Without question, some Democrats in northern Mississippi hoped to defeat Davis. There was talk that Roger Barton would make yet another try, but a potentially more dangerous foe emerged in Congressman Jacob Thompson from Oxford. Eager for Davis’s seat, Thompson pushed his northern residence, asserting that it was his section’s turn for the Senate post and that Davis could wait. He also argued that in relation to the Democratic party in the presidential election of 1848, “Davis to say the very least stood in a negative position.”60
Davis met these criticisms head-on. Disturbed that any portion of the state might oppose him because he was from another, he insisted that as senator he represented all of Mississippi. As his political trek back in October showed, he always strove to shore up his position in the northern counties. As for the charge that he had been insufficiently stalwart in 1848, he wondered how many of those against him would have tried to defeat Taylor for the party’s sake, if they had had his relationship with the general-become-president. Stressing his party loyalty, Davis told Mississippi Democrats he did not want the “organization and harmony” of the party disturbed by his name coming before the caucus of Democratic legislators. He declared that no office and no candidate was important enough for “a course which might lead to such evils.” The Democratic party, strong and united, was the watchword Davis put forth.61
Davis worried needlessly. Faced with his strength, even in the north, Jacob Thompson’s candidacy never materialized. When the legislators voted on February 12, 1850, to fill the six-year term, Davis won easily. On the first ballot he received exactly one-half of the votes, 64 of 128, with perennial candidate Roger Barton in second place, gaining 33, and the remainder scattered. On the second ballot Davis’s total soared to 79 of 129, with Barton far behind at 37, and the rest again scattered. Now, after his second resounding victory in as many years, no one doubted Jefferson Davis’s political authority in his state.62
While securing his own political position, Senator Davis confronted a vexing situation with his former father-in-law and fast friend, President Taylor. He undoubtedly wanted Taylor to succeed in the White House, even though they wore different partisan uniforms. Before the inauguration he shared political confidences with Taylor’s closest advisers. After Taylor took the oath of office, they remained close, with the younger man even venturing to express candid criticism. Obviously responding to such criticism, Taylor wrote frankly in mid-September 1849 defending his administration and insisting that harmony prevailed in his cabinet. Furthermore, Taylor claimed that most citizens would be pleased with his presidency. He admitted the inevitability of “blunders,” but hurried to add that he believed they would be attributed to his head, not his heart. Then, Taylor shifted to his paternal persona, telling Davis to pursue the political course directed by his “good sense, interest, and honor.” Even if Davis ended up opposing the president, Taylor reassured him that political disagreement would not “interrupt our personal intercourse, or my esteem & friendship for you.” That pledge would undergo a stern test in the first session of the Thirty-first Congress.63
At the same time Jefferson Davis coped with a complex political world, he and Varina were trying to get beyond the emotional minefield that had lacerated their relationship since his return from Mexico. When Jefferson was in Mississippi during the summer and fall of 1849, the situation between them obviously improved substantially, because he took Varina with him when he went back to Washington. Her Memoir leaves no doubt that she thoroughly enjoyed her return to the city. Because of Jefferson’s commitment to his work, the couple did not often go out at night, but Varina delighted as before in lively conversation with notables like Representative Robert Toombs, a hearty, leonine Georgian, and Senator Daniel Webster, the majestic personage from Massachusetts. She remembered with great pleasure a “high tea” given by a leading Washington hostess for the Swedish writer Frederika Bremer, which the Davises attended along with others from the capital’s political and social elite. The couple also appeared on the guest list for a dinner given by a wealthy, influential banker, W. W. Corcoran.64
In a photograph probably taken in 1849, the twenty-three-year-old Varina Davis looks beyond the camera with brooding eyes. Her dark hair, pulled back in matronly fashion, frames a pensive expression. Full lips and a broad nose give her face a sensual quality, with an appearance youthful but not girlish. The picture portrays a purposeful young woman, and during this time Varina was certainly trying to meet the criticism her husband had earlier poured upon her. Showering endearments upon Jefferson, she talked about his “sweet eyes,” called him “sweetest” and herself “your affectionate wife.” When she thanked him for giving her Charles Dickens’s The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, she related that she most admired the character of Milly, who saved her spouse and her father-in-law through her goodness and innocence. To emphasize her efforts to improve herself, Varina reported that she had been reading Sarah Stickney Ellis’s Guide to Social Happiness, which she told her husband would not interest him because it dealt with “woman and woman’s trials,” but, she hastened to add, “it will help ‘Winnie’ to be ‘Wife.’ ” Published in New York, the Guide was one of many books on the role of women and the family written by this prolific English author. A volume of moral instruction, it advised women to find happiness through selflessness and acceptance of their place in the world as ordained by God. According to Sarah Ellis, a woman won the respect and affection of others by studying how to please them, not by waiting for others to please her.
Varina Davis, c. 1849.
