The Life of Jefferson Davis. Alfriend Frank Heath

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СКАЧАТЬ fervent eloquence, his heroic adherence to the Constitution, elevated patriotism, and distinguished virtues. Contrasting the conduct of the Fillmore and Pierce administrations concerning the Cuban question, he avowed his belief that Cuba would then be in possession of the United States had Congress sustained General Pierce in his prompt and decided suggestions as to the Black Warrior difficulty.

      Mr. Davis expressed his approbation of the course pursued by the late administration with reference to Nicaragua. “Unlawful expeditions” should be suppressed, though he should rejoice at the establishment of American institutions in Central America, and maintained the right of the United States to a paramount influence in the affairs of the continent, with which European interference should be, at all times, promptly checked.

      When the Thirty-fifth Congress assembled in December, 1857, the Kansas question had already developed a difficult and critical phase. The rock upon which Mr. Buchanan’s administration was to split had been encountered, and the wedge prepared, with which the Democratic party was destined to be torn asunder.

      CHAPTER VI

RETURN OF MR. DAVIS TO THE SENATE – OPENING EVENTS OF MR. BUCHANAN’S ADMINISTRATION – TRUE INTERPRETATION OF THE LEGISLATION OF 1854 – SENATOR DOUGLAS THE INSTRUMENT OF DISORGANIZATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY – HIS ANTECEDENTS AND CHARACTER – AN ACCOMPLISHED DEMAGOGUE – DAVIS AND DOUGLAS CONTRASTED – BOTH REPRESENTATIVES OF THEIR RESPECTIVE SECTIONS – DOUGLAS AMBITION – HIS COUP D’ETAT, AND ITS RESULTS – THE KANSAS QUESTION – DOUGLAS’ TRIUMPHS OVER THE SOUTH AND THE UNITY OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY LOST – “SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY” – PROPERLY CHARACTERIZED – DAVIS’ COURSE IN THE KANSAS STRUGGLE – DEBATE WITH SENATOR FESSENDEN – PEN-AND-INK SKETCH OF MR. DAVIS AT THIS PERIOD – TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF POLITICAL EVENTS TO THE SOUTH – SHE RIGHTLY INTERPRETS THEM – MR. DAVIS’ COURSE SUBSEQUENT TO THE KANSAS IMBROGLIO – HIS DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS – TWO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKING – DAVIS THE LEADER OF THE REGULAR DEMOCRACY IN THE THIRTY-SIXTH CONGRESS – HIS RESOLUTIONS – HIS CONSISTENCY – COURSE AS TO GENERAL LEGISLATION – VISITS THE NORTH – SPEAKS IN PORTLAND, BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND OTHER PLACES – REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO ATTEND THE WEBSTER BIRTH-DAY FESTIVAL – MR. SEWARD’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE “IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT” – MR. DAVIS BEFORE MISSISSIPPI DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION – PROGRESS OF DISUNION – DISSOLUTION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY – SPEECHES OF MR. DAVIS AT PORTLAND AND IN SENATE

      Mr. Davis returned to the Senate at a period marked by agitation, no less menacing to the Union than that which had so seriously threatened it in 1850. His health at this time was exceedingly infirm, and for several months he was so much prostrated by his protracted sufferings, that a proper regard for the suggestions of prudence would have justified his entire abstinence from the labors and excitements of this stormy period. Again and again, however, did his heroic devotion carry him from his sick bed to the capitol, to engage in the death-struggle of the South, with her leagued enemies, for safety in the Union, which she was still loath to abandon, even under the pressure of intolerable wrong. Frequently, with attenuated frame and bandaged eyes, he was to be seen in the Senate, at moments critical in the fierce sectional conflict; and at the final struggle upon the Kansas question, not even the earnest admonitions of his physician, that to leave his chamber would probably be followed by the most dangerous results, were availing to induce his absence from the scene.

      The opening events of the first session of the Thirty-fifth Congress, (the first incidental to the administration of Mr. Buchanan,) were far from being auspicious of the continued unity of the Democratic party, which, for several years past, the intelligence of the country had correctly appreciated as an essential condition to the preservation of the Union.

