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[ftD #1359] The Democratic Party split over slavery.

One good theory deserves another.

SOURCE: John Remington Graham, A Constitutional History of Secession, pp. 265; 277-83.

There had been a string of events, obviously moved by the same interests and tending in the same direction, starting with the mass marketing of Uncle Tom's Cabin, then the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which was followed by the Kansas Civil War in 1855 and 1856, and then the case of Dred Scott in 1856 and 1857, then Buchanan's recommendation of the Lecompton Constitution in 1858. It is an insult to human intelligence to insist that these events occurred because of broad forces in history, and were not the planned results of a factious conspiracy.
A few days before his death on March 31, 1850, John Calhoun spoke of the future in conversation with a friend. "The Union is doomed to dissolution," he said, "I fix its probable occurrence within twelve years." He concluded, "It will explode in a Presidential election."
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Slavery was dying more rapidly in the South upon the election of Abraham Lincoln than the feudal system was dying in England upon the accession of Henry VIII. The institution was in fact dying a natural and humane death. Yet only two years before William Seward had wildly exclaimed that there was an "irrepressible conflict" over this lingering quasi-feudal anachronism, which, he claimed, was about to overwhelm the United States. Hysterically he warned that "the rye fields of Massachusetts and the wheat fields of New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York must become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men!"
In hearing or reading such bizarre comments by Yankee demagogues, the people of the Southern States reckoned the growing weakness of their position within the Union. Even abolitionists among them feared turbulent upheaval in their society at the hands of uncomprehending fanatics from the North. Slavery was a delicate and difficult problem to address, and, as John Randolph of Roanoke and countless others learned, freedom sometimes created more problems than it solved. Therefore, Southerners made tentative plans to escape from the Union. It was not reality, but falsehood which induced the fulfillment of Calhoun's forecast.
On May 24, 1860, the United States Senate adopted seven resolutions which had been introduced by Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. The first of these resolutions read,

"Resolved, That, in the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the States adopting the same acted severally as free and independent Sovereignties, delegating a portion of their powers to be exercised by the Federal Government for the increased security of each against dangers, domestic and as well as foreign; and that any intermeddling by any one or more States, or by a combination of their citizens, with the domestic institutions of the others, on any pretext whatever, political, moral, or religious, with a view to their disturbance or subversion, is in violation of the Constitution, insulting to the States so interfered with, endangers their peace and tranquility -- objects for which the Constitution was formed --, and, by necessary consequence, tends to weaken and destroy the Union itself."