Picture Collection, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (photo credit i7.1)
Whether or not Varina fully made herself over in Jefferson’s image of her cannot be known with certainty. A brief unpleasantness evidently occurred between her and the Taylor women in the White House, but during the months in Washington the rancor of the recent past between husband and wife did not surface. She remained with him through the session, though when the summer heat appeared, she spent some time with a niece of Jefferson’s in Pennsylvania. No evidence suggests that Jefferson was at all unhappy or displeased with his young wife during this Washington interlude.65
The relative quiet on the domestic front was not matched on the political front. When Congress convened on December 3, 1849, sectional anger and emotion reverberated through both houses. A wise old veteran of more than four decades in Washington, Senator Clay of Kentucky found sectional bitterness “stronger than I hoped or supposed it could.” This palpable hostility mangled attempts to get Congress underway when a closely divided House could not elect a speaker and organize itself. Certain northern Democrats would not support their party’s nominee because he was a southerner; likewise, some southern Whigs would not back their party’s choice because he came from Massachusetts and also because the Whig caucus formally refused to oppose the Wilmot Proviso. For three weeks raucous behavior and intimations of violence marked the barren voting. After fifty-nine frustrating ballots, the House in desperation managed to pass a resolution authorizing the election of a speaker with only a plurality, not the usual majority. On the next vote Howell Cobb, a Georgia Democrat, became speaker. Thus the Democrats would control both houses, for they had a clear majority in the Senate, which had been meeting and adjourning from day to day.66
With Congress finally ready for business, the reading of President Taylor’s message became the order of the day. For president and Congress, attention focused on the territorial issue, with California the flashpoint, because the rush of settlers after the discovery of gold mandated some form of governmental organization. Trying to bypass the political snake pit of the Wilmot Proviso, Taylor proposed the immediate admission of California as a state, pointing out that Californians had met in convention and written a constitution, but not revealing his administration’s role in facilitating that process. The president knew that everyone in the territorial debate, including Calhoun
, agreed that a state could decide its own position on slavery within its jurisdiction. Accordingly, he considered his intention to skip the territorial stage a brilliant stratagem that would preclude a bitter struggle over the proviso and California. That California would join the Union as a free state because its constitution prohibited slavery did not deter the slaveowning Taylor, who did not believe slavery would ever get to California, and, more fundamentally, did not think that slavery should expand at all beyond its 1849 borders. His message also indicated that New Mexico would soon follow California, with the clear implication that he wanted it too admitted as a free state without any territorial period. Zachary Taylor was convinced that the finality of his plan would end the trauma over slavery that had afflicted the country since the close of the Mexican War.67
Because Taylor’s plan would effectively shut the South out of the Mexican Cession, however, it generated an uproar among southerners. Southern Democrats denounced it as the executive proviso, and even southern Whigs turned anxious because Taylor left them precariously exposed to Democratic charges that their president and their party were uncaring about southern rights. As for Jefferson Davis individually, he was deeply troubled; in his mind the major issue combined fairness and sectional balance. Southern Americans, himself included, had fought and bled for the cession, and he believed profoundly that they possessed an absolute right to emigrate to it with their property, including human property. Moreover, Davis had fully adopted Calhoun’s position that the maintenance of southern rights in the nation depended upon sectional parity. Without the political power stemming from that equality, he feared an increasingly strident antislavery North endangering both the rights and the safety of the South.
The southern citadel remained the U.S. Senate, where the fifteen slave states and the fifteen free states had the same number of senators. Already the mushrooming northern population had reduced the South to a distinct minority in the House. Davis saw the result: the House had passed the proviso and had blocked the extension of the Missouri Compromise line as well as the Clayton Compromise. Thus, while he believed retaining the sectional balance in the Senate utterly essential, Taylor’s design would destroy it. In addition, what he saw as the unwarranted, hasty admission of California and New Mexico as states meant that southerners would never have a chance to take slaves into any part of the cession. They would not even be permitted to compete for any part of this new national domain. Even more important, the admission of California would signal the beginning of the decline of southern power in the Senate to the same level as in the House. Taylor’s message advised that New Mexico would soon have a constitution and deserved statehood, and, all knew, as a free state. Oregon and the vast bulk of the unorganized Louisiana Purchase were already free soil. As a result, the South and slavery had nowhere else to expand. As Davis perceived the matter of California, it involved both the future security of the South and the preservation of the Union he cherished. Writing to a political friend, he hoped Congress could “avoid the precipice on the brink of which I believe we now stand.”68
Reacting to Taylor’s message, Davis stood forthrightly in opposition. He united with the rest of the Mississippi delegation in informing Governor Quitman that the admission of a free California seemed inevitable and asking for his, the legislature’s, and “if practicable” the people’s advice on what the state would see as the proper course in “this emergency.” He also joined with other southern Democrats in resolutions demanding that the president send Congress all correspondence with agents it had dispatched to California and New Mexico. The southerners believed these documents would expose Taylor as the real force behind the push by westerners for immediate statehood with free constitutions.69
While Davis strove to throw up defensive walls, an old Senate hand moved in a different direction. Deeply concerned about what he perceived as a genuine danger to the Union, Henry Clay worked diligently for three weeks to come up with what he termed a compromise that could calm emotions, decrease tensions, and resolve issues. On January 29, 1850, he presented his proposal to the Senate, calling on the more powerful North to make “a more liberal and extensive concession” than the South. In that vein Clay described the net effect of his eight individual propositions as a comprehensive solution to the territorial problem in particular and sectional animosity in general. Moreover, according to Clay, southern rights were guaranteed. Yet, however soothing the words he aimed at the South, southern Democrats, Jefferson Davis among them, found little comfort in Clay’s prescription.
