Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Despite the potential danger, that is precisely what President Buchanan and the southerners decided: to adopt Lecompton as their own, to battle for admission of Kansas as a slave state. From Buchanan’s point of view, all the legalities had been observed. Even though the convention had disregarded his advice to submit the constitution to a popular vote, it had that right. And previous conventions in other territories had followed that model. When the free-soilers refrained from voting, that was their choice. In addition, southerners dominated the party, in the Congress and in the cabinet. Moreover, Buchanan had long been close to many prominent southern Democrats. For the president, personal proclivity and potential political benefit seemingly coalesced.

  The southern Democrats realized the Lecompton Constitution provided an opportunity to add a slave state, and promptly. Southerners wanted to test the willingness of the nation to admit another slave state into the Union; not since 1845, when Florida and Texas were admitted, had it done so. Many southerners believed that if a slave Kansas were refused admission, the great battles over constitutional rights would have been fought in vain, especially since the United States Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision handed down in March 1857, had sanctioned southern positions on slavery and the territories. Despite some confusion caused by the numerous opinions accompanying the decision, the Court did specifically declare the Missouri Compromise line unconstitutional, decreeing that Congress had no power to bar slavery from any territory, the common property of all citizens. Southerners also feared that if they let Kansas go by, they might never have another equally good chance. Kansas bordered slavery; it abutted Missouri and was just northwest of Arkansas. Many southerners felt it was now or never.17

  From his service in Pierce’s cabinet, Jefferson Davis certainly knew the reality of Kansas politics. In the Senate his chief concern was to protect what he considered the South’s constitutional rights in the territories, rights the Dred Scott decision had affirmed. Davis saw as equally important congressional willingness to admit a slave state, for in his mind admission offered a concrete test of the moral and constitutional equality defining his sense of the Union.

  His Mississippi speeches made his views quite clear. Calling Kansas “the pivot of this sectional conflict,” Davis termed it especially important because of geography, its proximity to Missouri and Arkansas, and he foresaw negative consequences if it were lost to the South. Although he had not seen the document written at Lecompton, he assumed it would either overtly authorize slavery or keep silent about it. To him, because of the Dred Scott decision, either approach was fine. Dismissing as irrelevant the dispute about submission to a popular vote, he pointed out that constitutions can come directly to Congress. While Davis condemned Walker’s statements on slavery and his hostility to Lecompton, he assured Mississippians that President Buchanan would stand with the South on constitutional grounds. He also believed that unity among southern senators and representatives would mean speedy admission of Kansas because a sufficient number of northern Democrats would side with the South to guarantee a positive outcome. Although he did not expect it, Davis did address the possibility that Kansas would be denied admission solely because of slavery. Then, as he saw it, the South would have to stand or “be degraded. Submission to such an invasion of our rights would cover us with moral leprosy.” Even so, he did not prescribe any precise course, but advocated only “stern resistance.”18

  When the president decided to put his office behind Lecompton, he knew there would be a struggle, but he expected his party ultimately to follow his lead just as it had taken up the banner of Kansas-Nebraska behind Pierce. With Kansas admitted as he anticipated, the everlasting war over slavery in the territories would surely end. The struggle, however, turned out to be more intense than he had thought. The ablest and most prominent northern Democrat in Congress, the man who had managed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, refused to support Buchanan. Ever since 1854, Douglas had made popular sovereignty his political creed; he had stumped the North for it. He could not accept the mockery Lecompton made of his doctrine, certainly not with the Republicans mounting a major campaign for his Senate seat, which came up in 1858. In his march away from the president and the southerners, Douglas took with him a sizable number of northern Democrats and their constituency within the party.

