From the stump in major towns like Vicksburg and Jackson as well as smaller places like Brandon and Lexington, Davis chorused his Senate lines. To places he could not reach in the time he had in Mississippi, he dispatched public letters carrying the same message. The admission of California he denounced as “unconstitutional,” fashioned not by real citizens but by “mere trespassers upon the public domain.” Using an even harsher term, he denigrated it as “a fraud” on the South. Equally unconstitutional was the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, in which Congress exercised a power never transmitted by the Constitution to the federal government. Davis continued with strong language, calling the Texas boundary settlement “the dismemberment of Texas.” And he identified a single culprit as underlying all: “the ruling, directing power of hostility to the slave institutions of the South.” In his judgment the antislavery North had inflicted “a wrong” on the South and would go so far as to “involve us in total ruin.” That implacable opposition to what he understood as southern rights and constitutional principles “nerved” him to fight unceasingly against the bulk of the Compromise.4
Because he could discover no compromise at all in the bills passed by Congress, he urged Mississippians to continue their resistance against northern aggression and usurpation by maintaining their opposition to the Compromise in particular and to the denial of their constitutional rights in general. Davis’s prescription for the stand he thought essential was simultaneously clear and quite murky. “If the doctrine of passive resistance shall prevail,” he warned, “we shall receive the contempt of the enemy.” Mississippi must “make a manly and determined resistance now and demand new guards for her security.”
Although he mentioned several forms of possible activities such as non-intercourse and public meetings, he focused on a vintage Calhounian program. Mississippi should hold a state convention, demand that Congress recognize the constitutional rights of all citizens, including slaveowners, especially in the territories, and call on other slave states to follow suit. Despite the failure of the Nashville Convention, whose feeble second gathering in November ended in a fiasco, Davis was unquestionably convinced that united action by the South would guarantee recognition and preservation of the rights he felt so vital. If the North failed to react as Davis expected, at that moment, but not before, the South would have to contemplate leaving the Union. Such “a catastrophe we will sincerely deplore,” he said, but “responsibility” for it, he hurried to insist, “will rest not on our heads, but upon those regardless of social and political obligation [who] have undermined the foundation on which the Union was erected.” He viewed this dreaded eventuality as unlikely because it could only occur following a Mississippi convention, a southern convention, and a congressional refusal to accept southern demands.
Thus, Davis never believed that he advocated disunion, and he vehemently shoved aside all attempts to stigmatize him as a disunionist. In fact, he dismissed as false the very notion of framing the issue as union or disunion. He described himself and all others opposing the Compromise as the real unionists, because they were struggling to maintain the constitutional Union. He professed an abiding loyalty to that Union, the Union of equals. Allegiance to the constitutional Union, he preached, was neither impractical nor treasonable. He contended that nothing he had advocated or done aimed at destroying it.
While arguing for his state to reject the Compromise as a valid settlement and claim its legitimate constitutional rights, Senator Davis made it indisputably clear that he would follow the lead of Mississippi. The course set by the people of Mississippi would be his course. Whatever determination his fellow citizens made, he “trust[ed] the decision w[ould] be made calmly and deliberately upon principle, by reason, and equally uninfluenced by headlong passion or unmanly fear.”
Davis returned to Brierfield on November 6. After only two weeks at home, he once again set off for Washington, reaching the city on the evening of December 4 and taking his seat in the Senate the next day. Having made the trip alone, he set up bachelor’s quarters at Mrs. Henry Hill’s boardinghouse on Capitol Hill. His leaving Varina behind did not signify any reappearance of undue distress and tension between them. For the short second session of the Thirty-first Congress, he expected to stay in Washington no more than around three months. Besides, according to her own testimony, Varina at this time was “by no means strong.” Writing a friend in January 1851, she spoke of “a misfortune” that had befallen her back in the fall and kept her bedridden for a month. The language in which she described herself as being in “such a situation” prior to her “misfortune” strongly suggests pregnancy and miscarriage, though the record provides no conclusive evidence.5
Jefferson’s correspondence contains no hint of husbandly displeasure. Although Varina boasted that he wrote twice weekly, only one of his letters is known—one written just after he arrived in the capital. Already he missed her “sweet presence” and had begun anticipating the time when again he would “clasp my own Winnie in my arms.” His closing revealed his deep feelings for his young wife, but the fatherly tone crept in: “Good bye sweet wife, and as you will not allow me to kiss you for an angel, be one now in the presence of Our God, and the absence of [your husband].” As for Varina, she did not expect Jefferson to mourn unduly his single status, sharing with another homebound congressional wife her opinion that both husbands would engage in “flirting” with “no kind friend to tell us!” Although she did depict herself and her correspondent as “sisters in affliction,” nothing indicates that she harbored any serious concern about her husband’s behavior. Other comments that she had made on his flirtations in Washington carried no connotations of disdain or jealousy. Neither did this letter convey or even imply harsh sentiments or censure.
