William Lowndes Yancey
Yancey’s motive was more than ideological or economic, but profoundly personal, buried in his wretched past. After his father, a former South Carolina state legislator, died when he was only three, his mother married a Northern Presbyterian minister, Nathan Beman, who had come to Georgia to teach school, and the family moved to Troy, New York. Beman was a cruel and violent stepfather, who physically and mentally abused his wife and children. Beman went on to associate with prominent abolitionists and become president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Yancey dropped out of Williams College at Amherst, relocated to upcountry South Carolina, and married the daughter of a wealthy planter. Within a year, he moved to Alabama to establish a large cotton plantation. At this news, Beman cast out his wife and sent her south. Yancey associated the North with his stepfather, “cold, austere, forbidding, cruel, and hypocritical,” according to his biographer Eric Walther.
In 1838, on a visit to South Carolina, asserting his honor, Yancey murdered his wife’s uncle in a petty dispute over something a young cousin had said, and briefly served time in jail for manslaughter, after which he returned to Alabama and was elected to the Congress. The most notable episode during his one term was his duel with Congressman Thomas Clingman of North Carolina, a Whig, over a disagreement about Texas annexation in which neither man received a scratch. The end of his elective career was the beginning of his march from the fevered swamp on the political margins to the podium of the South Carolina Institute.
From 1848 onward, Yancey perennially urged his Alabama Platform on state and national conventions. Robert Barnwell Rhett, of South Carolina, with whom he bonded in the Congress, became his brother fire-eater, the two constituting what other Southerners referred to as a “clique.” “Such folly—such madness I never expected from the South,” Senator Hammond wrote to William Gilmore Simms, editor of the Southern Quarterly Review, in 1859. The fire-eaters were “insuring Seward’s election. . . . Neither more nor less. That is what our Rhetts . . . are working for in conjunction . . . all of them, and [Senator Albert Gallatin] Brown, [Jefferson] Davis, [John] Slidell, etc., etc., were recruiting sergeants for Seward and his gang. The infatuated and besotted ‘fire-eaters.’ ”
In anticipation of the election year, Yancey wrote Rhett to publish an editorial asserting that if the Democratic Party failed to accept the Alabama Platform a new Southern party should be formed, and that if the Republican Party won the election the Southern legislatures should recall their states’ senators and representatives from the Congress and prepare the “means for their common safety”—secession. Rhett’s paper, the Mercury, ran the manifesto on October 13, 1859. The timing served to advance Yancey’s resolution on November 12 to the Democratic Party of Montgomery, Alabama, which in turn became the platform approved in January by the state convention, and then carried to other Southern states, and to Charleston.
At long last, elevated to the convention podium, Yancey had everybody’s attention. He denied that he knew of any Southerners who were “disruptionists,” “disunionists,” or “factionists.” He was present there only “to save the South” and “rescue the country.” The South, he said, was a victimized “minority.” It was “unsafe in the Union.” “Ours is the property invaded; ours are the institutions which are at stake; ours is the peace that is to be destroyed; ours is the property that is to be destroyed; ours is the honor at stake—the honor of children, the honor of families, the lives, perhaps, of all—all of which rests upon what your course may ultimately make a great heaving volcano of passion and crime, if you are enabled to consummate your designs.”
The villain of the crime was the prospective nominee. “Mr. Douglas’s doctrine is at war with the rights of southern citizens,” said Yancey. Douglas was “animated by an ardent and consuming ambition.” As though raising a cross against the devil Yancey quoted the inscription on Calhoun’s tomb: “Truth, Justice and the Constitution.”
Yancey’s true audience was the Southerners in the hall and he addressed his closing words to them. “To my countrymen of the South I have a few words here to say. Be true to your constitutional duties and rights. Be true to your own sense of right. Accept of defeat here, if defeat is to attend the assertion of the right, in order that you may secure a permanent victory in whatever contest you carry a constitutional banner. Yield nothing of principle for mere party success—else you will die by the hands of your associates as surely as by the hand of your avowed enemy.”
