Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Defending the right of slaveowners to enter the Mexican Cession, he even reasserted the diffusion theory in his testimony that “whatever the evil of slavery,” geographical expansion would not enhance it. In contrast, he contended that “the immediate connection” between master and slave “preserves the domestic character, and strictly patriarchal relations.” Davis claimed that cruelty could only exist on large plantations where intermediaries intervened between owners and bondspeople. Here, of course, he was referring, willy-nilly, to his and Joseph’s operations, but he avoided any suggestion that large plantations and brutality were necessarily synonymous. He maintained, rather, that the potential for a hostile relationship could obtain only on great estates. At the same time, he hurried on to assert that whatever cruelty did occur between master and slave, it “probably exists to a smaller extent than in any other relation of labor to capital.”

  Senator Davis took issue with Clay on all points involving the Mexican Cession. Regarding California, he rejected the notion that the South should be satisfied because Congress never denied the right of slavery to go there; rather, Californians themselves pursued the admission of California as a free state. He declared he could never accept “the will of the conglomerated mass of goldhunters, foreign and native” as sufficiently authoritative to keep out citizens of the United States supposedly protected by the “equal privileges” of the Constitution. “Why, sir, what choice is there between this and the Wilmot Proviso?” Davis found none, announcing that he preferred the latter because “the advocate of the Wilmot proviso attempts to rob me of my rights, whilst acknowledging them, by the admission that it requires legislation to deprive me of them. The other denies their existence.”

  On the rest of the cession, he contested Clay along two lines. Again repeating his case from his speech on Oregon in the Thirtieth Congress, he declared that the Constitution followed the flag. The contention that Mexican law still prevailed in American territory he dismissed as preposterous. By way of ridiculing the notion of any continuation of Mexican authority, Davis asked rhetorically whether Roman Catholicism remained the religion. Next, he denied Clay’s claim that nature banned slavery throughout the cession. In contrast, he saw opportunity for slave labor in mining and in agriculture dependent on irrigation, where slaves were perfect for the construction of necessary dams and ditches. As Davis saw it, denying slaveowners to any part of the cession deprived them of real economic possibilities.

  Davis stressed that he and the South did not request any political gifts, only their rights. “We want something substantial, something permanent,” he affirmed. Offering to compromise principle for sectional peace, he would accept extending the Missouri Compromise line because of tradition. Congress should establish territorial governments for California and New Mexico that would protect the rights of all. He saw no need for the “irregular” admission of new states. The territorial phase that had obtained with all other territories should certainly be employed in this instance also. In his opinion the northern majority had the power to settle “this distracting question” if it would give the South “some substantial proposition, such as magnanimity can offer, and such as we can honorably accept. I being one of the minority in the Senate, and the Union have nothing to offer, except an assurance of cooperation in anything which my principles will allow me to adopt, and which promises permanent, substantial security.”

  On Texas, Davis likewise discovered no room for discussion. In his judgment the provisions of the act annexing the republic of Texas back in 1845 were still in force, and they set the boundary at the Rio Grande, on both south and west. He did not believe that Congress could discard the law and make new borders wherever it saw fit. Texas had legal guarantees set by Congress in a solemn pact, guarantees which Davis perceived as inviolable.

  He had little more use for the rest of Clay’s plan. Even entertaining the possibility that Congress could abolish slavery in the District of Columbia distressed him mightily. Such a step would mean that southerners were not equal to other Americans because they could not bring their property to the seat of the federal government. To Davis, that eventuality was simply unacceptable. Neither did he expect anything from a new fugitive slave statute, which he termed “a dead letter” in any state where public opinion opposed the returning of any escaped slave. “I would sooner trust it to day to the sense of constitutional obligation of the state,” he maintained, “than to the enforcement of any law which Congress can enact against the popular opinion of those among whom it is executed.”