  Nonetheless, although Douglas’s defection created a glaring gap along the party’s northern front, President Buchanan forged ahead. A running debate on the Kansas question had existed since the opening of Congress, but the real struggle began on February 2, 1858, when Buchanan sent the Lecompton Constitution to the Capitol, along with a message urging its adoption. Senator Davis was optimistic that Lecompton would prevail, and in the Senate southern power and presidential muscle carried the day, despite Douglas’s opposition. Twenty-five of thirty-seven Democratic senators were southerners, and no more than three northern Democrats would align with Douglas. After six weeks of debate and maneuver, the Senate on March 23 accepted the Lecompton Constitution, 38 to 25.19

  All involved knew, however, that a ferocious struggle would occur in the House of Representatives. There the Democratic majority was much smaller—128 to the Republican 92 and the American 4. Moreover, among the Democrats the southerners were not so prominent, outnumbering the northerners by only 75 to 53. Buchanan and the southerners recognized that hard work lay ahead, but they were convinced that cracking the whip of party regularity, offering and threatening patronage, and other devices could deliver a majority, just as they had back in 1854 for Kansas-Nebraska. And the same man directed the administration’s effort, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, a former Whig. The cadaverous-looking Stephens, who weighed less than 100 pounds, enjoyed a deserved reputation as a brilliant floor manager and a master of parliamentary procedure. And he set out to give Buchanan and the South what they wanted. But after herculean exertions and a legion of stratagems, Stephens and Buchanan failed. Northern opinion had turned too strongly against Lecompton. On April 1 the House passed a bill that would return the Lecompton Constitution to Kansas for a closely supervised vote.

  With the two chambers deadlocked, a conference committee offered the only chance of adjustment. In the committee a compromise was fashioned to camouflage the failure of the president and the southerners to have Kansas admitted as a slave state. Known as the English Bill for its chief author, Democratic Congressman William H. English of Indiana, the settlement turned on the extraordinary request accompanying the Lecompton Constitution that Kansas be given 23 million acres of public land, about six times the normal award to a new state. English’s measure reduced the grant to around 4 million acres and returned the Lecompton Constitution to Kansas for voters to decide whether they wanted it with the reduced land grant. For southerners this approach had one great advantage: they could legitimately say that Congress had not rejected a slave state. In addition, although most realized that Kansas would vote against Lecompton, they would not soon face the prospect of a free Kansas, for the English Bill stipulated that if Kansas turned down Lecompton, the territory could not reapply for statehood until it had a population of 90,000. For northerners the English Bill meant that Kansas would have a federally sanctioned opportunity to vote on the Lecompton Constitution. On April 30 this approach won approval in both houses, though Douglas remained in opposition, and President Buchanan signed it into law. In the summer Kansans made their decision, drubbing Lecompton by 11,300 to 1,788. Kansas would not become a state until 1861.

  Despite congressional rejection of the Lecompton Constitution, Senator Davis did not view the outcome as a defeat. On the contrary, he considered the English Bill a notable success. During the deliberations of the conference committee, Congressman Stephens had obtained Davis’s help in framing the measure. Davis also called the Mississippi delegation together to lobby for the English Bill, gaining the support of Senator Brown and all the representatives but one. Because he believed passage of the bill imperative, he left h
is sickbed to be present when the Senate voted.20

  Thereafter, Davis always claimed the English Bill had been a “triumph of all for which we contended and the success of a great constitutional principle.” To support his contention, Davis occupied narrow and technical ground. According to him, Congress had not rejected but in fact admitted a slave state. Yet, in so doing, Congress had pointed to a flaw in the application, the outsized land grant. He even claimed to prefer the English Bill to the original Lecompton Constitution. And if the people of Kansas decided not to accept the congressionally mandated change in the acreage granted, they had the right to do so. This assessment he pushed in Mississippi, in the press and from the podium. Praising Buchanan for his stance throughout the struggle, he applauded the president’s “Roman firmness and integrity of purpose.” He told Mississippians he had “the most unlimited confidence in that noble old patriot,” who had fought valiantly and successfully for their rights. In his mind the English Bill “relieved” the country from a terrible danger, for had a legitimate application for the admission of a slave state been rejected, “our honor, our safety, our respect for our ancestors, and our regard for our posterity would have required the South to meet [the issue] at whatever sacrifice.”21