Finally, he bid farewell to the Democratic Party, condemning it for its betrayal of the South, and unmistakably calling for the lynching of its chief betrayer, Stephen A. Douglas. “The people have no interest in parties, except to have them pledged to administer the government for the protection of their rights. The leaders of the masses, brilliant men, great statesmen, may, by ever ignoring the people’s rights, still have a brilliant destiny in the rewards of office and the distribution of eighty millions annually; but when those leaders, those statesmen, become untrue to the people, and ask the people to vote for a party that ignores their rights, and dares not acknowledge them, in order to put and keep them in office, they ought to be strung upon a political gallows higher than that ever erected for Haman.”
Yancey spoke at twilight, and as darkness fell the gaslights in the hall flickered and flashed, Southerners interrupted with “outbursts of applause,” and were filled with “rapturous enthusiasm”—“the speech of the convention,” wrote Halstead.
But the vanity of Yancey’s gothic lament of Southern victimization at the hands of the Northern wing of the Democratic Party stirred Senator George E. Pugh of Ohio to jump out of his seat and take the podium. “When have we betrayed the South?” he demanded. “When have we broken faith with the South? Put your finger upon the place.” He listed Northern state after state where by standing on the Southern position the Democrats had been decimated. “Now, when we come here to debate with you, you commence by telling us that we are an inferior class of beings; that we shall not assume to have or express any opinion; that we shall not call upon you to stand by your plighted faith; that we shall put our hands on our mouths and our mouths in the dust. Gentlemen of the South, you mistake us. We will not do it.”
On April 28, Saturday, men on each side amended the clashing resolutions. The Southerners whittled their platform down to its essence of federal protection of slavery in the territories and “wherever else.” The Douglas side diluted its platform down to simply allowing the Supreme Court to settle the whole matter. They were prepared to drop popular sovereignty, which was nowhere mentioned, for the nomination. But the Southerners filibustered. The longer the delay, the more momentum ran against Douglas.
On April 29, Sunday, the Douglas camp tried winning support by offering delegates prospective federal jobs that would be forthcoming from the administration of President Douglas. Douglas’s old adventurer and adviser, George N. Sanders, who had ruined him in the 1852 campaign, was on the scene acting as a back channel to Buchanan, whom he had assisted in the 1856 campaign. Sanders sent Buchanan a long telegram pleading with him to relent against Douglas. Buchanan was peeved that he personally had to pay the charge of the wire, which cost $26.80.
On April 30, Monday, the competing planks were presented to the delegates. In the instant before the vote, Halstead glanced at Yancey. “Mr. Yancey caught my eye at this ‘solemn moment,’ as various gentlemen in the Convention insisted upon calling it, and he was smiling as a bridegroom.”
While the Douglas majority passed its platform, seven Southern state delegations abstained on every vote. “And now commenced the regular stampede. Alabama led the Southern column. . . . There was a shudder of excitement, an universal stir over the house, and then for the first time during the day, profound stillness.” The silence was soon broken with fervent speeches as the delegations declared their withdrawals. “The South Carolinians cheered loud and long, and the tempest of applause made the circuit of the galleries and the floor se
veral times before it subsided. There was a large number of ladies present, and they favored the secessionists with their sweetest smiles, and with nods and glances of approval, a delighted fluttering of fans and parasols, and even occasional clapping of hands.”
That night was the Walpurgisnacht of the Democratic Party, the traditional May Day’s eve when witches gather for their revels. An hour before midnight, Halstead wandered the streets of Charleston. “The night was beautiful with moonlight, which silvered the live oaks along Meeting Street, and made the plastered fronts of the old houses gleam like marble.” He heard the distant music of a band and shouting. “I soon came upon a street full of people in front of the Court House, and heard a thousand throats call for ‘Yancey!’ ‘Yancey!’ ” And Yancey stepped forward. “He spoke of the seceding delegates as about to form the ‘Constitutional Democratic Convention,’ and the delegates who remained, as composing the ‘Rump Convention.’. . . Every ultra sentiment was applauded with mad enthusiasm. Yancey said that, perhaps even now, the pen of the historian was nibbed to write the story of a new Revolution. At this, some one of the crowd cried ‘three cheers for the Independent Southern Republic.’ ” The Charleston Brass Band played again and the crowd marched to the offices of the Mercury to hear Rhett deliver a fire-eating speech.
