History is full
of ironies and that is frequently true when it comes to American elections.
In 1852 the
Democratic Party had won a sweeping electoral landslide that has served as the
death knell for the Whig Party, in large because the latter party had fallen
victim to sectional divides based on the issues of slavery. Now just eight
years later, the Democratic Party was on the verge of a similar sectional
fracture only the stakes were far higher for the party and the nation.
One of the major
reasons for the Democratic Party's fracture had been because of Stephen Douglas
and his own desire to be President. His own career was full of ironies. He had
helped salvage the Compromise of 1850 which had seemed to finally put the bed question
of slavery. Then just four years later, in large part due to his own ambitions
he had introduced the question of popular sovereignty into the national
dialogue which had reignited the embers of the debate and assured that they had
never fully gone away ever since. His decision to make himself the strong man
of the party had undercut the Presidency of Franklin Pierce and he had proven
himself the biggest adversary to the new President James Buchanan in so much of
the Congressional battles that had taken up the last four years. And in running
for reelection for the Senate he had exposed the flaws in his political theory
in a way to permanently making himself unacceptable to the South as a
Presidential candidate.
By the time 1860
began much of the South was openly hoping for secession. In direct response to
John Brown's raid Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis introduced a series of
resolutions to protect slavery in all U.S. territory. In one he stated that
neither Congress nor the legislatures of any territories 'possessed the power
to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen…to take his slave
into the common territories." He didn't ask for a floor debate, instead
placing them before the Senate Democratic caucus. He had no intention of
putting it before the Senate floor for the vote, the sole purpose was to get
the language into the Democratic platform and crush any hope Douglas might have
for popular sovereignty. Under the strategy of Alabama's Bill Yancey (coached
by that old secessionist Barnwell Rhett) Alabama's Democratic leaders to demand
this language in the platform and failing that bolt the convention. The goal
was simple: tear the party asunder causing a Democratic defeat and a likely
southern rebellion.
Rhett could see
on the horizon the Southern independence he spent a decade hoping for but the
course of events had increasingly put South Carolina – and much of the rest of
the South on his side. He was hoping events at the upcoming convention, which
was to be held in Charleston that April, would prove conclusive.
Buchanan had
declined to run for reelection, making Douglas the frontrunner for the
nomination. But with both the South opposed to him and the necessity for a
two-thirds majority of the delegates to win the nomination, things looked grim.
Other men wanted it, including Buchanan's own Vice President John C.
Breckinridge but Douglas was the overwhelming contender.
The problems
began well before that with the issue of the platform. Douglas was in a bind.
If he made the slave code part of the platform, he was told by an Ohio
representative that both Ohio and seven other Northwestern states would retire
from the convention. If the slave code was spurned, however, seven southern delegations
made it clear they would bolt. And it was clear that Alabama and its brethren
had no intention of compromising.
The fact the
convention took place in Charleston was not lost on most Americans. It was by
far the most aristocratic city in the South, and therefore the most determined
not to see change its 'peculiar institution'. Some northern delegates would
visit the plantations for themselves and would come away with the opinion
"the yoke is rather light in these parts" with the slaves 'appearing
to be happy and well-contended." It goes without saying the slave masters
did everything to put the best possible face on the treatment of the slaves and
it likely would not have made a difference with the Democrats in the north.
They wanted to modulate the issue in order to prevent the rupture of their
party and the disaster they foresaw it might bring. That many of the fire-eaters
wanted that very disaster was another reality they chose to blind
themselves too.
303 delegates
were present when the convention was gaveled into session. 202 votes would be
needed to nominate a President, while 152 would be needed for any other
decisions. The early votes in procedural demonstrated Douglas and his delegates
had the majority support but lacked the 2/3 for most things. By this point some
Douglas men were acting thinking that if the ultra-southern delegates left it
might be a blessing. If only 30 or 40 men walked out, Douglas might be able to
get the required two-thirds.
On April 27th
the first test came from the platform committee. A majority report, prepared by
two southerners, essentially echoed Jefferson Davis's slave code language as
part of the platform. The minority report, by contrast, skirted the issue
declaring property rights in states and territories best left to the Supreme
Court, essentially arguing the Dred Scott decision had resolved.