This language was adopted on vote of thirty-six against nineteen in the United States Senate. Voting in favor, as might be expected, were both senators from most of the Southern States, but also both senators from California, Indiana, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, as well as one senator from Ohio and one from New Jersey. Both senators from Delaware and both senators from Illinois abstained.
The first resolution began with an affirmation that the Union is a confederacy of free, sovereign, and independent States. From this premise, viewed in light of constitutional history, the right of secession ineluctably follows. The vote adopting this resolution was a posthumous tribute to John Calhoun's view of the Union as expressed in his debate with Daniel Webster in 1833. It was a view that was about to be trashed by politicians resembling the crusaders who took Constantinople, and thereby caused the final decline of the Byzantine Empire, but in the end failed to reach the Holy Land.
As Davis' resolutions were considered in the United States Senate, the nominating conventions of the major political parties began to meet. The democratic party was then an alliance of conservatives in the North and the South. The alliance had no clear objective except to maintain stability in unsettled times. The party may have been bland and uninspiring, yet it had long controlled Congress and the White House, and it offered the only electable alternative to unrest and calamity within the Union, which was a humble but inestimable virtue in politics.
The leading candidate for nomination by the democratic party as President was Stephen Douglas of Illinois. By this time, many informed Southern politicians were wise to Douglas. They knew that he had sold out the transcontinental railroad route through Louisiana and Texas for worthless concessions in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. They knew that Douglas preached a program desired by financiers in Philadelphia and New York. Such was the main bone of contention which this faction of Southern politicians had with Douglas.
It was increasingly obvious to thinking men in the South that geography barred their peculiar institution in the Federal territories. No amount of argument can change the unanswerable reality that, outside of Kansas where they were doomed before they started, planters from the Dixie States had made no serious effort to import slaves into the huge land mass affected by Compromise of 1850 and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. They made no serious effort, because there was nothing attractive to them in those vast stretches. And the proof of this stubborn fact is that in 1860 there were no slaves at all in the New Mexico, Utah, and Washington Territories, none in the Indian or Oklahoma Territory, none in the Dakota Territory, virtually none in the Kansas Territory which entered the Union as a free State in 1861, and barely more than a dozen in the Nebraska Territory, nor was there a prospect that more would ever arrive.
[nc note: the 1860 census indicates there were 29 slaves in Utah, 15 in Nebraska, 44 total slaves in the territories. In addition, there were 303 free blacks in the territories -- CO, NE, NV, NM, UT, WA]
The burning issue for Southern democrats was the transcontinental railroad, because it would have been of great value to their region of the United States as a stimulus to modernize their economy and society, and thereby to help phase out slavery.
The old party met in Charleston on April 23, 1860, to nominate candidates for President and Vice President. Compromised by railroad and allied financial interests Douglas was. But he was the front runner. And he was a practical man: -- he would pick a Southerner to run with him for Vice President; moreover, he would be indebted to the South for his election, and so would be obliged to repay with a political quid pro quo. The lesson on the nature of politics to be learned from this episode is augmented by an additional fact: -- nobody knew it at the time, but Douglas had only months to live, for he died on June 3, 1861. Which means that, if he had been elected, Douglas would not have been President very long, and the new President would have been a Southerner.
The anti-Douglas faction had a grievance, but they lacked vision. At the convention in Charleston, they prevented the nomination of Douglas after fifty-seven ballots, and thereby produced an irreparable split in the party on whose unity their best available option depended. Eight Southern delegations staged a walkout, using as their pretext the failure of a meaningless resolution denying the right of a territorial legislature to prohibit slavery. In the midst of this senseless political wreckage, the convention adjourned on May 3, 1860.
The stronger wing of the old party reconvened in Baltimore, and, on June 18, 1860, while calling themselves "union" democrats, they nominated Stephen Douglas of Illinois as President and Hershel Johnson of Georgia as Vice President. Their platform stipulated that, as to "the institution of slavery within the territories, the democratic party will abide by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States," which sounded safe and respectable enough to limit controversy. And their platform stated further that the democratic party "will pledge such constitutional government aid as will assure the construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast at the earliest practicable period." And that was a real question, because the railroad given reference had already been planned for the central route through the Nebraska Territory.
The Southern wing of the democratic party later met, first in Richmond then in Baltimore, and calling themselves "national" democrats, they voted their nominations on June 28, 1860: -- John Breckenridge of Kentucky for President and Joseph Lane of Oregon for Vice President. Breckenridge was then Vice President of the United States, undoubtedly qualified by character, temperament, and experience to be President. His heroic career as a patriot and statesman is a story in itself. In reluctantly accepting the nomination, he hoped that he might persuade Douglas to step aside or make concessions, and thereby to help reunify the party and win the election.
The platform of the "national" democrats pledged that any territory with sufficient population should be freely admitted as a State of the Union "whether its constitution prohibits or recognizes slavery," -- an obligatory platitude without real significance, since none of the existing territories would under any circumstances seek to become a State allowing slavery. Their platform then promised support of legislation "to the extent of the constitutional authority of Congress, for the construction of a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, at the earliest practicable moment." But this railroad was understood by the "national" democrats to be along the shorter route through Louisiana and Texas, or a least a route selected as part of a compromise in which the Southern States had a real voice.
And if the split between the democrats was not bad enough, the rump of old whigs formed a constitutional union party which met in Baltimore and on May 9, 1860, nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice President with an empty slogan for a platform, -- "the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws."
It is common belief that this splintering of conservative and moderate votes happened by misfortune or accident. But a situation characterized by two democratic tickets with seemingly identical platforms, and a similar third ticket running on a mere shibboleth, is simply too pronounced and absurd not to be suspicious. Sophisticated politicians were involved in this scenario. They foresaw the obvious consequences of their splintering, and they would not have permitted it unless they had been skillfully manipulated by the kind of money men who perennially supply the life blood of political campaigns. Three parties were manipulated, not to win, but to lose the election, because those pulling the strings had their eyes on the republican party, then the epicenter of radical politics in the United States.
Breckenridge was not able to make a deal with Douglas. Those controlling Douglas did not give him enough latitude. They had invested their capital in a central route for a transcontinental railroad, and none other was acceptable to them. It may be fairly surmised that these capitalists were in the circle of financiers who had secured repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and paid the "border ruffians" who started the Kansas Civil War.
And the money men who had induced the splintering between the two wings of the democratic party, also worked hand in glove with the money men behind the republican party. In order to swing the election their way, they weakened the conservative and moderate vote by splintering it, then supported the radical vote as a united front. The coordinated interaction between the two groups may be inferred insofar as men generally intend the foreseeable consequences of their acts, and the foreseeable consequences of events then operated to produce a crisis likely to induce the secession of Southern States.
The final element, absolutely crucial to the larger plan then unhatching, was to assure that secession, when it occurred, would erupt in a civil war. On May 16, 1860, the republican convention met in Chicago, and two days later nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois for President and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for Vice President. Their platform announced, "We hold in abhorrence all schemes of Disunion, come from whatever source they may," thus assuring that, when the republicans took over the direction of the Union and the anticipated secession of Southern States occurred, military force would be used to prevent it. That would guarantee a bloody and expensive conflict.
And in order to excite passions against the people of the South -- a necessary ingredient in inducing fellow Americans to kill each other in battle --, the republican platform stated that "the new dogma that the Constitution of its own force carries slavery into any or all of the territories is a dangerous political heresy." This new dogma was a political heresy, indeed worse than a political heresy: -- it was made respectable by a judicial heresy of the United States Supreme Court which rejected the jurisprudence of the South on the emancipation of slaves. It was particularly dangerous, not because Southern planters had any realistic hope of implanting slavery in the territories, but because impassioned debate about this unreal possibility created an inflammatory atmosphere of misunderstanding and hatred.
The election of Abraham Lincoln as President was thereby assured, -- "rigged" would be a more accurate and realistic word. He carried eighteen States in the North, one county in Missouri, and one county in Kentucky, but not a single State in the South. So certain in advance was the outcome that Lincoln could afford the luxury of not giving even one campaign speech. He simply sat at home and waited for his election victory on November 6, 1860.
As was anticipated by all informed observers, there was an explosion in the Southern States when the election results became known.