Battle Cry of Freedom

by James M. McPherson

  While this passion mobilized a large Republican vote, it deepened the foreboding that drove many ex-Whigs to vote for Buchanan or Fill-more. The Pierce administration also took steps to defuse the Kansas time bomb. Overwhelmed by his inability to control the violence there, territorial Governor Wilson Shannon resigned in August. Pierce replaced him with John W. Geary, whose six-foot five frame and fearless manner made him a commanding figure. Only thirty-six years old, Geary had pursued several careers with success: attorney, civil engineer, Mexican War officer who had led an assault at Chapultepec, and the first mayor of San Francisco, where he had subdued outlaws in that wide-open city. If anyone could pacify Kansas in time to save the Democrats, Geary was the man. He reportedly said that he went to Kansas "carrying a Presidential candidate on his shoulders."34 By facing down guerilla bands from both sides and using federal troops (whose numbers in Kansas reached 1,300) with boldness and skill, Geary suppressed nearly all of the violence by October. Kansas ceased to bleed—temporarily at least.

  The dawn of peace in Kansas brought some disaffected northern Democrats back into the fold. As they took stock of the greater number of northern than southern settlers in the territory, they saw that popular sovereignty might make Kansas a free state after all. While 20 percent or more of traditional Democrats in the upper North appear to have

  32. Gienapp, "Origins of the Republican Party," 1042; Nevins, Ordeal, II, 487.

  33. Hendrick Booraem V, The Formation of the Republican Party in New York: Politicsand Conscience in the Antebellum North (New York, 1983), 190; Nichols and Klein, "Election of 1856," in Schlesinger, ed., History of Presidential Elections, II, 1031.

  34. Nevins, Ordeal, II, 484n

  voted Republican in 1856, the figure in the lower North was probably 10 percent or less.35 This partial resurgence from the disaster of 1854 enabled the party to recoup some of its earlier losses. From only 25 seats in the House, northern Democrats rebounded to 53, though they were still outnumbered by 75 southern Democrats and 92 Republicans.36 Most important, while Frémont carried eleven northern states with 114 electoral votes, Buchanan carried the remaining five (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois along with California) with 62, which added to his 112 from the South gave him a comfortable margin. Buchanan was a minority president in the popular vote, however, having won 45 percent of that vote nationally—56 percent in the South and 41 percent in the North.37

  Southerners did not intend to let Buchanan forget that he owed his election mostly to them. "Mr. Buchanan and the Northern Democracy are dependent on the South," noted a Virginia judge after the election as he outlined his idea of a southern program for the next four years. "If we can succeed in Kansas, keep down the Tariff, shake off our Commercial dependence on the North and add a little more slave territory, we may yet live free men under the Stars and Stripes."38

  III

  Success in Kansas would require a bold strategy to overcome the estimated two-to-one majority of free-soil settlers. The proslavery legislature, elected by border ruffians in 1855 and still the official lawmaking body, was equal to the occasion. Meeting in January 1857, it ignored Governor Geary's request to modify the draconian slave code that prescribed the death penalty for certain antislavery acts. Instead, the legislature enacted a bill for what amounted to a rigged constitutional convention.

  35. Joel H. Silbey, The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Beforethe Civil War (New York, 1985), 96; Thomas B. Alexander, "The Dimensions of Voter Partisan Constancy in Presidential Elections from 1840 to 1860," in Stephen E. Maizlish and John J. Kushma, eds., Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860 (College Station, Texas, 1982), 75.

  36. Fourteen Americans were elected to the House. In the Senate 25 of the 37 Democrats were southerners. Twenty Republicans and five Whig-Americans (four from the upper South and one from Texas) completed the Senate roster.

  37. Frémont's share of the national popular vote was 33 percent, virtually all from the North where he won 55 percent of the total. Fillmore's share was 22 percent, consisting of 44 percent of the southern vote and 13 percent of the northern.

