Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  These resolutions had been approved by President Buchanan and an overwhelming majority of Democratic senators. The Democratic caucus of the Senate had even gone on record favoring them, with two notable exceptions: Stephen Douglas rightly saw them as an assault on his presidential ambitions, and Albert Brown recognized they effectively undermined his own bill mandating congressional action to protect slavery in the territories. Although the resolutions commanded a clear Senate majority, no vote on them occurred before the Democratic National Convention, which opened on April 23. Finally, in late May, the Senate passed them with one change, a specification that under number five, no conditions existed calling for action. According to Davis, that stipulation had no practical value, but it gained northern votes.73

  Although the partisan political motives underlying Davis’s resolutions have been clearly understood, their actual content and their fundamental intent have usually been misunderstood. All Republicans, Douglas and his band, and most historians have said Davis called for a federal slave code for the territories, that he wanted Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing the right of slave property in all territories just as state codes guaranteed the right of slave property in the slave states. That is precisely what Albert Brown proposed; but not Jefferson Davis.74

  In his resolutions Davis repeated his long-held premise that the territories belonged to all citizens and so all could take their legal property into the federal domain. But Davis had no interest in forcing slavery into any territory, a point he made in a Maine speech. To a Democratic rally in Portland he stated that if the inhabitants of a territory refused to adopt “police regulations” for the protection of property, “it would be rendered more or less valueless.” Referring specifically to slave property, Davis continued, “the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it.” Thus, the right to own slaves would remain, but “the remedy withheld, it would follow that the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the case, from taking slave property into a territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction.” Davis gave his final assessment: “So much for the oft repeated fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community.” As an editor in Mississippi noted, this position seemed closely parallel to the Freeport Doctrine. Both Davis and Douglas maintained that unless a territory actively protected slavery, slaveowners would not enter. But Davis still upheld his constitutional position, confirmed by Dred Scott, that slaveowners possessed a basic constitutional right.75

  Davis’s goal in the Senate was to get a statement of principle, not a specific statute. To an Alabama congressman he made clear his intent: “Our right is equality and the duty of the general government is to give adequate protection to every constitutional right which was placed under its care.” If existing laws provided “adequate protection,” Davis believed it “unwise” to request additional legislation “under the apprehension that they might not hereafter be effectual.” Besides, he reminded his correspondent, “there is danger of over action by our friends.” Analyzing the political forces involved, Davis made a shrewd observation: “As the smaller of the contending armies it behooves us carefully to reconnoiter ground before we advance to occupy it.” In the Senate, Davis maintained that Dred Scott provided the South with the required protection. As a result, Congress would not have to act until experience demonstrated that the executive and judiciary had trampled upon the rights of slaveowners. In making his case, he rejected Brown’s arguments that in Kansas these rights had already been violated.76

  Davis did not believe the South could obtain the kind of legislation Brown proposed; more important, he did not think it necessary, or even desirable. He had been convinced that in addition to Dred Scott, common-law property rights would protect slaveowners in any territorial judicial proceeding. He also confided to a friend that he and many of his colleagues knew the Supreme Court of Kansas would declare unconstitutional any antislavery law passed by the territorial legislature. Davis kept saying he wanted no factual case brought forward or discussed, but only a statement of basic principles.77

  He hoped his design could build a bridge over the chasm dividing northern and southern Democrats on the territorial question. But he had no intention of constructing a span wide enough to accommodate Douglas, unless Douglas came to him. Without question, his bringing up the resolutions in the winter of 1860 just weeks before the party’s national convention was not accidental. Even so, despite his best efforts, he never succeeded in getting his position denoted as moderate by a majority of northern Democrats.

  Davis, Douglas, and other senators now debated in a new chamber. On January 4, 1859, the Senate as a body had marched from its old quarters into the new northern wing of the Capitol, part of the building’s expansion that Secretary of War Davis had overseen. Two years earlier the House had moved to its new home at the opposite end of the Capitol. The Senate’s much-larger rectangular chamber was over 03 feet long and more than 80 feet wide, with 36 feet to a ceiling highlighted with intricately designed glass and iron skylights. Modern gas lighting illuminated the room; gold arabesques decorated its walls. The vice president’s elevated chair occupied the center of the northern wall; the galleries above seated almost 700 people, one for ladies and gentlemen, another for gentlemen only, and a third for press. Facing the vice president’s dais, the senators’ desks, which had been brought from the old chamber, were arranged in a semicircle with an aisle dividing them. Davis sat on the vice president’s right in the middle of the second row, amid several other southerners, with Douglas only three desks away.78