  Drawing to a close, Davis vigorously denied that either he or the South embraced disunion. Although he did acknowledge that perhaps “seeds of disunion” could be found, he said they were quite scattered and most certainly could not be equated with Mississippi’s call for a convention of slave states, which arose from “patriotism, and a high resolve to preserve if possible, our constitutional Union.” He diagnosed the health of the Union as most disturbed by the northern press that so incessantly harped on the South. After applauding the loyalty of his state and his section, Davis testified to his personal devotion to the Union. The son of a Revolutionary War soldier, he recalled one of his earliest childhood lessons as “attachment to this Union.” He also reminded the Senate that from boyhood into adulthood he had proudly worn the uniform of the country, and he still looked on the flag “with the affection of early love.…”

  The South, he cried, was American. Explaining that the South had shared in all the toil and danger, Davis demanded that the Congress not deny its constitutional rights. “If so,” he warned, “self-respect requires that we should assert them; and, as best we may, maintain that which we could not surrender without losing your respect as well as our own.” Both sections benefited each other. The commercial and manufacturing North needed southern agriculture, which provided its “life-blood.” Using Carthage, Tyre, and Venice as illustrations, he lectured that history taught the fate of states without a powerful agricultural base. Sorrowfully, he declaimed that if “this spirit of sectional aggrandizement, or, if gentlemen prefer, this love they bear the African race, shall cause the disunion of these States, the last chapter of our history will be a sad commentary upon the justice and wisdom of our people.”

  Even as Jefferson Davis dealt with momentous public issues creating such “a bubbling cauldron” that, as he phrased it, “at present all is uncertainty,” a grave private matter intruded. In response to a Virginia congressman’s praise of the First Mississippi at Buena Vista, Democratic representative William Bissell of Illinois, who had commanded the Second Illinois on that field, spoke up on February 21 for his regiment, saying that the Mississippians had not been within a mile and a half when the Second Indiana gave way. Davis, as always prideful about his and his unit’s performance at Buena Vista, on the next day identified himself as “the proper person to answer any charge which a responsible man may make against the Mississippi Regiment.” He penned a note asking “whether the information I have received is correct.” Bissell replied promptly that, desiring only “to do justice” to those under his “own observation,” he had made no attack on the First Mississippi. This statement failed to satisfy Davis, as he wrote Bissell, because it seemed to him that the Illinoisan still denied that his men stopped the Mexican assault, instead “assert[ing] that the merit of that service is due others.”73

  After this exchange each man enlisted a friend to act as an agent, or in the language of the southern code of honor, a second, to ascertain whether the apparently different positions could be reconciled—Democratic congressman Samuel Inge of Alabama for Davis and Democratic senator James Shields of Illinois, a brigade commander in Mexico, for Bissell. When Shields and Inge met, the latter suggested, at Davis’s behest, that Bissell add a sentence at the beginning of the final paragraph of his February 22 letter detailing the First Mississippi’s having saved the day at Buena Vista. For Bissell, Shields declined. On February 27, Davis informed Bissell that because a satisfactory answer to his
initial inquiry still had not been received, he should name someone to arrange with Inge “the necessary preliminaries” to a duel. Immediately, Bissell picked Major Osborne Cross of the United States Army.

  Although a duel seemed imminent, combat on the field of honor was averted. On the evening of February 27, Major Cross and Senator Shields met with Congressman Inge, and the three were joined by Whig senator William Dawson of Georgia and Democratic congressman William Richardson of Illinois, who came with a prepared settlement—the withdrawal of all correspondence after Davis’s first letter, and Bissell’s adding at the point Davis had earlier indicated a more succinct version of the language Davis had proposed. This time the wording would be: “But am willing to award them [the First Mississippi] the credit due to their gallant and distinguished service in the battle.” Cross, Shields, and Inge agreed. Then Davis’s letter of February 22 as well as Bissell’s amended reply of the same day were sent to the Washington Union with the declaration that the dispute had been honorably adjusted. There were also reports that President Taylor had intervened. The two disputants certainly appeared to hold no grudge, for just a couple of days later a reporter spotted them in the House engaging in “friendly chat.”