  38. Rawley, Race and Politics, 172.

  Specifying the election of delegates in June, the measure entrusted country sheriffs (all proslavery) with the registration of voters, and designated county commissioners (also proslavery) to choose judges of election. Given the record of previous elections in Kansas, little acumen was needed to discern the purpose of these provisions. To top them off, the bill specified that the new constitution drawn up by the convention would go into effect without a referendum.

  Geary was appalled. He had come to Kansas as a Democrat who "heartily despised" the "pernicious" doctrines of abolition. But he soon became convinced of the "criminal complicity of public officials" in trying to make Kansas a slave state "at all hazards." This started him on the path to free soil and a career as a fighting general in the Civil War and Republican governor of Pennsylvania afterwards. In 1857 he vetoed the convention bill. The legislature promptly passed it over his veto. At loggerheads with territorial officials, his life threatened almost daily, without support from the lame-duck Pierce administration, Geary resigned on March 4, 1857. After leaving Kansas he gave an interview in which he condemned its "felon legislature." Geary had put down lawless elements in the nation's toughest town, San Francisco, but Kansas proved too much for him.39

  Faced during his first days in office with the same Kansas problem that had wrecked the Pierce administration, Buchanan was determined that it should not ruin his. He prevailed upon Robert J. Walker, a Mississippian who had served with Buchanan in Polk's cabinet, to go to Kansas as territorial governor and give it a state constitution drafted by orderly process and approved by a referendum. More than a foot shorter than Geary in height, Walker was his equal in courage. But he too found Kansas more than he could handle. Though a southerner, he acknowledged that the free-state men had a majority in any fair election. The problem was that the election of delegates scheduled for June would not be fair. Arriving in Kansas at the end of May—too late to change the electoral procedures—Walker urged free-state men to participate anyway. Not wishing to sanction the legitimacy of this election, they refused. With only 2,200 of 9,250 registered voters participating, proslavery delegates won all the seats to the convention scheduled to meet at Lecompton in September.

  These farcical proceedings got Walker's governorship off on the wrong foot. His sharpest critics were fellow southerners. They opposed a referendum

  39. Ibid., 176–79; quotations from 176–77, 179.

  on the forthcoming constitution; Walker favored one. From the moment he arrived in the territory, therefore, he had to endure hostility from southerners on the ground and back East. When word came from Washington that Buchanan backed the governor's insistence on a referendum, southern Democrats rose in righteous indignation. "We are betrayed," they cried, "by an administration that went into power on [southern] votes." All four southern members of the cabinet turned against Walker. Several state legislatures and Democratic state conventions censured him. From Mississippi, Jefferson Davis denounced Walker's "treachery." Several southerners dragged out the time-honored threat to secede unless the administration fired Walker and backed down on the referendum issue.40

  This pressure caused Buchanan to cave in. The South won yet another of its Pyrrhic victories. Before this happened, however, Kansans went to the polls yet again, to elect a new territorial legislature. Walker persuaded free soilers to vote this time by promising to enforce strict fairness. But lo and behold, the initial returns seemed to indicate an astonishing proslavery victory. Closer investigation uncovered the curious phenomenon of two remote districts with 130 legal voters having reported almost 2,900 ballots. In one case some 1,600 names had been copied onto the voting rolls from an old Cincinnati city directory. Throwing out the fraudulent returns, Walker certified a free-state majority in the next territorial legislature. This action provoked more bitt
er outcries from southerners against "tampering" with the returns.

  While this furor continued, the constitutional convention completed its work at Lecompton. The document that emerged was in most respects conventional. But it 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 the same and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever." No amendment to the constitution could be made for seven years, and even after that time "no alteration shall be made to affect the rights of property in the ownership of slaves."41 Here was the solution of a problem of urgent national

  40. Thomas W. Thomas to Alexander Stephens, June 15, 1857; New Orleans Crescent, July 17, 1857; both quoted in Craven, Growth of Southern Nationalism, 284; Davis quoted in George Fort Milton, The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and theNeedless War (Boston, 1934), 267.