The debate for
the majority was led by William Yancey. For ninety minutes he delighted his
followers castigating his Northern brethren for refusing to defend Southern
rights under the principle the constitutions are made 'solely for the
protection of the minorities in government." He denied, with a straight
face, that he and his colleagues were not 'disunionists, per se" but
merely patriotic Americans seeking to redress long-standing grievances."
"Ours is the
property invaded; ours are the institutions which are at stake; ours is the
peace that is to be destroyed…ours is the honor at stake. Slave code approval
was the only basis upon which Alabama can associate with the Democratic Party."
The electrifying
eloquence of Yancey was met and surpassed by Ohio Senator George Pugh. He
delivered a complete rebuttal that scored southern Democrats for undermining
their party in the North with incessant and increasingly outlandish demands and
then taunting the northern party for losing political influence as a result of
doing so. Now the South was demanded that Northern Democrats 'prostrate
themselves with their mouths in the dust. Gentlemen of the South," he
famously said. "you mistake us – you mistake us. We will not do it."
If the South's party loyalty required this debasement, then the southern
dissidents might as well leave.
Despite an
adjournment to stop the convention from descending into complete chaos, the
following day the minority report passed by a bare majority of the delegates:
165-138. All but 11 of the votes in favor of it came from free states. Immediately
afterwards the Southern delegates walked out, led first by Alabama, followed by
Mississippi, Louisiana, all but two of South Carolina's delegates, Florida,
Texas, some of Arkansas' and a third of Delaware's.
With 50 delegates
gone, the Douglas men hoped the walkout wouldn't spread and therefore would
enhance their man's chance of getting the nomination. But Chairman Caleb
Cushing, while from Massachusetts but with no admiration for Douglas delivered
a blow. Rather than allowing 169 delegates to give the nomination (two-thirds
of the 253 remaining) he made it clear it would still take 202 delegates. This
excluded the possibility of Douglas – or indeed any candidate – from getting
the nomination.
Three days and an
unprecedented 57 ballots achieved nothing. After ten days the convention
adjourned with the stipulation that they would reconvene in Baltimore on June
18th to resume the selection process. By that point it was clear
that any nomination Douglas received would be worthless. On the day of the
walkout the Southerners planned to have a meeting on June 11th where
they would establish a new Democratic Party.
They would wait
until after the official party met in Baltimore to select a candidate/ The
delegates confronted the question of whether to seat those who had walked out
in Charleston or replacement figures chosen by party officials in several
states. Again they were forced into a corner. If they sat the walkout men,
Douglas's candidacy would be destroyed. If they sat replacements, the party
would be. Cushing ducked the controversy by sending it to the credentials
committee. After three days struggle, they crafted two separate reports.
The majority
report favored seating the replacement delegates from Alabama and Louisiana as
well as half of those from Georgia and 2 from Alabama. The convention embraced
it. But after that Cushing recognized Virginia delegate Charles Russell, who
announced that the majority of his delegation was walking out. So did the
majority of the North Carolina delegation and half of Maryland's.
Douglas received
the nomination he had hoped for all his life but he knew was the nominee of a
shell of the party he had served. His nomination of Herschel Johnson of Georgia
as Vice President was meaningless considering the fact that the anti-Douglas faction,
held there own gathering in Baltimore. Cushing resigned the presidency of his
party and then led the Southern Democrats.
The Southern
Democrats (as they would be known in the historical archives) would fully
embrace the slave code advocacy and call for the acquisition of Cuba, where
they hoped to expand slavery. They would nominate the incumbent Vice President
John C. Breckinridge of Virginia as their presidential candidate and Joseph
Lane of Oregon (still only a territory) as Vice President. Buchanan would
endorse Breckinridge for President as would his predecessor Franklin Pierce.
Many Democrats
expected as Charleston dissolved into chaos 'the next President will be named
in Chicago." That was where starting May 16th the Republicans
would hold their nominated convention.
Going into that
convention the overwhelming front-runner seemed to be William Seward. There had
been many prominent Republicans leading up to the convention – Salmon P. Chase
and Ben Wade of Ohio, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts
– but their attempts to build support had fizzled. That left only a single
contender – Abraham Lincoln.