  In drawing his conclusion, Davis could proclaim that the Democratic party remained a shield for the South and that the Union he cherished still existed. Yes, Douglas had broken ranks on this question, and Davis condemned him for this specific act only, making no effort to discipline him or drum him out of the party. He presented Buchanan, as he had Pierce, as the representative northern Democrat, reminding Mississippians that southern Democrats had never asked their northern brethren to concur in “their abstract opinion” about slavery, but simply to recognize their constitutional rights. The passage of the English Bill affirmed the moral and constitutional equality of the South. Davis opted to underscore that interpretation rather than confront the harsh fact of the defeat of the Lecompton Constitution, caused in large part by the opposition of the leading northern Democrat in Congress.22

  On February 13, just eleven days after President Buchanan submitted his message on the Lecompton Constitution to Congress, Senator Davis was “confined by a painful illness.” His condition worsened, a severe cold led to laryngitis, and, more dangerously, his “left eye became intensely inflamed.” The disease that had first downed him in 1851 struck again, and this time even more ferociously.23

  For two months Davis was in great pain and literally prostrate. He lay speechless, barely able to take nourishment, muffling screams, and communicating only through a writing tablet. Because his sensitive eye could not bear light, Davis was confined to a darkened room. On one occasion when light streamed into his chambers to make an examination of the eye possible, Varina wrote of “the emaciated hand that wrung mine at every pang.” Confronting such pain, Davis exhibited remarkable self-control, so much so that physicians expressed amazement at his stoical demeanor. But unsurprisingly, one of his doctors and a friend noted depression. Varina, who nursed him diligently and acted as his amanuensis, concentrated on her husband’s will to overcome his affliction.24

  During this protracted illness Davis had several regular visitors who showed their concern and helped him pass through his ordeal. Old army acquaintances Colonel Edwin Sumner and William Hardee, now a brevet lieutenant colonel, spent hours sitting in almost total darkness talking about army matters and reading to the invalid. The British ambassador, Lord Napier, often stopped by. From the political world two men came daily. Davis’s close friend Democratic senator Clement C. Clay of Alabama spent many hours, including nights, at the bedside of his stricken comrade. Then, from the other side of the partisan aisle and the opposite end of the sectional spectrum, Republican senator William Henry Seward of New York also appeared for an hour every day, and “sometimes oftener.” According to Varina, Senator Seward brought news of congressional proceedings and made every effort to build the patient’s spirits. Even in the aftermath of 1865, Varina commented on Seward’s “earnest, tender interest,” which she believed “unmistakably genuine.”25

  Davis had the services of extremely able physicians. Dr. Robert Stone, a highly regarded ophthalmologist in Washington, called on Davis at least daily. Then, the Davis family’s physician and friend Dr. Thomas Miller brought in Dr. Isaac Hayes of Philadelphia, perhaps the most eminent ophthalmologist of his day in America. Attending a conference in Washington, Dr. Hayes undertook to examine Davis. The medical men evidently agreed on treatment, at the time the accepted therapy for his illness—the patient remained quiet in a darkened room and took special medication.26

  Davis was unquestionably suffering from another siege of metaherpetic keratoiritis. The cold and fever that had gripped him, as well as the intense stress over Kansas, could easily have contributed to the timing of the new assault on his left eye. Dr. Stone’s clinical notes specifically talk about ulceration of the cornea. His description indicates a ruptured healing descemetococle filled with iris tissue and a threatened abscess of the eyeball, as well as a possible hypopyon, an accumulation of pus in the anterior chamber of the eye. After two frightful months, Davis began getting better. On April 19 he informed Joseph, “My health is now restored except the affection of the eye, and the consequent influence upon the sight.”27

  Late in April he briefly took his seat in the Senate, and after mid-May he appeared regularly. His trips to the Senate to vote on Lecompton and the English Bill had required incredible efforts. Describing Davis upon his return to the Senate, a reporter underscored how ravaging his illness had been: “a pale ghastly-looking figure, his eye bandaged with strips of white linen passing over the head, his whole aspect presenting an appearance of feebleness and debility.”28