After the tumult that had characterized its immediate predecessor, calmness predominated in this congressional session. On the Compromise no new fighting occurred, though enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law drew attention. Vigorous antislavery opposition had sparked unrest, especially in Boston, where a mob had forced release of an alleged fugitive. Addressing this matter, Davis repeated what he had previously said about northern public opinion—without its support, the law would be unenforceable and useless. At the same time he adamantly opposed using the U.S. Army for enforcement because he believed that any state could refuse to enforce a law. But when a state chose to deny the supremacy of public laws, only one more step would break apart the Union. Although southerners were constantly assaulted for their states’ rights views, Davis pointed out that no southern states were acting in such a manner.6
During the debate over the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, Davis spoke emotionally about the Union. He described “the charm which invests and binds [it] with greater force than bands of brass and steel.” “This Union,” he informed the Senate, “is held together by historical associations and national pride. It is held together by social links, from the fact that fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, and boyhood friends, live in extreme ends of the Union.” In Davis’s description, “so many unseen, close, and daily increasing points of contact” kept the Union whole. All together made for a “magic power.” In his opinion the Union could “only be rent in twain by something which loosens these rivets.” He identified antislavery and sectional politics as the “lever” that might do the loosening. He found especially worrisome the possibility that politicians would have “to manufacture bonds to hold the Union together.” If that sad day ever came, he saw the Union as “gone—worthless as a rope of sand.” Of course, in striving to maintain southern equality, Davis was clinging desperately to bonds that two previous generations of politicians had fashioned.7
Davis also reiterated in the strongest possible language his conception of the power of Congress and of the federal government when he opposed granting public land to construct asylums for the indigent insane. “I do not consider our Government as one founded for great eleemosynary purpos
es,” he declaimed. “This government was established as the agent of the States in their foreign relations, and as an umpire between the States in their relations one to another, not to dispense charities to the indigent, nor to establish workhouses or houses of correction for the vicious within the States.”8
His position in this instance was not at all unusual or isolated. Back in 1849 he had objected to the purchase of the artist George Catlin’s paintings of Indians. After praising the accuracy and quality of Catlin’s work, he still resisted because for Congress to buy them would denote a marked departure “from the simple republican character of the Government.” Taking such a step would result in “Congress becom[ing] the patron of art, the caterer to the tastes and refined pleasures, as well as the law-makers of the republic.” In similar vein, a year later he steadfastly contested a proposal to buy the corrected copy of George Washington’s Farewell Address. Congress had already bought the first president’s papers, he noted, and while he venerated Washington as did all patriots, he did not think that meant purchasing everything related to him from walking sticks to battlefields. Where would it stop? he asked. In his mind, emotion should not rule. He concluded that as representatives of the people, senators should not draw on public money to gratify sentiment.9
In addition, Davis expressed strong reservations about what he deemed seemingly uncontrollable growth of government publications. The possible publication of a report from the Patent Office, which included a substantial section devoted to the agricultural bureau within that agency, particularly distressed him. “I hold that it is no part of the duty of Congress to publish works on speculative philosophy, or compilations of agriculture, or any similar subject not connected with legislation.” Congress “ha[d] become the great book-maker of the country,” a situation he deplored and wanted to halt.10
At the same time he continued to advocate science and invention, and he also served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. In his declamation against the government as publisher, he made one exception: reports connected with inventions ought to be published. Davis also wanted to strengthen laws protecting rights of patent holders, those with “inventive genius.” And he supported additional appropriations for the U.S. Navy to carry out astronomical observations, arguing that the work was essential for science. As a Smithsonian regent, he became chairman of the building committee considering a general plan to improve the Mall, at that time described as “a large common … presenting a surface of yellow or white clay, cut into by deep gullies, and without trees except one or two scraggly and dying sycamores.” The ideas of New York landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing excited Davis. Calling them “most beautiful and useful,” he envisioned the Mall transformed into “an extended landscape garden, to be traversed in different directions by gravelled walks and carriage drives.”11
In the winter of 1851, Davis also struck out at two prime perquisites of senators, a move that attracted few allies. Davis believed firmly that his and all other speeches should be reported as spoken, not after having been edited. “I often address the Senate without having prepared myself as to what I was going to say,” he admitted candidly. As a result, he “always f[ou]nd in such cases that the reporter ha[d] failed to report me correctly.” Still, he maintained that the remarks uttered should be the remarks printed, even granting that reporters would inevitably make mistakes. Most of his colleagues did not agree; nor did many join him in calling for abolition of the franking privilege. Even though Davis himself made liberal use of it, he could find no “justice” in a system that taxed individuals “not for their own benefit, nor for the benefit of the country at large.” “I do not perceive the least propriety,” he asserted, “in giving to a member of Congress the right to send to his friends at the expense of the Government such documents as he may think proper to bestow on them, and to leave others either deprived of mailable matter or charged with the expense of paying for its transportation.”12