      Mainly through the undivided support given him by the South, Mr. Buchanan was elected upon the Cincinnati platform of 1856, which was a re-affirmation of the cardinal tenets of the Democratic faith, involving also emphatic approval of the Kansas-Nebraska legislation two years previous. Not until months after his inauguration were there any indications of hostility to his administration within the ranks of his own party. Nor had there been any avowed difference of construction as to the end and effect of the legislation of 1854. The rare unanimity with which the South had been rallied to the support of the Democracy was based upon the unreserved admission, by all parties, that the Kansas-Nebraska act was designedly friendly in its spirit, at all events, to Southern interests. No Southern statesman, for a moment, dreamed that it was capable of an interpretation unfriendly to his section. That the plain purpose of the bill was to remove the subject of slavery outside the bounds of congressional discussion, and to place it in the disposition of the States separately, and in the Territories, when organizing for admission as States, was regarded by the South as the leading vital principle which challenged her enthusiastic support. Such, indeed, was the doctrine asserted by the entire Democratic party of the South, enunciated by the administration, and tacitly approved by the Northern Democracy. Very soon, however, after the meeting of Congress, the action of Senator Douglas revealed him as the instrument of disorganization in his party. To a proper understanding of his motives and conduct at this conjuncture, a brief statement of his antecedents is essential.

      Stephen A. Douglas was now in the meridian of life and the full maturity of his unquestionably vigorous intellectual powers. For twenty-five years he had been prominent in the arena of politics, and as a member of Congress his course had been so eminently politic and judicious as to make him a favorite with the Democracy, both North and South. To an unexampled degree his public life illustrated the combination of those characteristics of the demagogue, a fertile ingenuity, facile accommodation to circumstances, and wonderful gifts of the ad captandum species of oratory, so captivating to the populace, which in America peculiarly constitute the attributes of the “rising man.” Douglas was not wanting in noble and attractive qualities of manhood. His courage was undoubted, his generosity was princely in its munificence to his personal friends, and he frequently manifested a lofty magnanimity. In his early youth, deprived of the advantages of fortune and position, the discipline of his career was not propitious to the development of the higher qualities of statesmanship – with which, indeed, he was scantily endowed by nature. It is as the accomplished politician, subtle, ready, fearless, and indefatigable, that he must be remembered. In this latter character he was unrivaled.

      Not less than Davis was Douglas a representative man, yet no two men were more essentially dissimilar, and no two lives ever actuated by aspirations and instincts more unlike. Douglas was the representative of expediency – Davis the exponent of principles. In his party associations Douglas would tolerate the largest latitude of individual opinion, while Davis was always for a policy clearly defined and unmistakable; and upon a matter of vital principle, like Percy, would reluctantly surrender even the “ninth part of a hair.” To maintain the united action of the Democratic party on election day, to defeat its opponents, to secure the rewards of success, Douglas would allow a thousand different constructions of the party creed by as many factions. Davis, on the other hand, would, and eventually did, approve the dissolution of the party, when it refused an open, manly enunciation of its faith. For mere party success Douglas cared every thing, and Davis nothing, save as it ensured the triumph of Constitutional principles. Both loved the Union and sought its perpetuity, but by different methods; Douglas by never-ending compromises of a quarrel, which he should have known that the North would never permit to be amicably settled; by staving off and ignoring issues which were to be solved only by being squarely met. Davis, too, was not unwilling to compromise, but he wearied of perpetual concession by the South, in the meanwhile the North continuing its hostility, both open and insidious, and urged a settlement of all differences upon a basis of simple and exact justice to both sections.

      Douglas was preëminently the representative politician of his section, and throughout his career was a favorite with that boastful, bloated, and mongrel element, which is violently called the “American people,” and which is the ruling element in elections in the Northern cities. In character and conduct he embodied many of its materialistic and socialistic ideas, its false conception of liberty, its pernicious dogmas of equality, and not a little of its rowdyism.

      Davis СКАЧАТЬ