  A second personal matter concerning Davis stemmed from the different stands he and his senatorial colleague Henry S. Foote took on Clay’s plan. Whereas Davis vigorously opposed Clay’s measures, Foote became an ardent advocate of a general settlement based on them. A native Virginian and an attorney, Foote had migrated to Mississippi in 1830 and practiced law in several towns, including Vicksburg and Jackson. Active politically, he served as a surveyor general of public lands, as a legislator, and in both 1840 and 1844 as a presidential elector. Then, in 1847, he won election to the United States Senate. Short, with a large bald head, “Foote was never known to deliberate.” Rather, his trademark became mercurial political shifts, a fiery temper, and fierce language on the stump and in Congress. An avid supporter of Calhoun and his Southern Address in the winter of 1848–49, Foote in March 1850 angrily accused the Carolinian of disunionism, then in the very next month defended his cause and his “holy work.” Having insulted a fellow senator in 1850 by calling him “a calumniator,” Foote found himself physically threatened, whereupon he drew a pistol on the floor of the Senate but just as quickly handed it to an associate. Although Davis and Foote had started out as political allies and at least friendly acquaintances on the personal level, their relationship had degenerated considerably prior to the stress of 1850.74

  On Christmas Day 1847 the two men had an altercation that resulted in violence, and certainly presaged future difficulties. Along with other messmates, they had adjourned after breakfast to the sitting room of their boardinghouse when a dispute about popular sovereignty arose. Their disagreement, heated by language Davis termed “offensive,” though unrecorded, prompted him to ignore his war wound, cross the room, and assault Foote. After friends separated them, Foote started to leave but at the door turned, announcing he had “struck first.” Denouncing him as a liar, Davis shook his fist in Foote’s face, threatening “to beat him to death” if he “dared” to repeat that claim. At first silent, Foote then hit Davis, who in return knocked Foote down and commenced beating him until pulled back by others. Thereupon, Davis proposed that he and Foote go to his room, where he had pistols, and lock the door. Foote found the proposal unreasonable. Inferring that his antagonist thought he would not get an equal chance, Davis prepared to assault him once again, but Foote denied any such implication. Others in the room intervened, urging that the matter be dropped as a “Christmas frolic” and kept private. Later, Davis told a friend he believed that that agreement had ended the matter.75

  It erupted again, however, approximately two years later. Davis learned that in New Orleans, Foote was boasting about having hit Davis, who had taken the blow, not “resent[ing]” it. Davis sent a note by Albert Brown asking Foote either to admit or deny that he had made such a statement. In Davis’s account, Foote sent a lengthy reply, which denied the charge, but not so explicitly as Davis desired. A second request produced a similar response. At that point Davis was prepared to challenge Foote to a duel, but Brown and Robert J. Walker persuaded him that Foote’s denial had been sufficient. In addition, they argued that many people would not view a challenge favorably because they considered Foote unequal to Davis “in a trial with deadly weapons.”76

  Obviously, considerable tension remained between them. In the summer of 1848 they engaged in a small-minded squabble over the presentation to Congress of a flag from the Mexican War. When they divided over Clay’s scheme, more was involved than simply two senators taking opposing sides on a political issue. Each harshly accused the other; Foote indicted Davis as a disunionist while Davis damned Foote as a submissionist. Moreover, both men claimed to speak for their state, and both aspired to use the congressional struggle to become the dominant force in Mississippi politics.77

  In the midst of the varied and tense reactions to Clay’s overtures, John C. Calhoun died. A giant of American politics, who from his arrival in the House of Representatives in 1810 had been a force in national affairs, Calhoun had exercised an enormous influence on Jefferson Davis. Davis was convinced that Calhoun had enunciated the correct interpretation of both the constitutional and the political Union. He shared Calhoun’s constitutional view that the sovereign states had created the Union through a written document in which they delegated only carefully stipulated powers to the federal government, with all others retained by the states. He believed this states’ rights doctrine, in turn, offered constitutional protection to the South in the Union. On the political front, Calhoun fervently believed that the South must maintain an equality in the Union. Without that equality and the political strength drawn from it, Calhoun feared that the South and slavery were mortally endangered. Likewise, Davis in 1850 did not think that the slave South could survive without an equal status, now lodged in the Senate, to block what he considered a northern drive to control the country.

