[Footnote 462: "He never became unduly excited about slavery. He had no sympathy for the religious or sentimental side of abolitionism, nor was he moved by the words of the philanthropists, preachers, or poets by whom the agitation was set ablaze and persistently fanned. He probably regarded it as an evil of less magnitude than several others that threatened the country."—Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 338.]

The Whigs, who had represented only a meagre minority of the voters of the State since the Know-Nothing defection, now responded to the call with a full quota of delegates, and elected John A. King president. King was nearly double the age of Fenton. He had been a lieutenant of cavalry in the War of 1812 and an opponent of DeWitt Clinton in the early twenties. The two men presented a broad contrast, yet King represented the traditions of the past along the same lines that Fenton represented the hopes of the future. One looked his full age, the other appeared younger than he was, but both were serious. Whatever their aspirations, they existed without rivalry or ill-feeling, the desire for the success of their principles alone animating leaders and followers.

Each convention organised separately, and, after adopting platforms and dividing their tickets equally between men of Whig and Democratic antecedents, conference committees of sixteen were appointed, which reported that the two bodies should appoint committees of sixteen on resolutions and of thirty-two on nominations. These committees having quickly agreed to what had already been done, the Whigs marched in a body to the hall of the Republican convention, the delegates rising and greeting them with cheers and shouts of welcome as they took the seats reserved for them in the centre of the room.

The occasion was one of profound rejoicing. The great coalition which was to stand so strong and to work such wonders during the next half-century doubtless had a period of feebleness in the first months of its existence; but never in its history has it had stronger or more influential men in its ranks, or abler and more determined leaders to direct its course. Horace Greeley reported its platform, demanding that Congress expressly prohibit slavery in the territories, and condemning the doctrines and methods of the Know-Nothings; John A. King, Edwin D. Morgan, and Reuben E. Fenton, destined to lead it to victory as its candidate for governor, sat upon the stage; Henry J. Raymond occupied a delegate's seat; and, back of the scenes, stood the great manager, Thurlow Weed, who had conferred with the Free-soil leaders, and anticipated and arranged every detail. Present in spirit, though absent in body, was William H. Seward, who, within a few weeks, put himself squarely at the head of the new organisation in a speech that was read by more than half a million voters.

After the enthusiasm had subsided the two chairmen, John A. King and Reuben E. Fenton, standing side by side, called the joint convention to order. This was the signal for more cheering. One delegate declared that not being quite sure which convention he ought to attend, he had applied to Seward, who wrote him it didn't make any difference. "You will go in by two doors, but you will all come out through one." Then everything went by acclamation. Speaker Littlejohn of the Assembly moved that the two conventions ratify the platforms passed by each convention; Elbridge G. Spaulding moved that the presidents of the two conventions appoint a state central committee; and John A. King moved that the names of the candidates, at the head of whom was Preston King for secretary of state, be given to the people of the State as the "Republican Ticket." Only when an effort was made to procure the indorsement of liquor prohibition did the convention show its teeth. The invitation, it was argued, included all men who were disposed to unite in resisting the aggressions and the diffusion of slavery, and a majority, by a ringing vote, declared it bad faith to insist upon a matter for which the convention was not called and upon which it was not unanimous.

The Know-Nothing state convention met at Auburn on September 26. It was no longer a secret society. The terrors surrounding its mysterious machinery had vanished with the exposure of its secrets and the exploiting of its methods. It was now holding open political conventions and adopting political platforms under the title of the American party; and, as in other political organisations, the slavery question provoked hot controversies and led to serious breaks in its ranks. At its national council, held at Philadelphia in the preceding June, the New York delegation, controlled by the Silver-Gray faction which forced Daniel Ullman's nomination for governor in 1854, had joined the Southern delegates in carrying a pro-slavery resolution abandoning further efforts to restore the Missouri Compromise. In this action the anti-slavery members of other Northern States, led with great ability and courage by Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, refused to acquiesce, preferring to abandon the Order rather than sacrifice their principles. The contest in New York was renewed at the state council, held at Binghamton on August 28; and, after a bitter session, a majority resolved that slavery should derive no extension from the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The convention at Auburn now took similar ground. It was not a great victory for the anti-slavery wing of the party; but it disproved the assurances of their delegates that the Americans of New York would uphold the pro-slavery action at Philadelphia, while the fervent heat of the conflict melted the zeal of thousands of anti-Nebraska Know-Nothings, who soon found their way into the Republican party.

But the main body of the Americans, crushed as were its hopes of national unity, was still powerful. It put a ticket into the field, headed by Joel T. Headley for secretary of state, and greatly strengthened by George F. Comstock of Syracuse for judge of the Court of Appeals. Headley was a popular and prolific writer. He had been educated for the ministry at Union College and Auburn Theological Seminary, but his pen paid better than the pulpit, and he soon settled down into a writer of melodramatic biography, of which Napoleon and His Marshals attained, perhaps, the greatest popularity. Possibly little interest now clings to his books, which ordinarily rest on the high shelf with Abbott's History of Napoleon; but, in their day, it was far pleasanter to read the entertaining and dramatic pages of Headley, with their impassioned, stirring pictures of war and heroism, than the tame, tedious biographies that then filled the libraries. Headley's History of the War of 1812 immediately preceded his entrance to the Assembly in 1854, where his cleverness attracted the attention of his party and led to his selection for secretary of state. George F. Comstock, now in his forty-first year, had already won an enviable reputation at the Onondaga bar. Like Headley he was a graduate of Union College. In 1847, Governor Young had appointed him the first reporter for the Court of Appeals, and five years later President Fillmore made him solicitor of the Treasury Department. He belonged to the Hards, but he sympathised with the tenets of the young American party.

There were other parties in the field. The Free Democracy met in convention on August 7, and the Liberty party, assembling at Utica on September 12, nominated Frederick Douglass of Monroe, then a young coloured man of thirty-eight, for secretary of state, and Lewis Tappan of New York for comptroller. Douglass' life had been full of romance. Neither his white father nor coloured mother appears to have had any idea of the prodigy they brought into the world; but it is certain his Maryland master discovered in the little slave boy the great talents that a hard life in Baltimore could not suppress. Douglass secretly began teaching himself to read and write before he was ten years of age, and three years after his escape from slavery at the age of twenty-one, he completely captured an audience at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket by his brilliant speaking. This gave him employment as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and four years later brought him crowded audiences, in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Frederick Douglass was a favourite everywhere. He had wit and humour, and spoke with the refinement of a cultivated scholar. He did not become a narrow and monotonous agitator. The variety of his intellectual sympathies, controlled by the constancy of a high moral impulse, wholly exempted him from the rashness of a conceited zealot; and, though often brilliant and at times rhetorical, his style was quiet and persuasive, reaching the reason as easily as the emotions. Coming as he did, out of slavery, at a time when the anti-slavery sentiment was beginning to be aggressive and popular in New England and other free States, Douglass seemed to be the Moses of his race as much as Booker T. Washington in these later years. Englishmen raised one hundred and fifty pounds and bought his freedom in 1846. The next year, as a Garrisonian disunionist, he began the publication of a weekly journal in Rochester; but he soon renounced disunionism, maintaining that slavery was illegal and unconstitutional. In the year the Liberty party nominated him for secretary of state, his publishers sold eighteen thousand copies of his autobiography, entitled My Bondage and My Freedom.