  41. The Lecompton constitution is printed in Daniel W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (Topeka, 1875), 134–47; the quoted clauses on slavery are from 140 and 146.

  interest, offered by a convention representing one-fifth of the potential voters in Kansas. And to make sure that those voters did not reject its handiwork, the convention decided to send the constitution and a petition for statehood to Congress without a referendum—in defiance of all pledges by Walker and Buchanan.

  With Democratic control of Congress, and southern control of the Democratic party, proslavery forces believed that this desperate gambit would succeed. But it was too barefaced for most Democrats, including some southerners, who sought a way to preserve the form of a referendum without its substance. On November 7 the convention modified its position. It now mandated a referendum, not on the whole constitution, but only on two alternative slavery clauses designated as the "Constitution with Slavery" or the "Constitution with no Slavery." This seemed fair enough—except that the constitution with no slavery specified that, while "Slavery shall no longer exist" in Kansas, "the right of property in slaves now in this Territory shall in no manner be interfered with." In effect, the constitution with no slavery merely prohibited the future importation of slaves into Kansas. Free soilers saw this choice as a Heads you win, Tails I lose proposition. They therefore denounced it as "The Great Swindle." Much of the northern Democratic press joined their Republican rivals in expressing outrage at this "dirty piece of work."42 Even if free-state men voted for the constitution with no slavery, they asked, what would stop slaveowners from smuggling human property across the 200-mile border with Missouri? Once in Kansas this property would be as "inviolable" as any other. Several southern states banned the importation of slaves, but such laws had proved meaningless. And in any case, the chances of defeating the constitution with slavery were problematical, because the convention put the polling machinery for the referendum in the hands of the same officials who had shown so much previous skill in rigging elections.

  Governor Walker denounced the outcome at Lecompton as "a vile fraud, a bare counterfeit." It was "impossible" that Buchanan would accept it, said Walker, for as recently as October 22 the president had reiterated his support for a fair referendum. But proslavery men who smiled and said that Buchanan had changed his mind were right. To one northern Democrat who bitterly protested the president's reversal, Buchanan said he had no choice: if he did not accept the results of the Lecompton convention, southern states would either "secede from the

  42. Nevins, Emergence, I, 236–37.

  Union or take up arms against him."43 Walker left Kansas never to return—the fourth governor in three years to be ground between the millstones of slavery and free soil.

  On December 3, 1857, Walker's friend Stephen A. Douglas stormed into the White House to confront Buchanan on the "trickery and juggling" of this Lecompton constitution. To give Kansas statehood under such a travesty of popular sovereignty, Douglas warned the president, would destroy the Democratic party in the North. If Buchanan insisted on going through with it, Douglas swore to oppose him in Congress. "Mr. Douglas," replied Buchanan, "I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed. . . . Beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives," two senators who had gone into political oblivion after crossing Andrew Jackson. Douglas riposted: "Mr. President, I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead, sir."44 The gage was down for a duel that would split the Democratic party and ensure the election of a Republican president in 1860.

  The "fraudulent submission" (Douglas's words) of the Lecompton constitution to Kansas voters occurred on December 21. Free soilers refused to participate in this referendum, which thereby approved the constitution "with slavery" by a vote of 6,226 to 569. (As usual, an investigation found 2,720 of the majority votes to have been fraudulent.) Meanwhile the new free-soil territorial legislature scheduled its own referendum for January 4, 1858. Voters this time would have an opportunity to accept or reject the whole constitution. Proslavery voters boycotted this referendum, which resulted in a poll of 138 for the constitution "with slavery," 24 for it "with no slavery," and 10,226 against the constitution.