With the adjournment of Congress in mid-March 1851, Senator Davis left for Mississippi by the western route, stopped briefly in Louisville, and reached Davis Bend on March 26. After a short stay, he journeyed downriver to New Orleans on business. While there he also visited his in-laws; William Howell had moved to that city in his unendingly unsuccessful search for financial security. By April 16, Davis had returned to Brierfield.13
Within two weeks, he plunged into the greatest contest he had yet known in his political career. Not only did the lengthy crisis over the Compromise of 1850 strain national party alliances, it also broke down party lines in the South. The great majority of southern Whigs had opposed Taylor and supported the Compromise, while the bulk of southern Democrats fought both the president and the Compromise. Each side experienced defections, especially Democrats both in and out of Congress who felt their comrades had gone too far in opposing the Compromise. Defining the Compromise as safe for the South and as politically defensible, these Democrats, with Henry Foote a major figure among them, made common cause with their partisan foes. In three states—Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi—this political storm shook traditional political alignments from their moorings. There, the overwhelming majority of Whigs along with a minority faction of Democrats moved into what they called the Union or Constitutional Union party. The mass of Democrats, joined by a sprinkling of Whigs, also dropped old labels, now calling themselves Southern Rights men or State Rights Democrats.14
One of the three states where parties became totally deranged, Mississippi obviously did not escape this convulsion jarring southern politics. For Whigs in the state, the Union party was politically as well as ideologically attractive. To be sure, by defending the Compromise and wrapping themselves in the folds of the Union, they staked out superb political ground, but the Union movement also provided an opportunity for recouping lost fortunes. Mississippi Whigs had been in a distinct minority since the Calhoun-Democratic rapprochement of the late 1830s. During the 1840s they had not elected a governor nor controlled a legislature, though they did hold a few state offices and had elected a congressman from a safe district centering on the southwestern river counties. From what one stalwart termed their “hopeless minority” position, the Whigs hoped to rejuvenate their party, albeit under a new banner.15
The path of the major Democratic bolter was also clear. When Henry Foote championed the Compromise in the Senate, he found himself an outcast among Democratic leaders in his state. Heavily Democratic, the legislature in late 1850 had censured him while praising the others in the congressional delegation for fighting the Compromise. Within the Union party, Henry Foote had a possible political future in Mississippi; without it, he had none.
The immediate political context surrounding these partisan shifts in Mississippi bore the imprint of Governor John A. Quitman, a Democrat and an extremist on sectional issues. When he learned that the Compromise of 1850 had won congressional approval, he called a special session of the legislature for November 18 to consider withdrawing from the Union. He soon began making public speeches advocating that route, and simultaneously he plotted secretly with officials in South Carolina, the most radical southern state, on the most efficacious method to bring about secession. Without question, Quitman believed the predicament of the South required leaving the Union, and he wanted his state in the vanguard. Although the legislature refused to go as far as Quitman desired, it did keep alive the question of Mississippi’s future by decreeing elections in September 1851 for delegates to a November state convention that would determine the state’s fate. Only by agreeing to postpone the convention for a year could Governor Quitman and his fellow radicals get legislators to authorize such a meeting.16
While the legislature met during the last two weeks of November 1850, a group calling itself “friends of the Union” also had gathered in Jackson, Mississippi. These friends proclaimed their platform in ringing terms: embracing the Compromise as safe for the South and championing the Union. Denouncing the governor as treasonable and the crisis as p
ossibly catastrophic, they declared old party lines obliterated and pleaded for all lovers of the Union to come together into a newly created Union party. Doing so served political as well as ideological purposes. Potential Democratic recruits could more easily move into an organization that did not bear the name Whig, their longtime and despised antagonist. With this newly built political vehicle, Unionists planned to storm the state in 1851, control the state convention, win the gubernatorial election, and wrest dominance away from the Democrats. With the close of Congress in the spring of 1851 and the appearance back in Mississippi of Senator Foote, a strong campaigner and marvelous stump speaker, Unionists were ready.
Although their opponents attempted to besmear Unionists as “submissionists” to northern and antislavery usurpation of southern rights, they protected themselves by appropriating the famous Georgia Platform as their own. Written in December 1850 by Georgia Unionists to expound their creed, the platform was no Milquetoast document. It proclaimed that Georgia “will and ought to resist,” with secession if necessary, any action by Congress directed against slavery in the District of Columbia or in other places within congressional jurisdiction that was “incompatible with the safety, and domestic tranquility, the rights and honor of the slave holding states.” The same reaction would follow should Congress deny admission to a slave state, prohibit slavery in either New Mexico or Utah Territories, or pass any bill “repealing or materially modifying” the Fugitive Slave Law. The Georgia Platform, now also the Mississippi Platform, bristled with southern weaponry.17
The Democrats sustained difficulties matching their new political rivals. First, they assumed an altered name. To underscore their ideological benchmark and to attract sympathetic Whigs, they prefaced their traditional appellation with “State Rights.” Even so, State Rights Democrats were seriously divided among themselves, all the way from outright secessionists like Governor Quitman to the much more moderate Jefferson Davis. Assessing the stance of twenty-three formerly Democratic newspapers, one observer reported them in four camps, ranging from steadfastly unionist to “avowedly” disunionist. Davis recognized the “great confusion” plaguing what had recently been the almost omnipotent Democratic party.18
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