Before the campaign was far advanced it became evident that the Republican party was not drawing all the anti-slavery elements to which it was thought to be entitled; and, on the 12th of October, Seward made a speech in Albany, answering the question, "Shall we form a new party?" The hall was little more than two-thirds filled, and an absence of joyous enthusiasm characterised the meeting. Earnest men sat with serious faces, thinking of party ties severed and the work of a lifetime apparently snuffed out, with deep forebodings for the future of the new organisation. This was a time to appeal to reason—not to the emotions, and Seward met it squarely with a storehouse of arguments. He sketched the history of slavery's growth as a political power; he explained that slave-holders were a privileged class, getting the better of the North in appropriations and by the tariff. "Protection is denied to your wool," he said, "while it is freely given to their sugar." Then he pointed out how slavery had grasped the territories as each one presented itself for admission into the Union—Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, almost at the very outset of the national career; then Florida, when acquired from Spain; then as much of the Louisiana Purchase as possible; then Texas and the territory acquired from Mexico—all the while deluding the North with the specious pretence that each successive seizure of free soil was a "compromise" and a final settlement of the slavery question. This opened the way to the matter in hand—how to meet slavery's aggressiveness. "Shall we take the American party?" he asked. "It stifles its voice, and suppresses your own free speech, lest it may be overheard beyond the Potomac. In the slave-holding States it justifies all wrongs committed against you. Shall we unite ourselves to the Democratic party? If so, to which faction? The Hards who are so stern in defending the aggressions, and in rebuking the Administration through whose agency they are committed? or the Softs who protest against the aggressions, while they sustain and invigorate the Administration? What is it but the same party which has led in the commission of all those aggressions, and claims exclusively the political benefits? Shall we report ourselves to the Whig party? Where is it? It was a strong and vigorous party, honourable for energy, noble achievement, and still more noble enterprises. It was moved by panics and fears to emulate the Democratic party in its practised subserviency; and it yielded in spite of your remonstrances, and of mine, and now there is neither Whig party nor Whig south of the Potomac. Let, then, the Whig party pass. It committed a grievous fault, and grievously hath it answered it. Let it march off the field, therefore, with all the honours.... The Republican organisation has laid a new, sound, and liberal platform. Its principles are equal and exact justice; its speech open, decided, and frank. Its banner is untorn in former battles, and unsullied by past errors. That is the party for us."[463]

[Footnote 463: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 256. For full speech, see Seward's Works, Vol. 4, p. 225.]

When the meeting ended the people went out satisfied. The smallness of the audience had been forgotten in the clear, homely arguments, and in the glow kindled in every heart; nor did they know that the speech spoken in their hearing would be read and pondered by half a million voters within a month. Richard H. Dana pronounced it "the keynote of the new party."[464] But though sown in fruitful soil, insufficient time was to elapse before election for such arguments to root and blossom; and when the votes were counted in November, the Know-Nothings had polled 146,001, the Republicans 135,962, the Softs 90,518, and the Hards 58,394. Samuel L. Selden, the candidate of the Hards and Softs for judge of the Court of Appeals, had 149,702. George F. Comstock was also declared elected, having received 141,094, or nearly 5000 less than Headley for secretary of state. In the Assembly the Republicans numbered 44, the Know-Nothings 39, and the Hards and Softs 45.

[Footnote 464: Diary of R.H. Dana, C.F. Adams, Life of Dana, Vol. 1, p. 348.]

"The events of the election," wrote Seward, "show that the Silver-Grays have been successful in a new and attractive form, so as to divide a majority of the people in the cities and towns from the great question of the day. That is all. The rural districts still remain substantially sound. A year is necessary to let the cheat wear off."[465] To a friend who was greatly alarmed at the success of the Know-Nothings, he wrote: "There is just so much gas in any ascending balloon. Before the balloon is down, the gas must escape. But the balloon is always sure not only to come down, but to come down very quick. The heart of the country is fixed on higher and nobler things. Do not distrust it."[466]

[Footnote 465: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 258.]

[Footnote 466: Ibid., p. 259.]

After the election, some people held the opinion that the prospect of a united anti-slavery party was not so favourable as it had been at the close of 1854; and men were inclined then, as some historians are now, to criticise Seward for not forcing the formation of the Republican party in New York in 1854 and putting himself at its head by making speeches in New England and the West as well as in New York. "Had Seward sunk the politician in the statesman," says Rhodes; "had he vigorously asserted that every cause must be subordinate to Union under the banner of opposition to the extension of slavery—the close of the year would have seen a triumphant Republican party in every Northern State but California, and Seward its acknowledged leader. It was the tide in Seward's affairs, but he did not take it at the flood."[467]

[Footnote 467: James F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 2, p. 69. See also p. 68. "Seward," says the historian, "had the position, the ability and the character necessary for the leadership of a new party. He was the idol of the anti-slavery Whigs.... Perhaps his sympathies were heartily enlisted in the movement for a new party and he was held back by Thurlow Weed. Perhaps he would have felt less trammelled had not his senatorship been at stake in the fall election. The fact is, however, that the Republican movement in the West and New England received no word of encouragement from him. He did not make a speech, even in the State of New York, during the campaign. His care and attention were engrossed in seeing that members of the Legislature were elected who would vote for him for senator." On July 27, 1854, the New York Independent asked: "Shall we have a new party? The leaders for such a party do not appear. Seward adheres to the Whig party." In the New York Tribune of November 9, Greeley asserted that "the man who should have impelled and guided the general uprising of the free States is W.H. Seward."]

Looking back into the fifties from the viewpoint of the present, this suggestion of the distinguished historian seems plausible. Undoubtedly Thurlow Weed's judgment controlled in 1854, and back of it was thirty years of successful leadership, based upon the sagacity of a statesman as well as the skill of a clever politician. It was inevitable that Weed should be a Republican. He had opposed slavery before he was of age. The annexation of Texas met his strenuous resistance, the Wilmot Proviso had his active approval, and he assailed the fugitive slave law and the Nebraska Act with unsparing bitterness. With a singleness of purpose, not excelled by Seward or Sumner, his heart quickly responded to every movement which should limit, and, if possible, abolish slavery; but, in his wisdom, with Know-Nothings recruiting members from the anti-slavery ranks, and the Whig party confident of success because of a divided Democracy, he did not see his way safely to organise the Republican party in New York in 1854. It is possible his desire to re-elect Seward to the United States Senate may have increased his caution. Seward's re-election was just then a very important factor in the successful coalition of the anti-slavery elements of the Empire State. Besides, Weed knew very well that defeat would put the work of coalition into unfriendly hands, and it might be disastrous if a hostile majority were allowed to deal with it according to their own designs and their own class interests. Nevertheless, his delay in organising and Seward's failure to lead the new party in 1854, left an indelible impression to their injury in the West, if not in New York and New England, "for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."



CHAPTER XVII

THE FIRST REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR

1856

Kansas troubles did not subside after the election. The Pierce administration found itself harassed by the most formidable opposition it had yet encountered. Reeder was out of the way for the moment; but the Northern settlers, by planning a flank movement which included the organisation of a state government and an appeal to Congress for admission to the Union, proved themselves an enemy much more pertinacious and ingenious than the removed Governor. To aid them in their endeavour, friends sent a supply of Sharpe's rifles, marked "books." Accordingly, on the 9th of October, 1855, delegates were elected to a convention which met at Topeka on the 23d of the same month and framed a Constitution prohibiting slavery and providing for its submission to the people.

This practically established a second government. Governor Shannon, the successor of Reeder, recognised the action of the fraudulently chosen territorial Legislature, while the free-state settlers, with headquarters at Lawrence, repudiated its laws and resisted their enforcement. Things could not long remain in this unhappy condition, and when, at last, a free-state man was killed it amounted to a declaration of hostilities. Immediately, the people of Lawrence threw up earthworks; the Governor called out the militia; and the Missourians again crossed the border. By the 1st of December a couple of regiments were encamped in the vicinity of Lawrence, behind whose fortifications calmly rested six hundred men, half of them armed with Sharpe's rifles. A howitzer added to their confidence. Finally, the border ruffians, who had heard of the breech-loading rifles and learned of the character of the men behind them, after dallying for several weeks, recrossed the river and permitted the settlers to ratify the new Constitution. In January, 1856, a governor and legislature were chosen, and, in February, the Legislature, meeting at Topeka, memorialised Congress, asking that Kansas be admitted into the Union. Thereupon, Senator Douglas reported a bill providing that whenever the people of Kansas numbered 93,420 inhabitants they might organise a State. Instantly, Senator Seward offered a substitute, providing for its immediate admission with the Topeka Constitution.