The previous
February he had given his famous Cooper Union speech in which he made it clear
about how slavery was morally wrong. "The whole atmosphere must be
disinfected from all taint an opposition to slavery before they cease to
believe all their troubles proceed from us. Their thinking it right and our
thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole
controversy."
This speech
caused an immediate stir and was published in four New York City newspapers.
Editors William Cullen Bryant and Horace Greeley had wanted to get Lincoln to
the city as part of a stop-Seward movement. They were part of a Republican contingent who were skeptical of
the New Yorker's chances of carrying Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana and New
Jersey. Fremont's failure to carry those four states four years earlier had
ensured Buchanan's victory and they did not want to make the same mistake this
time. Indeed going into the convention gubernatorial candidates in Indiana and
Pennsylvania warned party leaders that if Seward was at the top of the ticket,
their campaigns would be hopeless.
Seward's problem
was his blunt-toned rhetoric and his embrace of 'higher law' had stamped him as
a bit of radical. He was also a scourge of the Know-Nothing movement, which
while it was no longer a political party still faced lingering hostility. Lincoln's
relative obscurity and his decision to seek the middle ground, made him seem
like a moderate. It helped matters immensely that the convention was to take
place in Lincoln's home state.
They would pack
the convention halls with full-throated loyalists to overwhelm Seward's men and
made sure the Seward delegation was scattered to make conferring more
difficult. They printed counterfeit admission tickets in order to supplant
Seward die-hards with Lincoln men. And Lincoln's campaign leader David Davis
cheerfully ignored the candidates admonition that 'no contracts will bind me'.
Davis would dangle before the leader of Pennsylvania's delegation a cabinet
post for Simon Cameron if it would go to Lincoln on the second ballot. (They
would follow through and Cameron would be named Lincoln's first Secretary of
War. However, he would quickly prove so incompetent that he would be forced out
less than a year into the administration.)
On May 17th
the second night of the convention Lincoln's team spent the entire night
entreating and cajoling every single delegation they could. Indiana agreed to
come aboard with 26 votes. They set to work on Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine
and Virginia to demonstrate support from New England on the second ballot. The
game was to procure at least 100 first ballot votes with support building in
the subsequent tallies. And he urged Lincoln partisans in the convention hall
to out scream and outshout Seward's men.
On the first
ballot, Seward had 173 1/2 of the necessary 233 for the nomination. (The
Republicans needed a simple majority of the delegates to achieve the
nomination.) But Lincoln scored 102 votes.
On the second
ballot Lincoln gained 79 votes while Seward only managed another 11. Critical
were 48 from Pennsylvania. On the third ballot Lincoln moved into the lead with
231 1/2 ballots.
Then David Carter
of Ohio rose. His state had gone in behind Salmon Chase but in the second
ballot fourteen members of the delegation had gone to Lincoln. Now he transferred
three of the remaining votes to Lincoln, earning him the nomination. The vice
presidential slot went to Hannibal Hamlin of Maine.
While all of this
was unfolding a collection of old line politicians, dismayed by the acidic
effect of the strife over slavery gathered at Baltimore to establish a new
party. They called themselves the Constitutional Union Party and its members
included Southern whigs still clinging to the Union, lingering Know-Nothings
from the south and even some slavery issue moderates from a cross the country.
They nominated for President John Bell of Tennessee; a Whig whose lack of color
belied his resume. Bell had represented Tennessee in the House for seven terms,
briefly serving as Speaker. He had been William Henry Harrison's secretary of
War and had left after Tyler assumed power. After that he had served two terms
in the Senate. His Vice President was Edward Everett of Massachusetts, one the
representative of the Cotton Whigs and now completely out of favor in his
state. The platform was less 100 words and didn't mention slavery at all.
Looking back it
seems strange that of the four candidates for President in 1860 the
overwhelming favorite was at the time the most obscure. Lincoln wasn't even on in
the ballot in the south and the campaign would quickly divide among section lines.
Lincoln vs. Douglas in the North, Breckinridge vs. Bell in the South. Given
that Lincoln had an overwhelming position of strength in the North, the only
thing that might possibly give any of the three candidates a chance to win was
if no candidate could get a majority of the electoral vote. In that case, as in
1824, the election would go to the House of Representatives where the top three
vote getters in the electoral college would vie for the prize and each states
delegation would get one vote.