  In his last public act Calhoun opposed Clay’s plan, finding nothing in it for the South and calling for new guarantees to preserve southern parity in the Union. Terminally ill with tuberculosis and wracked with pain, an emaciated Calhoun appeared in the Senate on March 4 for what would be his final speech. He was so weak that his address had to be read for him; by the end of the month he was dead.

  The Senate, the national capital, and South Carolina paid their ceremonious homage. Thousands followed the cortège to the Potomac River and a ship waiting to bear the body on the first stage of its return to South Carolina. As one of six senators appointed to accompany Calhoun’s remains back to his native state, Davis left Washington on April 22 and three days later reached Charleston, where he participated in the public ritual that lasted for several days. After Calhoun’s burial, he arrived back in Washington on April 30.78

  Senator Davis returned to a political battleground where the contesting forces plotted tactics and jockeyed for advantage. President Taylor stood resolute, willing to accept only his plan—California and New Mexico statehood alone. Holding and desiring to strengthen their firm free-soil position, northern Whigs overwhelmingly lined up with the president, though the most prestigious northern Whig in the Senate did not.

  Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, who along with Clay and Calhoun formed what has been designated the Great Triumvirate, rose in the Senate, even before Calhoun’s death, to pronounce himself for compromise. He began his oration with the famous words: “I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a northern man, but as an American.…” With his massive head and brooding eyes, and his incomparable oratorical skills, the majestic Webster projected a formidable presence. Although his embrace of compromise, including a fugitive slave law, caused angry outcries among antislavery men, especially in Massachusetts, Webster provided compromise a lustrous ally and a potent voice. Moreover, southern Whigs, who felt betrayed by Taylor’s adamant demand for a free Californi
a and New Mexico without any political offerings to the South and also abandoned by most of their northern associates, could claim in Webster a northern Whig friend who supported a general settlement that included a fugitive slave law and excluded the proviso. Webster’s tacking toward compromise did not surprise Jefferson Davis, who earlier had predicted that with almost all northerners moving in the other direction or hunkering down, the Massachusetts powerhouse might do just what he did. Northern Democrats also added their troops to the pro-compromise battalions. Generally speaking, northern Democrats were more conservative on sectional and slavery issues than northern Whigs, and in adopting popular sovereignty they had repudiated the Wilmot Proviso. Thus, they had no difficulty with the general scheme of compromise.79

  The final major bloc was composed of southern Democrats, most of whom utterly opposed both Taylor’s strategy and Clay’s proposal. Davis started here, never wavered, and became a leader of southerners trying to bar the admission of California and the compromise plan, while Foote broke with the majority of his southern Democratic brethren and became a major proponent of the compromise. In Davis’s judgment, the South had to insist on recognition of its rights, and this must be done now because as time passed, the South would only grow weaker in comparison with the North. That all southerners did not see the situation as he did troubled him greatly, for he believed that a unified South could obtain a respectable deal, such as extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean. Viewing the upcoming Nashville Convention from this perspective, he hoped it would spur the southern unity he believed essential for southern safety.80

  During the spring, pro-compromise senators, with Henry Foote among the leaders, decided on a new course, grouping all of Clay’s individual proposals into a single inclusive bill known as the Omnibus. Although Clay had initially opposed that approach, it was decided upon by a select Senate committee appointed in April to consider the slavery question as a whole, not just as it pertained to the Mexican Cession. On May 8, the committee presented its handiwork, which addressed all the points Clay had originally brought up, but with a few notable changes. Important to southern Whigs were two provisions: creating territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah specifically prohibited from passing any law on slavery, thus precluding the proviso; and pushing the Texas boundary farther west, though still not to the limits Texas claimed.