The events leading up to this parliamentary situation had been noisy and murderous, rekindling a spirit of indignation in the South as well as in the North, which brought out fiery appeals from the press. The Georgia Legislature proposed to appropriate sixty thousand dollars to aid emigration to Kansas. A chivalrous colonel of Alabama who issued an appeal for three hundred men willing to fight for the cause of the South, began his march from Montgomery with two hundred, having first received a blessing from a Methodist minister and a Bible from a divine of the Baptist church. One young lady of South Carolina set the example of selling her jewelry to equip men with rifles. The same spirit manifested itself in the North. Public meetings encouraged armed emigration. "The duty of the people of the free States," said the Tribune, "is to send more true men, more Sharpe's rifles, and more howitzers to Kansas."[468] William Cullen Bryant wrote his brother that "by the 1st of May there will be several thousand more free-state settlers in Kansas. Of course they will go well armed."[469] Henry Ward Beecher, happening to be present at a meeting in which an orthodox deacon who had enlisted seventy-nine emigrants asked for more rifles, declared that a Sharpe's rifle was a greater moral agency than the Bible, and that if half the guns needed were pledged on the spot Plymouth Church would furnish the rest.[470] Thus, the equipment of Northern emigrants to Kansas became known as "Beecher's Bibles."[471] Henry J. Raymond said that "the question of slavery domination must be fought out on the plains of Kansas."[472] To add to Northern bitterness, President Pierce, in a special message to the United State Senate, condemned the emigrant aid societies, threatening to call out the army, and approving the acts of the pro-slavery Legislature.

[Footnote 468: New York Weekly Tribune, February 2, 1856.]

[Footnote 469: Parke Godwin, Life of Bryant, Vol. 2, p. 88.]

[Footnote 470: New York Independent, March 26, 1856.]

[Footnote 471: New York Independent, February 7, 1856.]

[Footnote 472: New York Times, February 1, 1856.]

In the midst of this excitement, Senator Douglas began the debate on his Kansas bill which was destined to become more historic than the outrages of the border ruffians themselves. Douglas upheld the acts of the territorial Legislature as the work of law and order, denouncing the Northern emigrants as daring and defiant revolutionists, and charging that "the whole responsibility for all the disturbance rested upon the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company and its affiliated societies."[473] Horace Greeley admitted the force and power of Douglas' argument, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the gifted author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was so profoundly impressed with the matchless orator that she thought it "a merciful providence that with all his alertness and adroitness, all his quick-sighted keenness, Douglas is not witty—that might have made him too irresistible a demagogue for the liberties of our laughter-loving people, to whose weakness he is altogether too well adapted now."[474] The friends of a free Kansas appreciated the superiority in debate of the Illinois statesman, whose arguments now called out half a dozen replies from as many Republican senators. It afforded a fine opportunity to define and shape the principles of the new party, and each senator attracted wide attention. But the speech of Seward, who took the floor on the 9th of April in favour of the immediate admission of Kansas as a State, seems to have impressed the country as far the ablest. He sketched the history of the Kansas territory; reviewed the sacrifices of its people; analysed and refuted each argument in support of the President's policy; and defended the settlers in maintaining their struggle for freedom. "Greeley expressed the opinion of the country and the judgment of the historian," says Rhodes, "when he wrote to his journal that Seward's speech was 'the great argument' and stood 'unsurpassed in its political philosophy.'"[475] The Times pronounced it "the ablest of all his speeches."[476] On the day of its publication the Weekly Tribune sent out 162,000 copies. Seward wrote Weed that "the demand for it exceeds what I have ever known. I am giving copies away by the thousand for distribution in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other States."[477]

[Footnote 473: Report of Committee on Territories, U.S. Senate, March 12, 1856.]

[Footnote 474: New York Independent, May 1, 1856, Letters from Washington.]

[Footnote 475: James F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 2, p. 130.]

[Footnote 476: New York Times, April 9, 1856.]

[Footnote 477: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 270.]

A month later, on the 19th and 20th of May, came the speech of Charles Sumner, entitled "The Crime Against Kansas." Whittier called it "a grand and terrible philippic." Sumner had read it to Senator and Mrs. Seward, who advised the omission of certain personal allusions to Senator Butler;[478] but he delivered it as he wrote it, and two days later the country was startled by Preston S. Brooks' assault. The North received this outrage with horror as the work of the slave power. In public meetings, the people condemned it as a violation of the freedom of speech and a blow at the personal safety of public men having the courage to express their convictions. "The blows that fell on the head of the Senator from Massachusetts," said Seward, "have done more for the cause of human freedom in Kansas and in the territories of the United States than all the eloquence which has resounded in these halls since the days of Rufus King and John Quincy Adams."[479] The events surrounding the assault—Brooks' resignation, his unanimous re-election, his challenge to Burlingame, and his refusal to fight in Canada—all tended to intensify Northern feeling. Close upon the heels of this excitement came news from Kansas of the burning of Lawrence, the destruction of Osawatomie, the sacking of free-state printing offices, and the murder of Northern immigrants. To complete the list of crimes against free speech and freedom, the commander of a force of United States troops dispersed the Topeka Legislature at the point of the bayonet.

[Footnote 478: Statement of William H. Seward, Jr., to the Author.]

[Footnote 479: This speech was made on June 24, 1856.]

This was the condition of affairs when the two great political parties of the country assembled in national convention in June, 1856, to select candidates for President and Vice President. At their state convention, in January, to select delegates-at-large to Cincinnati, the Softs had put themselves squarely in accord with the pro-slavery wing of their party. They commended the administration of Pierce, approved the Nebraska Act, and denounced as "treasonable" the Kansas policy of the Republican party. This was a wide departure from their position of August, 1855, which had practically reaffirmed the principles of the Wilmot Proviso; but the trend of public events compelled them either to renounce all anti-slavery leanings or abandon their party. Their surrender, however, did not turn their reception at Cincinnati into the welcome of prodigals. The committee on credentials kept them waiting at the door for two days, and when they were finally admitted they were compelled to enter on an equality with the Hards. Horatio Seymour pleaded for representation in proportion to the votes cast, which would have given the Softs three-fifths of the delegation, but the convention thought them entitled to no advantages because of their "abolition principles," and even refused a request for additional seats from which their colleagues might witness the proceedings. To complete their humiliation the convention required them formally to deny the right of Congress or of the people of a territory to prohibit slavery in any territory of the United States. It was a bitter dose. The Democracy of the Empire State had been accustomed to control conventions—not to serve them. For twenty years they had come with candidates for the Presidency, and if none of their statesmen had been nominated since 1836 they were recognised as resolute men, bold in diplomacy, ready for any emergency, and as formidable to their enemies as they were dear to their friends. For nearly three decades a New Yorker had been in the Cabinet of every administration. But the glory of former days had now departed. For twelve years the party had been divided and weakened, until, at last, it had neither presidential candidate to offer nor cabinet position to expect.

The leading candidates at Cincinnati were Franklin Pierce, Stephen A. Douglas, and James Buchanan. Northern delegates had been inclined to support Pierce or Douglas; but since the assault upon Sumner and the destruction of Lawrence, the conciliation of the North by the nomination of a candidate who had not participated in the events of the past three years seemed the wisest and safest policy. Buchanan had been minister to England since the birth of the Pierce administration; and the fact that he hailed from Pennsylvania, a very important State in the election, strengthened his availability. The Softs recognised the wisdom of this philosophy, but, under the leadership of Marcy, who had given them the federal patronage for three years, they voted for the President, with the hope that his supporters might ultimately unite with those of Douglas. The Hards, on the contrary, supported Buchanan. They had little use for Pierce, who had persecuted them.

On the first ballot Buchanan had 135 votes, Pierce 122, Douglas 33, and Cass 5, with 197 necessary to a choice. This made Buchanan's success probable if his forces stood firm; and as other ballots brought him additional votes at the expense of Pierce, his nomination seemed certain. The Softs, however, continued with Pierce until his withdrawal on the fourteenth ballot; then, putting aside an opportunity to support the winning candidate, they turned to Douglas. But to their great surprise, Douglas withdrew at the end of the next ballot, leaving the field to Buchanan. This placed the Softs, who now joined the Hards because there was no longer any way of keeping apart, in an awkward position. Seymour, however, gracefully accepted the situation, declaring that, although the Softs came into the convention under many disadvantages, they desired to do all in their power to harmonise the vote of the convention and to promote the discontinuance of factional differences in the great State of New York. Greene C. Bronson, who smiled derisively as he heard this deathbed repentance, did not know how soon Horatio Seymour was destined again to command the party.