  During 1859 and 1860 in the Senate, Davis did not spend his time solely on the territorial question, though it was certainly the most important item of business. Military matters also occupied his attention. Always defending appropriations for the army, he fended off senators who wanted severe retrenchment. He also chided lawmakers for their penchant for creating new posts but providing insufficient funds to garrison them adequately. Basically, Davis fought a largely successful action to retain the gains he thought the army had made during the Pierce administration. He also continued his vigorous support for a transcontinental railroad, built with federal assistance. As before, he struggled against his strict-constructionist associates, who did not think the federal government should aid railroads. Again, Davis based his contention on requirements for defense and federal ownership of the territories. To avoid the problems of selecting a route, he suggested authorizing private companies to present plans for construction; he argued that they would make decisions on the best way west on engineering and commercial bases, not politics. Then, accepting the best proposal, the government could provide alternate sections of land in the territories and advance as much as $10 million, to be repaid from the railroad’s profits. He did not succeed.79

  Davis never forgot Mississippi. He sent government documents such as Patent Office reports and volumes from the Pacific railroad survey to his constituents. He was active in filling a federal attorney’s slot; the appointment of local postmasters received his careful attention. He tried to help a Woodville man obtain a reexamination of his patent application for cotton gin improvements, and he intervened with the secretary of war for a West Point cadet charged with drunkenness. A ledger he used illustrates the care he gave to his political base. Containing more than 400 pages with about 80 percent filled, the volume begins with a catalogue of Mississippi’s newspapers by town and county. There is also a roll of correspondents, individual and institutional, again by town and county, with an alphabetically arranged table of contents.80

  In the midst of Davis’s normal senatorial duties and the consideration of momentous national problems, private matters intruded into the public arena. Despite serious political and ideological differences, Davis usually remained on good terms with his senatorial colleagues, at least in public. Even with their competitiveness in Mississippi and Brown’s dislike for him, he and Brown did not openly reveal personal animosity. In 1857 Davi
s willingly agreed to let a group of mutual friends reconcile him and Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia, over differences stemming from old Unionist-State Rights charges. But on June 8, 1858, a situation arose suddenly that could have ended in disaster.81

  During Senate consideration of the army appropriations bill, the Finance Committee proposed to strike a provision providing $100,000 for breech-loading guns. In the ensuing debate sharp words passed between Davis and Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana. The two men disagreed over whether the secretary of war had requested the money to buy new weapons or to rework old ones. Benjamin accused Davis of making “a sneering reply”; Davis responded that if Benjamin found it “disagreeable, I hope he will keep it to himself.” Benjamin riposted, “When directed to me, I will not keep it to myself; I will repel it instanter.” Davis snapped, “You have got it, sir.” Some evidence suggests that the Congressional Globe purposefully omitted Davis’s most offensive remark: he had “no idea that he was to be met with arguments of a paid attorney in the Senate chamber.” When Benjamin asked if he had heard correctly, Davis affirmed that he had.

  Thereupon a duel seemed imminent. Almost immediately Benjamin sent Davis a challenge. When Davis read it in the Senate cloakroom, he realized he had stepped across a boundary. Promptly tearing up the note, he informed a colleague, “I will make this all right at once. I have been wholly wrong.” On the floor of the Senate, he publicly expressed regret: “I cannot gainsay … that my manner implied more than my heart meant.” To his fellow senators Davis confessed, “I always feel pained, nay, more … when I am involved in a personal controversy with anybody.” Admitting that he became angry and had “intended to be offensive,” and acknowledging that when he stated a conviction he could seem “dogmatic and dictatorial,” Davis apologized to the Senate and to Benjamin, toward whom he felt “kindness and respect,” for his unacceptable display of emotion. Thanking Davis, Benjamin said admiration and esteem still characterized his feelings toward the Mississippian. The incident was over.82

  Even though Davis had recovered from the serious illness that had prostrated him in the spring of 1858, physical and emotional stress maintained a tenacious grip. That the Benjamin incident took place soon after his return to the Senate following the lengthy, painful struggle for his eye is probably not accidental. Not only did his eye keep bothering him into 1859, but Davis also reported other maladies, chiefly facial neuralgia, probably deriving from his eye illness. In 1859, he even consulted with a prominent British physician who was visiting Washington.83

  A reporter who observed him in the Senate in May 1860 penned a vivid word picture. Initially struck by “the face of a corpse, the form of a skeleton,” he urged: “Look at the haggard, sunken weary eye—the thin white wrinkled lips clasped close upon the teeth in anguish. That is the mouth of a brave but impatient sufferer. See the ghostly white, hollow, bitterly puckered cheek, the high, sharp cheek bone, the pale brow full of fine wrinkles, the grizzly hair, prematurely gray.”84

  Indeed, photographs from the time depict a face showing great strain. One taken for McMlees’ Gallery portrays a haggard visage that had changed dramatically in five years. Davis’s hair and the fringe beard he had just started have become permeated with gray. The new beard, along with thin lips pressed tight, elongate his angular face. The pale eyes peer far off and away from the camera as he tries to mask the affected left one. Even though the famous Mathew Brady photograph from 1860 presents a well-groomed and composed man, the worn, tension-filled face reveals the scars of ravaging physical illness and enormous emotional pressure. Despite the obvious pain and strain, Davis did not turn from the unprecedented challenges facing him, his party, and his country. His determination and willpower continued to propel him. His wife understood when she wrote: “his mind dominated his body in so great a degree that he was able to endure nearly what he pleased.”85

  Jefferson Davis believed the presidential election of 1860 would be absolutely critical, a conviction shared by most southerners and many northerners. Its momentousness derived from the potential triumph of the Republican party, which sustained its unrelenting ideological and political onslaught on the South. But Davis was also aware that danger lurked in waters plied only by Democrats. The same division over the territorial issue and chiefly between the southerners and Douglas that had plagued the party since Lecompton remained deep.