Late that night Richard Taylor, the son of the late president, made his way to the house where Buchanan’s men—Slidell, Bright, and Bayard—had set up their headquarters, “not as delegates, but under the impulse of hostility to the principles and candidacy of Mr. Douglas.” Taylor made an urgent case, “pointing out the certain consequences of Alabama’s impending action,” and he persuaded them. “Mr. Yancey was sent for, came into our views after some discussion, and undertook to call his people together at that late hour, and secure their consent to disregard instructions. We waited until near dawn for Yancey’s return, but his efforts failed of success.” He had done his job all too well. “Governor [John A.] Winston, originally opposed to instructions as unwise and dangerous, now insisted that they should be obeyed to the letter, and carried a majority of the Alabama delegates with him. Thus, the last hope of preserving the unity of the National Democracy was destroyed, and by one who was its earnest advocate.”
In the sober light of day, the townspeople of Charleston were still celebrating but the Douglas camp found itself hungover and surrounded by wreckage. “The Convention Breaking Up,” ran the headline on the Mercury. “The events of yesterday will probably be the most important which have taken place since the Revolution of 1776,” Rhett declared. “The Douglas men look badly this morning, as though they had been troubled during the night with bad dreams,” wrote Halstead. But the nightmare was real enough and not over. Almost all of the Douglas supporters from the North, including a number of delegates, left for home. “The attendance at the regular Convention was very slim. The Hall where the seceders were in session was on the contrary crowded,” the New York Times reported. “Cushing’s course is detested by all, North and South.”
The certainty and poise of Douglas’s entire strategy relied on the solidity of New York, personified in its chairman, Dean Richmond, master of the New York Central, who brought with him to the convention the “Silk Stockings” of Wall Street, including August Belmont, the American manager for the Rothschild bank. They had stood by Douglas through the 1852 convention and been his rock at this one. Richmond had fended off New York City mayor Fernando Wood’s rascals of his Mozart Hall faction, established after he was expelled from Tammany Hall. His complete control was guaranteed by the victory on the unit rule. But Douglas’s inability to close the deal turned Richmond from bullish to bearish. He quietly wished he could substitute Horatio Seymour, the former governor of New York, for Douglas. He never mentioned it publicly. But now the test came to sustaining Douglas. With the walkout of seven Southern delegations, the question was whether the nominee would be selected by two thirds of those present or two thirds of the whole. Cushing, still in the chair of the convention, ruled that retaining the old rule was valid even though the Southern delegates were phantoms and the motion was laid on the table. New York, under Richmond, was the decisive vote. Breaking with all the other Douglas delegations, New York cast its thirty-five votes as a unit for the old two-thirds rule, which carried by twenty-nine, 141 to 112. It spelled Douglas’s doom.
Richmond’s faithlessness was the last step in Douglas’s march of folly. At first his managers thought winning on the unit rule would assure his nomination. When they lost the vote on the convention chairman they thought Cushing would be at least neutral. Then they thought a walkout of two or three Southern delegations would help Douglas. The final blunder was to count on New York to be unswaying. Now Douglas’s name was put into nomination, followed by nominations for James Guthrie of Kentucky, Senator Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, Senator Hunter of Virginia, Senator Johnson of Tennessee, and Senator Joe Lane of Oregon. “After the vote of New York had decided that it was impossible to nominate Douglas, she proceeded, the roll of States being called, to vote for him as demurely as if she meant it,” wrote Halstead. “The first ballot for the nomination of a candidate for the Presidency, was taken about dusk, amid the most profound silence. When the name of Douglas was put in nomination, a feeble yelp went up from the North-western delegations. It was not hearty and strong, but thin and spiritless . . . the cold steel of the new construction of the two-thirds rule had pierced their vitals.”
After fifty-six ballots Douglas still fell short and his tally was stagnant. The New York delegation announced that if he didn’t receive two thirds on the sixtieth ballot it would dump him. On May 3, Douglas’s leadership decided that the convention should be adjourned for six weeks, until June 18, where it would meet in Baltimore.