The Republican national convention convened at Philadelphia on the 17th of June. Recent events had encouraged Republicans with the hope of ultimate victory. Nathaniel P. Banks' election as speaker of the national House of Representatives on the one hundred and thirty-seventh ballot, after a fierce contest of two months, was a great triumph; interest in the Pittsburg convention on the 22d of February had surpassed expectations; and the troubles of "bleeding Kansas," which seemed to culminate in the assault upon Sumner and the destruction of Lawrence, had kept the free States in a condition of profound excitement. Such brutal outrages, it was thought, would certainly discredit any party that approved the policy leading to them. Sustained by this hope the convention, in its platform, arraigned the Administration for the conduct of affairs; demanded the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union under the Topeka Constitution; and resolved, amidst the greatest enthusiasm, that "it is both the right and duty of Congress to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery."

The selection of a presidential candidate gave the delegates more trouble. They wanted an available man who could carry Pennsylvania; and between the supporters of John C. Fremont and the forces of John McLean, for twenty-six years a member of the United States Supreme Court, the canvass became earnest and exciting. Finally, on an informal ballot, Fremont secured 359 of the 555 votes in the convention. William L. Dayton of New Jersey was then nominated for Vice President over Abraham Lincoln, who received 110 votes.

William H. Seward was the logical candidate for President. He represented Republican principles and aims more fully than any man in the country, but Thurlow Weed, looking into the future through the eyes of a practical politician, disbelieved in Republican success. He argued that, although Republicans were sure of 114 electoral votes, it was essential to carry Pennsylvania to secure the additional 35, and that Pennsylvania could not be carried. This belief was strengthened after the nomination of Buchanan, who pledged himself to give fair play to Kansas, which many understood to mean a free State. Under these conditions Weed advised Seward not to become a candidate, on the theory that defeat in 1856 would sacrifice his chances in 1860.

Seward, as usual, acquiesced in Weed's judgment. "I once heard Seward declare," wrote Gideon Welles, "that 'Seward is Weed and Weed is Seward. What I do, Weed approves. What he says, I indorse. We are one.'"[480] On this occasion, however, it is certain Seward accepted Weed's judgment with much reluctance. His heart was set upon the nomination, and his letters reveal disappointment and even disgust at the arrangement. "It is a delicate thing," he wrote, on the 27th of April, "to go through the present ordeal, but I am endeavouring to do so without giving any one just cause to complain of indifference on my part to the success of the cause. I have shut out the subject itself from conversation and correspondence, and, so far as possible, from my thoughts."[481] But he could not close his ears. "From all I hear 'availability' is to be indulged next week and my own friends are to make the sacrifice," he wrote his wife, on June 11, six days before the convention opened. "Be it so; I shall submit with better grace than others would."[482] Two days later he said: "It tries my patience to hear what is said and to act as if I assented, under expectation of personal benefits, present and prospective."[483]

[Footnote 480: Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward, p. 23. "I am sorry to hear the remark," said the late Chief Justice Chase, "for while I would strain a point to oblige Mr. Seward, I feel under no obligations to do anything for the special benefit of Mr. Weed. The two are not and never can be one to me."—Ibid., p. 23.]

[Footnote 481: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 270.]

[Footnote 482: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 277.]

[Footnote 483: Ibid., p. 277.]

What especially gravelled Seward was the action of his opponents. "The understanding all around me is," he wrote his wife, on June 14, "that Greeley has struck hands with enemies of mine and sacrificed me for the good of the cause, to be obtained by the nomination of a more available candidate, and that Weed has concurred in demanding my acquiescence."[484] Seward suspected the truth of this "understanding" as to Greeley, but it is doubtful if he then believed Weed had betrayed him. Perhaps this thought came later after he heard of Fremont's astonishing vote and learned that the newspapers were again nominating the Path-finder for a standard-bearer in 1860. "Seward more than hinted to confidential friends," wrote Henry B. Stanton, "that Weed betrayed him for Fremont." Then Stanton tells the story of Weed and Seward riding up Broadway, and how, when passing the bronze statue of Lincoln in Union Square, Seward said, "Weed, if you had been faithful to me, I should have been there instead of Lincoln." "Seward," replied Weed, "is it not better to be alive in a carriage with me than to be dead and set up in bronze?"[485]

[Footnote 484: Ibid., p. 277.]

[Footnote 485: H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 194.]

How much Weed's advice to Seward was influenced by the arguments of opponents nowhere appears, but the disappointment of Democrats and conservative Americans upon the announcement of Seward's withdrawal proves that these objections were serious. His views were regarded as too extreme for a popular candidate. It was deemed advisable not to put in issue either the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or the repeal of the fugitive slave law, and Seward's pronounced attitude on these questions, it was asserted, would involve them in the campaign regardless of the silence of the platform. It was argued, also, that although the Whigs were numerically the largest portion of the Republican party, a candidate of Democratic antecedents would be preferable, especially in Pennsylvania, a State, they declared, which Seward could not carry. To all this Greeley undoubtedly assented. The dissolution of the firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley, announced in Greeley's remarkable letter of November 11, 1854, but not yet made public, had, indeed, taken effect. The result was not so patent, certainly not so vitriolic, as it appeared at Chicago in 1860, but Greeley now began insinuating doubts of Seward's popular strength, exaggerating local prejudices against him, and yielding to objections raised by his avowed opponents. His hostility found no place in the columns of the Tribune, but it coloured his conversations and private correspondence. To Richard A. Dana he wrote that Callamer's speech on the Kansas question "is better than Seward's, in my humble judgment;"[486] yet the Tribune pronounced Seward's "the great argument" and "unsurpassed in political philosophy." The importance of Pennsylvania became as prominent a factor in the convention of 1856 as it did in that of 1860, and Greeley did not hesitate to affirm Seward's inability to carry it, declaring that such weakness made his nomination fatal to party success.

[Footnote 486: Letters of April 7, 1856.]

The opponents of Seward, however, could not have prevented his nomination had he decided to enter the race. He was the unanimous choice of the New York delegation. The mere mention of his name at Philadelphia met with the loudest applause. When Senator Wilson of Massachusetts spoke of him as "the foremost American statesman," the cheers made further speaking impossible for several minutes. He was the idol of the convention as he was the chief figure of his party. John A. King declared that could his name have been presented "it would have received the universal approbation of the convention." Robert Emmet, the son of the distinguished Thomas Addis Emmet, and the temporary chairman of the convention, made a similar statement. Even Thurlow Weed found it difficult to prevail upon his friends to bide their time until the next national convention. "Earnest friends refused to forego my nomination," Seward wrote his wife on June 17, the day the convention opened, "without my own authority."[487]

[Footnote 487: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 278.]

When the several state conventions convened at Syracuse each party sought its strongest man for governor. The Hards and the Softs were first in the field, meeting in separate conventions on July 30. After inviting each other to join in a union meeting they reassembled as one body, pledged to support the Cincinnati platform. It was not an occasion for cheers. Consolidation was the only alternative, with chances that the ultra pro-slavery platform meant larger losses if not certain defeat. In this crisis Horatio Seymour assumed the leadership that had been his in 1852, and that was not to be laid down for more than a decade. Seymour was now in his prime—still under fifty years of age. He had become a leader of energy and courage; and, although destined for many years to lead a divided and often a defeated organisation, he was ever after recognised as the most gifted and notable member of his party. He was a typical Northern Democrat. He had the virtues and foibles that belonged to that character in his generation, the last of whom have now passed from the stage of public action.

The effort to secure a Democratic nominee for governor required four ballots. Addison Gardiner, David L. Seymour, Fernando Wood, and Amasa J. Parker were the leading candidates. David Seymour had been a steady supporter of the Hards. He belonged to the O'Conor type of conservatives, rugged and stalwart, who seemed unmindful of the changing conditions in the political growth of the country. At Cincinnati, he opposed the admission of the Softs as an unjust and utterly irrational disqualification of the Hards, who, he said, had always stood firmly by party platforms and party nominations regardless of personal convictions. Fernando Wood belonged to a different type.[488] He had already developed those regrettable qualities which gave him a most unsavoury reputation as mayor of New York; but of the dangerous qualities that lay beneath the winning surface of his gracious manner, men as yet knew nothing. Just now his gubernatorial ambition, fed by dishonourable methods, found support in a great host of noisy henchmen who demanded his nomination. Addison Gardiner was the choice of the Softs. Gardiner had been elected lieutenant-governor on the ticket with Silas Wright in 1844, and later became an original member of the Court of Appeals, from which he retired in 1855. He was a serious, simple-hearted, wise man, well fitted for governor. But Horatio Seymour made up his mind that Parker, although far below Gardiner and David L. Seymour in number of votes, would better unite the convention, and upon Gardiner's withdrawal Parker immediately received the nomination.