  The Democrats confronted two massive obstacles: a platform and a candidate. Most southerners demanded a platform containing at least Davis’s resolutions on the explosive territorial issue. The Alabama Democratic convention had even instructed its delegation to the national convention to bolt unless such a platform was adopted. Calling such provisions a slave code for the territories, a substantial number of northerners rejected it. At the same time, a majority of northerners supported the candidacy of Stephen A. Douglas, who would command the allegiance of more than half the delegates. But, according to Democratic rules, nomination required a two-thirds vote of the convention. With southerners, including Davis, resolved to deny Douglas the presidential nod, he had practically no chance of amassing the necessary two-thirds. Thus, a successful convention would necessitate compromise on both platform and candidate. Northerners and southerners alike would have to step back, giving way on both Davis’s resolutions and Douglas’s candidacy. Unless such an outcome could be arranged, the party faced cataclysm.86

  Although Davis did not underestimate the political obstacles endangering his side, he thought it could surmount them. He envisioned the track for victory in a reprise of Zachary Taylor’s 1848 campaign. The Democrats needed a man “recognized in both sections as true exponent of their opinions.” Because in the national convention the territorial question would generate “a hazardous controversy” that Davis could conceive no way to avoid, he wanted no platform adopted. He believed the nominee would have to be a northerner, for to gain sufficient northern backing any southerner would have to make too many dangerous compromises. He had already picked out his ideal choice: Franklin Pierce. Most important, according to Davis, Pierce met two essential requirements; no one else could save the party from “a controversy as to ‘the platform,’ ” and he could win. Moreover, Davis liked Pierce, who he believed would protect southern rights as defined by the Supreme Court and interpreted in his resolutions. He could also expect to exercise considerable influence himself in a second Pierce administration. Davis counseled an obviously interested Pierce, advised him to remain above the fray, and refused to meet his friend in New York City out of fear that personal contact would tarnish Pierce with his southern identity. Davis’s efforts were not secret, for the Douglas camp was aware of the pro-Pierce activity.87

  Davis kept to this course despite considerable talk about his trying for the nomination. In 1859 the Mississippi Democratic convention by a five-to-one margin voted to recommend him for the presidency to the national convention. From New England came positive soundings about his “qualities of mind and character,” including one from a notable Massachusetts Democrat who would soon become notorious in the South, Benjamin F. Butler. Davis’s own choice, Franklin Pierce, reported that Davis was “rapidly gaining ground” in Pierce’s home area. Among southern politicians, he stood high on the list of favored potential candidates. These notices made heady news for a man as ambitious as Davis. A fellow senator, albeit a critical one, wrote: “Jefferson Davis is burning up with ambition and … What Jeff will do if not nominated God only knows.” Davis’s career to 1860 gives every reason to accept Andrew Johnson’s opinion on the matter of ambition, but this time Davis was absolutely convinced that everyone, himself included, had to put aside personal goals for the sake of the party, which, to Davis at this point, meant the country. As a result, he spurned all overtures and parried all attempts to push his name. He feared “a division of the Democracy must be a forerunner of a division of the States.”88

  On April 23, 1860, the Democrats gathered for their quadrennial assembly in Charleston, South Carolina, the citadel
of southern fire-eating and an incredibly inopportune site for judicious deliberations and reconciliation. Before Charleston, Davis met in Washington with former cabinet associate Caleb Cushing, who supported the basic southern position and who would be named presiding officer of the convention. Davis also sent an emissary to Charleston, urging his friends, especially in the Mississippi delegation, to recognize their most important task as stopping Douglas, not writing a particular platform. A group of southern congressional leaders went to Charleston, while others, including Davis, maintained telegraphic contact.89

  The convention paid no heed to Davis’s wishes or the efforts of congressional managers on the scene. Before considering nominations, it took up the platform, making an early casualty of Davis’s hope for no such document. Attempting to force its will on the party and on Douglas, the anti-Douglas combine with southerners in the vanguard demanded a platform embodying Davis’s resolutions on slavery and the territories. In the atmosphere of strident southernism pervading Charleston, the southern offensive received public cheers. Yet the Douglas forces refused to break, or even to bend. When the platform committee endorsed the southern position (because in it each state had one vote, and the southern-administration alliance controlled a majority of states), the Douglasites prepared a minority report stating that all matters involving slavery in the territories and the duty of Congress should be left to the Supreme Court. On the floor, with voting by individuals rather than by states, the minority version prevailed by a narrow margin. At the announcement of the result, Alabama led delegations from the Deep South out of the hall.