While the regular Democratic convention deadlocked, the bolters, calling themselves the Constitutional Democratic Convention, assembled in the theater of St. Andrew’s Hall to act out a moonlight and magnolia dramaturgy of revolution beneath a large portrait of Queen Victoria. Senator Bayard, one of Buchanan’s agents, served as chairman, and delivered a ringing denunciation of the regular convention as “the spirit of Black Republicanism that existed there for power and plunder.” Yancey, “greeted with the most deafening applause,” repeated the section of his speech proclaiming that the ultras were not “disunionists.” The slave code platform was unanimously passed. One speaker urged the nomination of a candidate. Jefferson Davis’s name was bruited. But there was no nomination. Some thought the regular convention would decide to concede on the platform and invite them back to occupy their delegate seats. Others worried that they would be banished forever from the Democratic Party. The fire-eaters gave speeches calling Douglas men the worst sort of abolitionists. Pretty ladies fluttered in the galleries. When the regular convention adjourned, the counter-convention agreed to reassemble on June 11 in Richmond.
One week after the suspension of the Democratic convention, on May 10, the Constitutional Union convention was held in Baltimore. This assemblage attracted whatever was left from the decayed remnants of the Old Whigs and the Know-Nothings, a reprise of the American Party that had four years earlier nominated Millard Fillmore. The chairman of the convention was Senator John J. Crittenden, given three rounds of three cheers when he entered. The program of the party was to uphold the status quo, “the Constitution as it is,” as one speaker said, while resolutely avoiding all issues, especially slavery. “Everybody is eminently respectable, intensely virtuous, devotedly patriotic, and fully resolved to save the country,” wrote Halstead. “They propose to accomplish that political salvation so devoutly to be wished, by ignoring all the rugged issues of the day. The expression against platforms was universal and enthusiastic.”
Declaring itself the party of principle with a one-line platform—“The Constitution of the country, the union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws”—the delegates nominated a respectable backward-looking ticket of Senator John Bell of Tennessee for presi
dent, an Old Whig (“the fossil remains of the old Whig strain of political geology,” according to the New York Herald), but one of two Southerners (along with Sam Houston) to vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Edward Everett for vice president, the distinguished and even older Old Whig from Massachusetts. Both had the distinction of serving as short-lived cabinet secretaries in the short-lived administration of William Henry Harrison.
The Constitutional Unionists of course stood no chance of victory, but like Fillmore four years earlier pinned their hopes on a deadlock in the Electoral College that would throw the contest into the House of Representatives where they could be the balance of power. The New York Times editorialized that the chief purpose of the party was “primarily the defeat of the Republican ticket.” Medill of the Chicago Press and Tribune called it a “stupid absurdity” that was “a repetition of the Fillmore swindle of 1856.” The Douglas camp believed the Constitutional Unionists might drain off Old Whig votes from the Republicans throughout the lower North, tilting states to the Democrats. From Douglas’s point of view, Crittenden’s Constitutional Unionists were a distant ally potentially producing an effect similar to what Crittenden’s letter did in reducing the Old Whig vote for Lincoln in the Senate race.
In Washington, after the Southern bolt, Senator Milton S. Latham of California, a proslavery Democrat who had succeeded the murdered Broderick, recorded in his diary the spread of rumors sweeping the capital. On May 2, while dining at Senator Hammond’s, Sam Ward burst in with astonishing news that “Douglas was withdrawn and Guthrie has 196 votes.” (Ward was an extraordinary cosmopolitan of wide influence, the son of a wealthy banker, married to an Astor, the brother of Julia Ward Howe, and friend of Seward, but a Democrat who would become known as “King of the Lobby.”) “[John C.] Breckinridge turned pale and I could almost hear Mrs. B’ heart beat.” After dinner, Latham and Senator William M. Gwin, of California, went to Ward’s house, who confided he got his information from the White House. Ward rounded up Jefferson Davis and the entourage went to see Buchanan, who told them he hadn’t received that news, at which the “countenances of D[avis] and G[win] fell—didn’t believe it and off we started for Gov. Cobb.” He wasn’t at home, but “Mrs. C. had heard no such news. Then we went to Senators Hunter and Mason. Hunter and Cobb out but Mason was in. Mason heard the news, seemed glad of Douglas defeat but not pleased at the idea of having Guthrie for President. By and by Hunter and Cobb came and said ‘Douglas 1501/2 and Guthrie 68, adjourned until tomorrow.’ A perfect damper and Gwin retires with ‘dam[n] the luck.’ ”
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