[Footnote 488: Fernando Wood was a Quaker and a Philadelphian by birth. In early youth he became a cigarmaker, then a tobacco dealer, and later a grocer. At Harrisburg, his first introduction to politics resulted in a fist-fight with a state senator who was still on the floor when Wood left the bar-room. Then he went to New York, and, in 1840, was elected to Congress at the age of twenty-eight. Wood had a fascinating personality. He was tall and shapely, his handsome features and keen blue eyes were made the more attractive by an abundance of light hair which fell carelessly over a high, broad forehead. But, as a politician, he was as false as his capacity would allow him to be, having no hesitation, either from principle or fear, to say or do anything that served his purpose. He has been called the successor of Aaron Burr and the predecessor of William M. Tweed. In 1858, he organised Mozart Hall, a Democratic society opposed to Tammany.]

Amasa J. Parker was then forty-nine years of age, an eminent, successful lawyer. Before his thirty-second birthday he had served Delaware County as surrogate, district attorney, assemblyman, and congressman. Later, he became a judge of the Supreme Court and removed to Albany, where he resided for forty-six years, until his death in 1890. Parker was a New England Puritan, who had been unusually well raised. He passed from the study of his father, a Congregational clergyman, to the senior class at Union College, graduating at eighteen; and from his uncle's law library to the surrogate's office. All his early years had been a training for public life. He had associated with scholars and thinkers, and in the estimation of his contemporaries there were few stronger or clearer intellects in the State. But his later political career was a disappointment. His party began nominating him for governor after it had fallen into the unfortunate habit of being beaten, and, although he twice ran ahead of his ticket, the anti-slavery sentiment that dominated New York after 1854 kept him out of the executive chair.

The Republican state convention assembled at Syracuse on the 17th of September. A feeling existed that the election this year would extract the people from the mire of Know-Nothingism, giving the State its first Republican governor; and confidence of success, mingled with an unusual desire to make no mistake, characterised the selection of a nominee for chief executive. Myron H. Clark, a man of the people, had made a good governor, but he was too heavily weighted with prohibition to suit the older public men, who did not take kindly to him. They turned to Moses H. Grinnell, whose pre-eminence as a large-hearted, public-spirited merchant always kept him in sight. Grinnell was now fifty-three years of age. His broad, handsome face showed an absence of bigotry and intolerance, while the motives that controlled his life were public and patriotic, not personal. Probably no man in New York City, since the time John Jay left it, had ever had more admirers. He was a favourite of Daniel Webster, who appointed Washington Irving minister to Spain upon his request. This interest in the famous author, as well as his recent promotion of Dr. Kane's expedition to the Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin, indicated the broad philanthropy that governed his well-ordered life. But he declined to accept office. The distinguished house that had borne his name for twenty-seven years, decided that its senior member could not be spared, even temporarily, to become governor of the State, and so Grinnell's official life was limited to a single term in Congress, although his public life may be said to have spanned nearly two-thirds of his more than three score years and ten.

Grinnell's decision seemed to leave an open field, and upon the first ballot John A. King received 91 votes, James S. Wadsworth 72, Simeon Draper 23, Myron H. Clark 22, and Ira Harris 22. Thurlow Weed and the wheel horses of Whig descent, however, preferring that the young party have a governor of their own antecedents, familiar with political difficulties and guided by firmness and wisdom, had secretly determined upon King. But Wadsworth, although he quickly felt the influence of their decision, declined to withdraw. Wadsworth was a born fighter. In the Free-soil secession of 1847, he proclaimed uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery, and he never changed his position until death ended his gallant and noble service in the Civil War.

Wadsworth descended from a notable family. His father, James Wadsworth, a graduate of Yale, leaving his Connecticut home in young manhood, bought of the Dutch and of the Six Nations twenty thousand acres in the Genesee Valley, and became one of the earliest settlers and wealthiest men in Western New York. He was, also, the most public-spirited citizen. He believed in normal schools and in district school libraries, and he may properly be called one of the founders of the educational system of the State. But he never cared for political office. It was said of him that his refusal to accept public place was as inflexible as his determination to fight Oliver Kane, a well-known merchant of New York City, after trouble had occurred at the card table. The story, told at the time, was that the two, after separating in anger, met before sunrise the next morning, without seconds or surgeons, under a tall pine tree on a bluff, and after politely measuring the distance and taking their places, continued shooting at each other until Kane, slightly wounded, declared he had enough.[489]

[Footnote 489: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 1, p. 153.]

James S. Wadsworth discovered none of his father's aversion to holding office. He, also, graduated at Yale and studied law in the office of Daniel Webster, but he preferred politics and agriculture to the troubles of clients, and, although never successful in getting office, all admitted his fitness for it. He was brave, far-sighted, and formed to please. He had a handsome face and stately presence. Many people who never saw him were strongly attracted to him by sympathy of political opinions and by gratitude for important services rendered the country. There was to come a time, in 1862, when these radical friends, looking upon him as the Lord's Anointed, and indifferent to the wishes of Thurlow Weed and the more conservative leaders, forced his nomination for governor by acclamation; but, in 1856, John A. King had the weightiest influence, and, on the second ballot, he took the strength of Draper, Clark, and Harris, receiving 158 votes to 73 for Wadsworth. It was not soon forgotten, however, that in the memorable stampede for King, Wadsworth more than held his own.

John Alsop King was the eldest son of Rufus King. While the father was minister to the court of St. James, the son attended the famous school at Harrow, had as classmates Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel, and went the usual rounds of continental travel. For nearly four decades he had been conspicuous in public life as assemblyman, senator, congressman, and in the diplomatic service. Starting as a Federalist and an early advocate of anti-slavery sentiments, he had been an Anti-Mason, a National Republican, and a Whig. Only when he acted with Martin Van Buren against DeWitt Clinton did he flicker in his political consistency. Although now sixty-eight years old, he was still rugged—a man of vigorous sense and great public spirit. His congressional experience came when the hosts of slavery and freedom were marshalling for the great contest for the territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific, and at the side of Preston King he resisted Clay's compromise measures, especially the fugitive slave law, and warmly supported the admission of California as a free State. "I have come to have a great liking for the Kings," wrote Seward, in 1850. "They have withstood the seduction of the seducers, and are like a rock in the defence of the right. They have been tried as through fire."[490] John A. King was not ambitious for public place. He waited to be called to an office, but he did not wait to be called to join a movement which would be helpful to the public. His ear was to the sky rather than to the ground. He believed Ralph Waldo Emerson's saying: "That is the one base thing in the universe, to receive benefits and render none." Like his distinguished father, he was tolerant in dealing with men who differed from him, but he never shrank from the expression of an opinion because it would bring sacrifice or ostracism.

[Footnote 490: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 140.]

The ticket was strengthened by the nomination of Henry R. Selden of Monroe for lieutenant-governor. Selden belonged to a family that had been prominent for two centuries in the Connecticut Valley. Like his older brother, Samuel L. Selden, who lived at Rochester, he was an able lawyer and a man of great industry. These brothers brought to the service of the people a perfect integrity, coupled with a gracious urbanity that kept them in public life longer than either desired to remain. One was a Republican, the other a Democrat. Samuel became a partner of Addison Gardiner in 1825, and Henry, after studying law with them, opened an office at Clarkson in the western part of the county. In 1851, Henry became reporter for the Court of Appeals, and then, lieutenant-governor. Samuel's public service began earlier. He became judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1831, of the Supreme Court in 1847, and of the Court of Appeals in 1856. When he resigned in 1862, Henry took his place by appointment, and afterward by election. Finally, in 1865, he also resigned. The brothers were much alike in the quality they brought to the public service; and their work, as remarkable for its variety as for its dignity, made Samuel an original promoter of the electric telegraph system and Henry a defender of Susan B. Anthony when arrested on the charge of illegally voting at a presidential election.