  Congress now had two referenda to choose from. Fire-eaters below the Potomac heated up their rhetoric to ensure the correct choice. Yan-cey in Alabama talked of forming committees of public safety to "fire the Southern heart" and "precipitate the cotton states into a revolution." Governors and legislatures stood by to call conventions to consider secession if Congress refused to admit Kansas under the "duly ratified" Lecompton constitution. "If Kansas is driven out of the Union for being a Slave State," asked South Carolina's Senator James Hammond, "can any Slave State remain in it with honor?" The southern people, declared

  43. Milton, Eve of Conflict, 270–71.

  44. Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1973), 581–86.

  a Georgia congressman, intended "to have equality in this Union or independence out of it."45 These threats stiffened Buchanan's backbone. On February 2, 1858, he sent the Lecompton constitution to Congress with a message recommending admission of a sixteenth slave state. Kansas, proclaimed the president, "is at this moment as much a slave state as Georgia or South Carolina."46

  The Lecompton issue gripped Congress for several months. It evoked more passion than even the initial Kansas-Nebraska Act four years earlier. The lineup was the same now as then—with two significant differences: this time Douglas led the opposition; and the new Republican party dominated northern representation in the House. Douglas's political future hung in the balance. If he had supported Lecompton, southern backing for his presidential nomination in 1860 would have been assured. But in those circumstances the nomination would have been worth little. The millstone of Lecompton would sink Democratic chances of carrying any northern state. Douglas did not hesitate in his choice. He could never vote, he told the Senate, to "force this constitution down the throats of the people of Kansas, in opposition to their wishes and in violation of our pledges."47 Telegrams and letters by the bushel poured into Washington praising Douglas's stand. "You have adopted the only course that could save the Northern Democracy from annihilation at the next election," ran a typical letter.48 Douglas even had the novel experience of seeing himself lionized by such members of the opposition as Horace Greeley, who wanted to adopt him as a good Republican.

  From the South, however, came little but eternal damnation. Southerners professed "astonishment" that the Illinoisian had turned against them. "Douglas was with us until the time of trial came," said a Georgian, "then he deceived and betrayed us." A South Carolinian lamented that "this defection of Douglas has done more than all else to shake my confidence in Northern men on the slavery issue, for I have long regarded him as one of our safest and most reliable friends." As the controvercy

  45. Yancey quoted in Craven, Growth of Southern Nationalism, 289; Hammond in Johannsen, Douglas, 600; Georgia congressman in Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Southand Three Sectional Crises (Baton Rouge, 1980), 54.

 
46. James D. Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 20 vols. (Washington, 1897), VII, 3010.

  47. CG, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., 14–19.

  48. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York, 1978), 466.

  sharpened, southern rhetoric toward Douglas became more heated: he was "at the head of the Black column . . . stained with the dishonor of treachery without a parallel . . . patent double dealing . . . detestable heresies . . . filth of his defiant recreancy . . . a Dead Cock in the Pit . . . away with him to the tomb which he is digging for his political corpse."49

  With its southern-dominated Democratic majority, the Senate approved admission of Kansas as a slave state on March 23, 1858. In the House the administration could count on at least half of the northern Democrats, as in 1854. But this time that was not enough to win the battle. "Battle" was not too strong a word for events in the House. On one occasion during an all-night session Republican Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania walked over to the Democratic side to confer with a few northern Democrats. Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina shouted at him: "Go back to your side of the House, you Black Republican puppy!" Replying with a sneering remark about slave drivers, Grow grappled with Keitt and knocked him down. Congressmen from both sides rushed into the melee. "There were some fifty middle-aged and elderly gentlemen pitching into each other like so many Tipperary savages," wrote a reporter describing this 2:00 a.m. free-for-all, "most of them incapable, from want of wind and muscle, of doing each other any serious harm." But Alexander Stephens believed that "if any weapons had been on hand it would probably have been a bloody one. All things here are tending my mind to the conclusion that the Union cannot and will not last long."50 On April 1, in a dramatic roll call, 22 (of 53) northern Democrats joined the Republicans and a handful of Americans to defeat Lecompton by a vote of 120 to 112. "The agony is over," wrote a Douglas Democrat, "and thank God, the right has triumphed!"51