make it clear that a majority of the people were resolved to submit to no further aggressions by the slave power. The success of South Carolina more than a quarter of a century be 16 Debates between Lincoln and Douglas, passim. 17 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How., 293. This case is discussed at length, infra. § 36. 1 Lincoln's Speech before the Republican State Convention at Springfield, Ill., June 17, 1858. fore made it seem probable that official action on the part of the slave States would compel concessions. The result of the presidential election had proved that nothing else could do so. A junto of members of Congress from the South, in co-operation with the other leaders of their constituents, planned a demonstration which they resolved should be more imposing, and they expected would be no less effective, than the work of Calhoun and Hayne. On December 14th, 1860, they issued a public address to their constituents, in which they said " that the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people require the organization of a Southern Confederacy, a result to be obtained only by separate State secession." 2 "2 The Palmetto State, the location of which, surrounded by slave States, made invasion from the North difficult, again took the lead. On December 20th, a convention of the people of South Carolina unanimously adopted the following ordinance of secession: "An ordinance to dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled The Constitution of the United States of America.' "We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the Twenty-third of May, in the year of our Lord One thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and also all other Acts and parts of Acts of the General Constitution, are hereby repealed, and the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." Action by a convention rather than by the legislature was due to the fact that, as the people through a convention had originally ratified the Constitution, it might have been contended that the legislature had no such authority. The people, however, were considered the sovereign power of the State. The ordinance was followed by a declaration of independence drawn with studied imitation of the original, to which it referred in its preamble, and 2 This was signed by about half the members of the Southern delegations in both houses, including Jefferson Davis, Slidell, Benjamin and Wigfall (Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. iii, p. 178). 3 See the language of Madison, quoted supra, § 19. from which was copied its conclusion. The body set forth the doctrine that the Constitution was a compact, a breach of which by one party dissolved the others from their obligations. It recited those clauses inserted by way of compromise in the Constitution for the protection of the right of property in man; and emphasized the provision for the return of fugitive slaves. As infractions were set forth the enactment by fifteen Northern States of personal-liberty laws, which interfered with the operation of the Fugitive Slave law; the refusal of their officers to enforce, and of their people to obey, this constitutional mandate; the denial of the right of transit for slaves; and the refusal of two State executives to deliver, on demand of the executives of Southern States, persons accused of having committed crimes in connection with attempts at forcible emancipation. Complaint was made of the formation of a sectional party, which, "aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens," had elected President a man whose opinions and purposes were hostile to slavery. "It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory; that the judicial tribunals shall become sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States." In conclusion it was declared that the Union was dissolved: and South Carolina had resumed her position among "the nations of the world as a free, sovereign, and independent State." 4 The day following the action of the South Carolina convention, the representatives of that State retired from their seats in Congress. On January 5th, 1861, a caucus of the senators of seven Southern States recommended to their constituents immediate secession and the organization of a new Confederacy.5 4 This was the work of R. B. Rhett (Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. iii, p. 204). It is printed at length by Preston, Documents Illustrative of American History, p. 305. The following resolutions were adopted by the Senators of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Messrs. Toombs, of Georgia, and Sebastian, of Arkansas, were absent from the meeting: "Resolved, That, in our opinion, each of the States should, as soon as may be, secede from the Union. Resolved, That provision should be made for a convention to organize a confederacy of the seceding States: the convention to meet not later than the 15th of February, at the city of Montgomery, in the State of Alabama. |