The Americans nominated Erastus Brooks for governor. He was a younger brother of James Brooks, who founded the New York Express in 1836. The Brookses were born in Maine, and early exhibited the industry and courage characteristic of the sons of the Pine Tree State. At eight years of age, Erastus began work in a grocery store, fitting himself for Brown University at a night school, and, at twenty, he became an editor on his brother's paper. His insistence upon the taxation of property of the Catholic Church, because, being held in the name of the Bishops, it should be included under the laws governing personal holdings in realty, brought him prominently before the Americans, who sent him to the State Senate in 1854. But Brooks' political career, like that of his brother, really began after the Civil War, although his identification with the Know-Nothings marked him as a man of force, capable of making strong friends and acquiring much influence.

The activity of the Americans indicated firm faith in their success. Six months before Brooks' nomination they had named Millard Fillmore for President. At the time, the former President was in Europe. On his return he accepted the compliment and later received the indorsement of the old-line Whigs. Age had not left its impress. Of imposing appearance, he looked like a man formed to rule. The peculiar tenets of the Americans, except as exemplified in the career of their candidate for governor, did not enter into Fillmore's campaign. He rested his hopes upon the conservative elements of all parties who condemned the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and opposed the formation of a party which, he declared, had, for the first time in the history of the Republic, selected candidates for President and Vice President from the free States alone, with the avowed purpose of electing them by the suffrages of one part of the Union to rule over the other part.

This was also the argument of Buchanan. In his letter of acceptance he sounded the keynote of his party, claiming that it was strictly national, devoted to the Constitution and the Union, and that the Republican party, ignoring the historic warning of Washington, was formed on geographic lines.[491] All this made little impression upon the host of Northern men who exulted in the union of all the anti-slavery elements. But their intense devotion to the positive utterances of their platform took away the sense of humour which often relieves the tension of political activity, and substituted an element of profound seriousness that was plainly visible in speakers and audiences. Seward did not hasten into the campaign. Richard H. Dana wrote, confidentially, that "Seward was awful grouty." It was October 2 when he began speaking. Congress had detained him until August 30, and then his health was so impaired, it was explained, that he needed rest. But other lovers of freedom were deeply stirred. The pulpit became a platform, and the great editors spoke as well as wrote. Henry Ward Beecher seemed ubiquitous; Greeley and Raymond made extended tours through the State; Bryant was encouraged to overcome his great timidity before an audience; and Washington Irving declared his intention of voting, if not of speaking, for Fremont.

[Footnote 491: Horatio Seymour used the same argument with great effect. "Another tie which has heretofore held our country together has been disbanded, and from its ruins has sprung a political organisation trusting for its success to sectional prejudices. It excludes from its councils the people of nearly one-half of the Union; it seeks a triumph over one-half our country. The battlefields of Yorktown, of Camden, of New Orleans, are unrepresented in their conventions; and no delegates speak for the States where rest the remains of Washington, Jefferson, Marion, Sumter, or Morgan, or of the later hero, Jackson. They cherish more bitter hatred of their own countrymen than they have ever shown towards the enemies of our land. If the language they hold this day had been used eighty years since, we should not have thrown off the British yoke; our national constitution would not have been formed; and if their spirit of hatred continues, our Constitution and Government will cease to exist."—Seymour at Springfield, Mass., July 4, 1856. Cook and Knox, Public Record of Horatio Seymour, p. 2.

"John A. Dix supported the Democratic candidates in the canvass of 1856; he did not, however, take an active part in the contest."—Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 319.]

This campaign also welcomed into political life a young man whose first speech made it plain that a new champion, with bright and well-tempered sword, had taken up the cause of freedom with the courage of the cavalier. George William Curtis was then thirty-two years old. He had already written the Howadji books, which earned him recognition among men of letters, and Prue and I, which had secured his fame as an author. In the campaign of 1856, the people for the first time saw and knew this man whose refined rhetoric, characterised by tender and stirring appeal, and guided by principle and conviction, was, thereafter, for nearly forty years, to be heard at its best on one side of every important question that divided American political life. Nathaniel P. Willis, who drove five miles in the evening to hear him deliver a "stump speech," thought Curtis would be "too handsome and too well dressed" for a political orator; but when he heard him unfold his logical argument step by step, occasionally bursting into a strain of inspiring eloquence that foreshadowed the more studied work of his riper years, it taught him that the author was as caustic and unconstrained on the platform as he appeared in The Potiphar Papers.

Curtis' theme was resistance to the extension of slavery. His wife's father, Francis G. Shaw, had stimulated his zeal in the cause of freedom; and he treated the subject with a finish and strength that came from larger experience and longer observation than a young man of thirty-two could usually boast. To him, the struggle for freedom in Kansas was not less glorious than the heroic resistance in 1776, and he made it vivid by the use of historic associations. "Through these very streets," he said, "they marched who never returned. They fell and were buried, but they can never die. Not sweeter are the flowers that make your valley fair, not greener are the pines that give your valley its name, than the memory of the brave men who died for freedom. And yet no victim of those days, sleeping under the green sod, is more truly a martyr of Liberty than every murdered man whose bones lie bleaching in this summer sun upon the silent plains of Kansas. And so long as Liberty has one martyr, so long as one drop of blood is poured out for her, so long from that single drop of bloody sweat of the agony of humanity shall spring hosts as countless as the forest leaves and mighty as the sea."[492]

[Footnote 492: Edward Cary, Life of George William Curtis, p. 113; New York Weekly Tribune, August 16, 1856.]

Curtis thought the question of endangering the Union a mere pretence. "Twenty millions of a moral people, politically dedicated to Liberty, are asking themselves whether their government shall be administered solely in the interest of three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders." He did not believe that these millions would dissolve the Union in the interest of these thousands. "I see a rising enthusiasm," he said, in closing; "but enthusiasm is not an election; and I hear cheers from the heart, but cheers are not voters. Every man must labour with his neighbour—in the street, at the plough, at the bench, early and late, at home and abroad. Generally we are concerned in elections with the measures of government. This time it is with the essential principle of government itself."[493]

[Footnote 493: Ibid., August 16, 1856.]

The result of the election was not a surprise. Fremont's loss of Pennsylvania and Indiana had been foreshadowed in October, making his defeat inevitable, but the Republican victory in New York was more sweeping than the leaders had anticipated, Fremont securing a majority of 80,000 over Buchanan, and John A. King 65,000 over Amasa J. Parker.[494] The average vote was as follows: Republican, 266,328; Democrat, 197,172; Know-Nothing, 129,750. West and north of Albany, every congressman and nearly every assemblyman was a Republican. Reuben E. Fenton, who had been beaten for Congress in 1854 by 1676 votes, was now elected by 8000 over the same opponent. The Assembly stood 82 Republicans, 37 Democrats, and 8 Know-Nothings. In the country at large, Buchanan obtained 174 electoral votes out of 296, but he failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, leaving the vanquished more hopeful and not less cheerful than the victors. Fillmore received the electoral vote of Maryland and a popular vote of 874,534, nearly one-half as many as Buchanan and two-thirds as many as Fremont. In other words, he had divided the vote of the North, making it possible for Buchanan to carry Pennsylvania and Indiana.

[Footnote 494: John A. King, 264,400; Amasa J. Parker, 198,616; Erastus Brooks, 130,870.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]



CHAPTER XVIII

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT

1857-1858

It was the duty of the Legislature of 1857 to elect a successor to Hamilton Fish, whose term as United States senator expired on the 4th of March. Fish had not been a conspicuous member of the Senate; but his great wisdom brought him large influence at a time when slavery strained the courtesy of that body. He was of a most gracious and sweet nature, and, although he never flinched from uttering or maintaining his opinions, he was a lover and maker of peace. In his Autobiography of Seventy Years, Senator Hoar speaks of him as the only man of high character and great ability among the leaders of the Republican party, except President Grant, who retained the friendship of Roscoe Conkling.