  Even though Davis came through this trial, his eye problem was not yet over. Good vision did not return to the left eye, which periodically still caused difficulties. In the spring of 1859 he wrote his mother-in-law, “The eye of which the sight was almost lost has slowly recovered and hopes are entertained that by quiet and proper treatment during the approaching summer the sight may be restored so as to make it again useful for looking in two directions.” At least part of his treatment included surgery; by early June he had had a surgical procedure performed on the eye in Washington. Although no details survive, he probably had a hypopyon, which would involve an incision of the cornea to drain pus from the anterior chamber of the eye, a not uncommon technique in Davis’s time.29

  Although Davis never again experienced eye disease that remotely resembled the seriousness of the 1858 attack and the 1859 surgery, they left their marks. He turned to eyeglasses, with evidently some temporary help. As time passed, however, the degenerative ocular process connected with his affliction continued, and in all probability phthisisvalbi set in. As a film covered the left eye, he could see only light and darkness, but could no longer distinguish objects. Contemporaries used various terms when they mentioned the eye. A close friend mentioned “clouded”; another observer called it “discolored”; even the word “blind” was used. In photographs taken in 1859 and 1860, Davis did not look directly at the camera. Instead, he presented a profile which emphasized his right side and hid his left side and his damaged eye.30

  Although Davis did return to the Senate, he was far from fully recovered. He remained quite weak, with little appetite, was much thinner than usual, and could not see well enough to write. His attending physician wanted him to get away to a cooler climate for rest and recuperation. When Congress adjourned in mid-June, the Davis family prepared for a lengthy sojourn in New England.31

  On July 3 in Baltimore, Jefferson, Varina, and both children—Maggie now three and a half and Jeff Jr., eighteen months—embarked on the Joseph Whitney. Arriving in Boston on the morning of July 6, Jefferson and Varina spent the day touring the sights until late afternoon, when they took an overnight steamer bound for Portland, Maine, disembarking there the next morning. During the subsequent three months the Davises enjoye
d the refreshing summer and early fall of Maine. They saw much of the state, from Portland to Augusta, Penobscot Bay, Bangor, and just over fifty miles east of Bangor the Coast Survey camp on 1,475-foot Humpback or Lead Mountain, where Alexander Bache once again greeted his old friend. Varina remembered joyful excursions on the water, clambakes, picnics or “basket parties,” fresh fish and vegetables adorning tables, quiet nights because of the absence of nocturnal insects, and the kindness of so many people.32

  When on October 6 the Davises finally left Maine, they stopped once again in Boston. Here they stayed over a week, longer than they expected because Jeff Jr. came down with a bronchial illness. During this stopover, in company with numerous other dignitaries, Jefferson toured Boston Harbor and visited Marshfield, the estate of Daniel Webster. After Boston, the Davises made a brief stop in New York City before returning to Washington on October 22.33

  The trip certainly aided Davis’s physical condition. As early as mid-August he reported that since his arrival in Maine his health had “improved steadily.” One of his hosts recalled his “pleasant face,” even though he was not completely well. But he got better over the weeks; Varina thought “hourly.” According to her, the trip accomplished precisely what had been hoped: “health came back to his wasted form, and his sight improved daily.”34

  And the trip had an unexpected dimension. Hailed as a notable public figure, Davis often found himself called upon to give speeches, and give them he did. From impromptu remarks on board ship on the Fourth of July to addressing a crowd of 5,000 at a Democratic rally in New York City on October 19, Davis spoke at least eight times, including before the Maine Democratic convention, at the state militia encampment, at the Maine Agricultural Society, and at a Democratic ratification meeting at Faneuil Hall in Boston. This public recognition surprised and delighted him. He told one audience it overwhelmed him; to another, he spoke of the “constant acts of generous hospitality” shown him. Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Franklin Pierce’s alma mater, even awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree. All the while he enjoyed renewing old political friendships and making new ones.35