A close inspection of what Clay actually put before the Senate reveals that while he may have spoken with a southern accent, his proposed actions had a decidedly northern tone. Following Taylor, he would immediately admit California as a free state; yet, unlike the president, he would move to organize the remainder of the cession with an unspecified number of territorial governments. Although Clay made no mention of the Wilmot Proviso, his suggestion would result in barring slavery. In the first place, he asserted that Mexican law prevailed unless specifically superseded, eliminating the possibility of slavery because Mexico had abolished the institution. Then he addressed an issue that had become increasingly controversial, the boundary of Texas. When admitted as a state in 1845, Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern and western border, which meant that much of eastern New Mexico would end up in Texas, a slave state. Clay redrew the line, giving Texas the Rio Grande in the south, but placing the border with New Mexico so far east that a substantial portion of central and western Texas would become part of New Mexico. Clay also proposed that the U.S. government assume the debt Texas had incurred as an independent republic. There were no southern victories here, for Clay not only slammed the door on slavery in all of the Mexican Cession, he also intended to lop off a sizable portion of Texas.70
In addition, Clay wanted adjustment on four other contentious points. In one instance he called on Congress to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia, a demand long urged by many northerners. Then, Clay ostensibly addressed southern anxieties and grievances. Congress should declare that it had no authority to prohibit the interstate slave trade and that it was “inexpedient” to outlaw slavery in the District, without residents consenting and the approval of Maryland, in addition to making “just compensation” to the slaveowners. Finally, Clay requested that Congress pass a stronger fugitive slave law.
Even though Clay clearly intended for the last three resolutions to reassure and pacify the South, that section would really benefit little. He only called on Congress not to act on the interstate slave trade and slavery in the District; and by claiming that it was “inexpedient” to abolish slavery in the District, he implied that Congress could do so if it wished, a power that most southerners vehemently denied. Of course, the great majority of southerners did like the idea of a more effective fugitive slave law, though the measure that eventually won congressional approval did not include Clay’s provision for some procedural protection for the alleged fugitives.
Agreeing with many of his fellow southerners, especially southern Democrats, Jefferson Davis perceived no sectional equity in Clay’s proposed settlement. On the very day Clay presented his resolution, Davis rose to say that he saw no compromise anywhere. Replicating the stance he had taken in 1848, he articulated what he thought was a fair way to handle the Mexican Cession, proclaiming to the Senate, “I here assert that never will I take less than the Missouri compromise line extended to the Pacific ocean, with the specific recognition of the right to hold slaves in the territory below that line.”71
Two weeks later, on February 13 and 14, before a packed chamber and filled galleries, Senator Davis delivered his full-dress response. He began by announcing that he believed his “duty” required him to present his views on the “dangerous doctrines” Clay had offered. His reaction had not come sooner, he explained, because he could not get the floor. “I now come to lift the glove [Clay] then threw down, and trust in the justice of the cause in which I s
tand.” He had hoped that Clay would put forward a true compromise, but had to confess disappointment because he now had to place Clay on the side of “the preponderating aggressive majority.” Davis found this situation so fraught with danger because it was not “merely the result of passion.” Instead, he averred, considering “the cold, calculating purpose of those who seek sectional domination, I see nothing short of conquest on the one side, or submission on the other.” Insisting to the Senate that the basic drive of his political opponents aimed for political power in order to destroy southern constitutional rights so they could harm his section, Davis informed the lawmakers that the South needed both the North and the national government to halt their hostility against “an institution so interwoven with its interests, its domestic peace, and all its social relations, that it cannot be disturbed without causing their overthrow.”72
Davis then recounted his unchanged interpretation of slavery and the Constitution. Although slavery antedated the formation of the Union, Davis argued that it derived from that document recognition it would otherwise not enjoy. According to him, the Constitution provided for a national responsibility for slavery in obligating states to return fugitive slaves as well as in authorizing Congress to tax slaves and in giving them a role in representation. To Davis these provisions led to only one logical conclusion: “As a property recognized by the Constitution, and held in a portion of the States, the Federal Government is bound to admit it into all the Territories, and to give it such protection as other private property receives.”
Jefferson Davis, American Page 26