The contest over the senatorship brought into notice a disposition among Republicans of Democratic antecedents not to act in perfect accord with Thurlow Weed, a danger that leading Whigs had anticipated at the formation of the party. Weed's management had been disliked by anti-slavery Democrats as much as it had been distrusted by a portion of the Whig party, and, although political associations now brought them under one roof, they did not accept him as a guiding or controlling spirit. This disposition manifested itself at the state convention in the preceding September; and to allay any bitterness of feeling which the nomination of John A. King might occasion, it was provided that, in the event of success, the senator should be of Democratic antecedents. The finger of fate then pointed to Preston King. He had resisted the aggressions of the slave power, and in the formation of the Republican party his fearless fidelity to its cornerstone principle made him doubly welcome in council; but when the Legislature met, other aspirants appeared, prominent among whom were Ward Hunt, James S. Wadsworth, and David Dudley Field.

Hunt, who was destined to occupy a place on the Court of Appeals, and, subsequently, on the Supreme Court of the United States, had taken little interest in politics. He belonged to the Democratic party, and, in 1839, had served one term in the Assembly; but his consistent devotion to Free-soilism, and his just and almost prescient appreciation of the true principles of the Republican party, gave him great prominence in the ranks of the young organisation and created a strong desire to send him to the United States Senate. Hunt was anxious and Wadsworth active. The latter's supporters, standing for him as their candidate for governor, had forced the agreement of the year before, and they now demanded that he become senator; but in the interest of harmony, both finally withdrew in favour of David Dudley Field.

The inspiration of an historic name did not yet belong to the Field family. The projector of the Atlantic cable, the future justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the eminent New York editor, had not taken their places among the most gifted of the land, but David Dudley's activity in the Free-soil contests had made him as conspicuous a member of the new party as his celebrated Code of Civil Procedure, passed by the Legislature of 1848, had distinguished him in his profession. Promotion did not move his way, however. Thurlow Weed insisted upon Preston King. It is likely the Albany editor had not forgotten that Field, acting for George Opdyke, a millionaire client, had sued him for libel, and that, although the jury disagreed, the exciting trial had crowded the courtroom for nineteen days and cost seventeen thousand dollars; but Weed did not appeal to Field's record, since he claimed the agreement at the state convention included John A. King for governor and Preston King for senator, and to avoid controversy he adroitly consented to leave the matter to Republican legislators of Democratic antecedents, who decided in favour of King. This ended the contest, the caucus giving King 65 votes and Hunt 17.

In 1857, events gave the Republican party little encouragement in New York. Public interest in Kansas had largely died out, and, although the Dred Scott decision, holding inferentially that the Constitution carried with it the right and power to hold slaves everywhere, had startled the nation, leading press, pulpit, and public meetings to denounce it as a blow at the rights of States and to the rights of man, yet the Democrats carried the State in November, electing Gideon J. Tucker secretary of state, Sanford E. Church comptroller, Lyman Tremaine attorney-general, and Hiram Denio to the Court of Appeals. It was not a decisive victory. The Know-Nothings, who held the balance of power, involuntarily contributed a large portion of their strength to the Democratic party, giving it an aggregate vote of 194,000 to 175,000 for the Republicans, and reducing the vote of James O. Putnam, of Buffalo, the popular American candidate for secretary of state, to less than 67,000, or one-half the number polled in the preceding year.

Other causes contributed to the apparent decrease of Republican strength. The financial disturbance of 1857 appeared with great suddenness in August. There had been fluctuations in prices, with a general downward tendency, but when the crisis came it was a surprise to many of the most watchful financiers. Industry and commerce were less affected than in 1837, but the failures, representing a larger amount of capital than those of any other year in the history of the country up to 1893, astonished the people, associating in the public mind the Democratic charge of Republican extravagance with the general cry of hard times.

But whatever the cause of defeat, the outlook for the Republicans again brightened when Stephen A. Douglas opposed President Buchanan's Lecompton policy. The Kansas Lecompton Constitution was the work of a rump convention controlled by pro-slavery delegates who declared that "the right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever." To secure its approval by the people it was ingeniously arranged that the vote taken in December, 1857, should be "for the constitution with slavery" or "for the constitution without slavery," so that in any event the constitution, with its objectionable section, would become the organic law. This shallow scheme, hatched in the South to fix slavery upon a territory that had already declared for freedom by several thousand majority, obtained the support of the President. Douglas immediately pronounced it "a trick" and "a fraud upon the rights of the people."[495] The breach between the Illinois Senator and the Administration thus became complete.

[Footnote 495: This debate occurred December 22, 1857.]

Meantime, the governor of Kansas convened the territorial legislature in an extra session, which provided for a second election in January, 1858. The December election had stood: for the constitution with slavery, 6226; for the constitution without slavery, 569. Of these 2720 were subsequently shown to be fraudulent. The January election stood: for the constitution with slavery, 138; for the constitution without slavery, 24; against the constitution, 10,226. The President, accepting the "trick election," as Douglas called it, in which the free-state men declined to participate, forwarded a copy of the constitution to Congress, and, in spite of Douglas, it passed the Senate. An amendment in the House returned it to the people with the promise, if accepted, of a large grant of government land; but the electors spurned the bribe—the free-state men, at a third election held on August 2, 1858, rejecting the constitution by 11,000 out of 13,000 votes.

This ended the Lecompton episode, but it was destined to leave a breach in the ranks of the Democrats big with consequences. Stephen A. Douglas was now the best known and most popular man in the North, and his popular sovereignty doctrine, as applied to the Lecompton Constitution, seemed so certain of settling the slavery question in the interest of freedom that leading Republicans of New York, notably Henry J. Raymond and Horace Greeley, not only favoured the return of Douglas to the Senate unopposed by their own party, but seriously considered the union of Douglas Democrats and Republicans. It was even suggested that Douglas become the Republican candidate for President. This would head off Seward and please Greeley, whose predilection for an "available" candidate was only equalled by his growing distrust of the New York Senator. The unanimous nomination of Abraham Lincoln for United States senator and his great debate with Douglas, disclosing the incompatibility between Douglasism and Republicanism, abruptly ended this plan; but the plausible assumption that the inhabitants of a territory had a natural right to establish, as well as prohibit, slavery had made such a profound impression upon Northern Democrats that they did not hesitate to approve the Douglas doctrine regardless of its unpopularity in the South.

In the summer of 1858, candidates for governor were nominated in New York. The Republican convention, convened at Syracuse on the 8th of September, like its predecessor in 1856, was divided into Weed and anti-Weed delegates. The latter, composed of Know-Nothings, Radicals of Democratic antecedents, and remnants of the prohibition party, wanted Timothy Jenkins for governor. Jenkins was a very skilful political organiser. He had served Oneida County as district attorney and for six years in Congress, and he now had the united support of many men who, although without special influence, made a very formidable showing. But Weed was not looking in that direction. His earliest choice was Simeon Draper of New York City, whom he had thrust aside two years before, and when sudden financial embarrassment rendered Draper unavailable, he encouraged the candidacy of James H. Cook of Saratoga until Jenkins' strength alarmed him. Then he took up Edwin D. Morgan, and for the first time became a delegate to a state convention.

Weed found a noisy company at Syracuse. Horace Greeley as usual was in a receptive mood. The friends of George Patterson thought it time for his promotion. Alexander S. Diven of Elmira, a state senator and forceful speaker, who subsequently served one term in Congress, had several active, influential backers, while John A. King's friends feebly resisted his retirement. The bulk of the Americans opposed Edwin D. Morgan because of his broad sympathies with foreign-born citizens; but Weed clung to him, and on the first ballot he received 116 of the 254 votes. Jenkins got 51 and Greeley 3. On the next ballot one of Greeley's votes went to Jenkins, who received 52 to 165 for Morgan. Robert Campbell of Steuben was then nominated for lieutenant-governor by acclamation and Seward's senatorial course unqualifiedly indorsed.