The only
realistic possibility for that to happen was if the opposition parties could
fuse together and pull the anti-Lincoln votes under one banner. Several men who
favored Breckinridge in New York met with representatives from Douglas and Everett
to do so. A meeting was called on September 9th with particular
emphasis on pooling financial resources. However on the 15th it
collapsed under the wait of partisan animosity, particularly when the
Breckinridge men refused to accept Douglas's faction insisting that any fusion
ticket run on popular sovereignty.
The South knew
that Lincoln was likely to be the next President and they refused to accept his
moderate remarks on the issue of slavery being inseparable from those of the
very abolitionists who considered him insufficiently radical on the issue. He
went out of his way to make it clear that the Constitution sanctioned slavery,
fugitive slave laws were a constitutional mandate and that he didn't place
blacks on an equal social footing as whites. None of this mattered. Lincoln
thought that slavery was a moral wrong and in their minds that made him no
different from Garrison on the subject.
Stephen Douglas
knew his path to the Presidency was nearly impossible and in what was unprecedented
at that time, he took the stump and traveled the South in particular trying to
convince them of fealty to the Union where secessionism seemed inevitable. In a
speech in Virginia he made it clear where he stood:
"If Abraham
Lincoln be elected President of the United States will the Southern States be
justified in seceding from the Union? To this I emphatically answer no. The
election of a man to the Presidency by the American people, in conformity with
the Constitution of the United States would not justify any attempt at dissolving
this glorious confederacy.
If the Southern states
secede from the Union upon the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, before he
commits an overt act against their constitutional rights, will you advocate or
vindicate resistance by force to their secession. I answer empathically that it
is the duty of the President of the United States and all others in authority
under him, to enforce the laws of the United States as passed by Congress and
the courts expound him….And I, as in duty bound by my oath of fidelity to the
Constitution, would do all in my power to aid the government of the United
States in maintaining the supremacy of the laws against all resistance to them,
come from what quarter they may."
It was a fervent
speech for the Union. But it did nothing to improve his prospects.
After the returns
were counted, Lincoln had been elected President with what remains today the
smallest percentage of the popular vote in history, not even forty percent of
the vote. Douglas had carried 29.5 percent, Breckinridge 18 percent and Bell
12.6 percent. But electorally the math was different. Lincoln carried Pennsylvania,
Illinois and Indiana, three states Fremont had not carried in 1856. Combined
with 4 of New Jersey's 7 electoral votes (Douglas carried the rest) they were
enough to give him a majority in the electoral college for what would be a
total of 180 electoral votes. Douglas would only carry Missouri along with New
Jersey's three. Bell carried Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia for 39 while
Breckinridge carried the remaining 72 of the South.
Beyond that, it
was hard to read the tea leaves in Congress. The Republicans maintained control
of the House even though they would lose 8 seats and the Democrats lost six
seats but still were tied with the Republicans for control of the Senate. (Only
after the South seceded and the majority of the Southern Senators left with
their states did the Republicans gain control of the Senate.)
What was clear
from the results is that overwhelming the voting people believed in unity.
Combined Lincoln, Douglas and Bell accounted for more than 80 percent of the popular
vote and Bell had outperformed Breckinridge in many parts of the South.
Regardless of the opinions of the scourge of slavery all three of these people
believed in the preservation of the Union something Breckinridge and his
followers were not inclined to endorse any more.
But to the South
all that mattered was Lincoln's victory. On November 7th 1860, with
news of the triumph of Lincoln’s victory just a few hours old, South Carolina
District Judge Andrew McGrath closed the latest term with a starling
announcement: because secession was inevitable, he was resigning his judgeship.
While South
Carolina had been at the forefront of the secessionist movement few had thought
that McGrath, who had always been on the side of the cooperationist part of the
divide in his home state, would be the one to lead the secessionist movement.
Yet he was the first member of the first state to secede from the Union.
Three days later
the South Carolina state senate approved legislation and called for a convention
of delegates to consider secession. Two days after that both South Carolina senators
James Chestnut and James Hammond resigned their seats. Barnwell Rhett's dream
of secession was about to become a reality.
In my conclusion
to this series I will end this series where I began: with how Garrison and
Rhett's fates after secession became a reality and how their world view colors
both of the extreme parts of political debate to this day.