Edwin D. Morgan was in his forty-eighth year. He had been alderman, merchant, and railroad president; for four years in the early fifties he served as a state senator; more recently, he had acted as chairman of the Republican state committee and of the Republican national convention. Weed did not have Morgan's wise, courageous course as war governor, Union general, and United States senator to guide him, but he knew that his personal character was of the highest, his public life without stain, and that he had wielded the power of absolute disinterestedness. Morgan was a fine specimen of manhood. He stood perfectly erect, with well poised head, his large, lustrous eyes inviting confidence; and the urbanity of his manner softening the answers that showed he possessed a mind of his own. No man among his contemporaries had a larger number of devoted friends. He was a New Englander by birth. More than one person of his name and blood in Connecticut was noted for public spirit, but none developed greater courage, or evidenced equal sagacity and efficiency.

For several weeks before the convention, the Americans talked of a fusion ticket with the Republicans, and to encourage the plan both state conventions met at the same time and place. In sentiment they were in substantial accord, and men like Washington Hunt, the former governor, and James O. Putnam, hoped for union. Hunt had declined to join the Republican party at its formation, and, in 1856, had followed Fillmore into the ranks of the Americans; but their division in 1857 disgusted him, and, with Putnam and many others, he was now favourable to a fusion of the two parties. After conferring for two days, however, the Republicans made the mistake of nominating candidates for governor and lieutenant-governor before agreeing upon a division of the offices, at which the Americans took offence and put up a separate ticket, with Lorenzo Burrows for governor. Burrows was a man of considerable force of character, a native of Connecticut, and a resident of Albion. He had served four years in Congress as a Whig, and in 1855 was elected state comptroller as a Know-Nothing.

The failure of the fusionists greatly pleased the Democrats, who, in spite of the bitter contest for seats in the New York City delegation, exhibited confidence and some enthusiasm at their state convention on September 15. The Softs, led by Daniel E. Sickles, represented Tammany; the Hards, marshalled by Fernando Wood, were known as the custom-house delegation. In 1857, the city delegates had been evenly divided between the two factions; but this year the Softs, confident of their strength, insisted upon having their entire delegation seated, and, on a motion to make Horatio Seymour temporary chairman, they proved their control by a vote of 54 to 35. The admission of Tammany drew a violent protest from Fernando Wood and his delegates, who then left the convention in a body amidst a storm of hisses and cheers.

A strong disposition existed to nominate Seymour for governor. Having been thrice a candidate and once elected, however, he peremptorily declined to stand. This left the way open to Amasa J. Parker, an exceptionally strong candidate, but one who had led the ticket to defeat in 1856. John J. Taylor of Oswego, whose congressional career had been limited to a single term because of his vote for the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854, became the nominee for lieutenant-governor by acclamation. In its platform, the convention very cunningly resolved that it was "content" to have the American people judge President Buchanan's administration by its acts, and that it "hailed with satisfaction" the fact that the people of Kansas had settled the Lecompton question by practically making the territory a free State.

Thus Parker stood for Buchanan and popular sovereignty, while the Republicans denounced the Lecompton trick as a wicked scheme to subvert popular sovereignty. It was a sharp issue. The whole power of the Administration had been invoked to carry out the Lecompton plan, and New York congressmen were compelled to support it or be cast aside. But in their speeches, Parker and his supporters sought to minimise the President's part and to magnify the Douglas doctrine. It was an easy and plausible way of settling the slavery question, and one which commended itself to those who wished it settled by the Democratic party. John Van Buren's use of it recalled something of the influence and power that attended his speeches in the Free-soil campaign of 1848. Since that day he had been on too many sides, perhaps, to command the hearty respect of any, but he loved fair play, which the Lecompton scheme had outraged, and the application of the doctrine that seemed to have brought peace and a free State to the people appealed to him as a correct principle of government that must make for good. He presented it in the clear, impassioned style for which he was so justly noted. His speeches contained much that did not belong in the remarks of a statesman; but, upon the question of popular sovereignty, as illustrated in Kansas, John Van Buren prepared the way in New York for the candidacy and coming of Douglas in 1860.

Roscoe Conkling, now for the first time a candidate for Congress, exhibited something of the dexterity and ability that characterised his subsequent career. The public, friends and foes, did not yet judge him by a few striking and picturesque qualities, for his vanity, imperiousness, and power to hate had not yet matured, but already he was a close student of political history, and of great capacity as an orator. The intense earnestness of purpose, the marvellous power of rapidly absorbing knowledge, the quickness of wit, and the firmness which Cato never surpassed, marked him then, as afterward upon the floor of Congress, a mighty power amidst great antagonists. Perhaps his anger was not so quickly excited, nor the shafts of his sarcasm so barbed and cruel, but his speeches—dramatic, rhetorical, with the ever-present, withering sneer—were rapidly advancing him to leadership in central New York. A quick glance at his tall, graceful form, capacious chest, and massive head, removed him from the class of ordinary persons. Towering above his fellows, he looked the patrician. It was known, too, that he had muscle as well as brains. Indeed, his nomination to Congress had been influenced somewhat by the recent assault on Charles Sumner. "Preston Brooks won't hurt him," said the leader of the Fifth Ward, in Utica.[496]

[Footnote 496: Alfred R. Conkling, Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, p. 77.]

The keynote of the campaign, however, was not spoken until Seward made his historic speech at Rochester on October 25. The October success in Pennsylvania had thrilled the Republicans; and the New York election promised a victory like that of 1856. Whatever advantage could be gained by past events and future expectations was now Seward's. Lincoln's famous declaration, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," had been uttered in June, and his joint debate with Douglas, concluded on October 15, had cleared the political atmosphere, making it plain that popular sovereignty was not the pathway for Republicans to follow. Seward's utterance, therefore, was to be the last word in the campaign.

It was not entirely clear just what this utterance would be. Seward had shown much independence of late. In the preceding February his course on the army bill caused severe comment. Because of difficulties with the Mormons in Utah it was proposed to increase the army; but Republicans objected, believing the additional force would be improperly used in Kansas. Seward, however, spoke and voted for the bill. "He is perfectly bedevilled," wrote Senator Fessenden; "he thinks himself wiser than all of us."[497] Later, in March, he caught something of the popular-sovereignty idea—enough, at least, to draw a mild protest from Salmon P. Chase. "I regretted," he wrote, "the apparent countenance you gave to the idea that the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty will do for us to stand upon for the present."[498] Seward did not go so far as Greeley and Raymond, but his expressions indicated that States were to be admitted with or without slavery as the people themselves decided. Before, he had insisted that Congress had the right to make conditions; now, his willingness cheerfully to co-operate with Douglas and other "new defenders of the sacred cause in Kansas" seemed to favour a new combination, if not a new party. In other words, Seward had been feeling his way until it aroused a faint suspicion that he was trimming to catch the moderate element of his party. If he had had any thought of harmony of feeling between Douglas and the Republicans, however, the Lincoln debate compelled him to abandon it, and in his speech of October 25 he confined himself to the discussion of the two radically different political systems that divided the North and the South.

[Footnote 497: James S. Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, p. 379.]

[Footnote 498: Warden, Life of Chase, p. 343.]

The increase in population and in better facilities for internal communication, he declared, had rapidly brought these two systems into close contact, and collision was the result. "Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free labour nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labour, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men."[499]

[Footnote 499: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 351.]

It was one of the most impressive and commanding speeches that had ever come from his eloquent lips, but there was nothing new in it. As early as 1848 he had made the antagonism between freedom and slavery the leading feature of a speech that attracted much attention at the time, and in 1856 he spoke of "an ancient and eternal conflict between two entirely antagonistic systems of human labour." Indeed, for ten years, in company with other distinguished speakers, he had been ringing the changes on this same idea. Only four months before, Lincoln had proclaimed that "A house divided against itself cannot stand."[500] Yet no one had given special attention to it. But now the two words, "irrepressible conflict," seemed to sum up the antipathy between the two systems, and to alarm men into a realisation of the real and perhaps the immediate danger that confronted them. "Hitherto," says Frederick W. Seward in the biography of his father, "while it was accepted and believed by those who followed his political teachings, among his opponents it had fallen upon unheeding ears and incredulous minds. But now, at last, the country was beginning to wake up to the gravity of the crisis, and when he pointed to the 'irrepressible conflict' he was formulating, in clear words, a vague and unwilling belief that was creeping over every intelligent Northern man."[501]