Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Brilliantly Boxing In Stephen Douglas

THE DRED SCOTT DECISION NOT ONLY BROUGHT ABRAHAM LINCOLN out of his silence on slavery; it also compelled the “moderate” Stephen Douglas, with direct pressure from Senate-candidate Abraham Lincoln, to figure out how to maintain his position in favor of popular sovereignty without going against the Supreme Court. Douglas’s solution, set out in reply to a question from Lincoln, was to introduce the Freeport Doctrine. Lincoln’s question, as reiterated by Douglas, was, “Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?” To which Douglas, clearly irritated, replied,

I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution. Mr Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a Slave Territory or a Free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point.32

The idea, put succinctly, was that slavery could not be established in any territory if the people in the territory chose not to pass regulations that facilitated law enforcement on behalf of its establishment. Douglas’s solution was consistent with the letter but clearly not the spirit of the law as articulated in the Dred Scott decision. It had two fundamental political consequences. First, it appealed to the Illinois legislature, the body with the constitutional authority at the time to elect members of the Senate. Hence, his Freeport Doctrine was a politically expedient path to defeating Lincoln for the Senate. But, second, it was not well received by the southern portions of the Democratic Party. They saw the Freeport Doctrine for what it was—an effort to thwart the Dred Scott ruling that had opened the territories to the unfettered spread of slavery just as desired by southern politicians.

Lincoln understood that he was putting Douglas in a quandary.33 Douglas professed the utmost regard for the Supreme Court. He also was a strong advocate of popular sovereignty. The court had ruled against popular sovereignty. What, Lincoln pondered, was Douglas’s position on the free spread of slavery into the territories following the Dred Scott decision? The reply he extracted from Douglas practically guaranteed that the Democratic Party, or a substantial—proslavery—part of it, would not support Stephen Douglas for president in 1860. With the Democrats likely to be divided in the presidential election, the door was opened to the election of a Republican and Lincoln had every intention of being that Republican.

Lincoln’s maneuver in posing a question to Douglas that could only harm Douglas—either he would answer in favor of the Court ruling and lose his Senate seat or he would answer as he did and lose the bulk of the Democratic Party in 1860—was politically brilliant but also foreseeably dangerous. Lincoln was knowingly dividing the Democratic Party, which meant deepening sectional divisions and a heightened risk of war. This, as we saw in examining the “House Divided” speech and his explicit letter to Robertson on the peaceful extinction of slavery, was surely front and center on his mind. He had options. For instance, he could have chosen not to ask the question, in the process probably still losing the Senate seat to the incumbent (as he did anyway), without precipitating deeper national rancor. Probably the upshot of that course would have been that Lincoln would have faded from the political scene, adding yet another failed campaign to his long list. Or he could, by posing the question and dividing the opposition, increase his odds of becoming president at the price of a heightened risk of civil war. Ambition dictated his course—he asked the question, lost the Senate race, and heightened his prospects for 1860, which he further heightened by adding another lawyer’s brief against Douglas and the Southern Democrats in his Cooper Union speech a couple of years later.

Lincoln’s own position on the fateful question he put to Douglas, as indicated in the “House Divided” speech, was that the country faced the need to determine if it was to be all slave or all free. He clearly favored the latter position, contrary to the implications of the Dred Scott decision. Not surprisingly, Illinois’s Democrats defended their position by characterizing Lincoln and his entire party as extremists who were prepared to reject the law of the land as set out by the Supreme Court with the intent of precipitating a war. Douglas specifically attacked Lincoln’s view that the nation could not endure without being all slave or all free. Lest anyone doubt that Lincoln’s position was understood to be a call to civil war, here are Douglas’s own words on Lincoln’s speech, delivered on July 9, 1858, with Lincoln known by Douglas to be in the audience:

Mr. Lincoln asserts, as a fundamental principle of this government, that there must be uniformity in the local laws and domestic institutions of each and all the States of the Union; and he therefore invites all the non-slaveholding States to band together, organize as one body, and make war upon slavery in Kentucky, upon slavery in Virginia, upon the Carolinas, upon slavery in all of the slaveholding States in this Union, and to persevere in that war until it shall be exterminated. He then notifies the slaveholding States to stand together as a unit and make an aggressive war upon the free States of this Union with a view of establishing slavery in them all; of forcing it upon Illinois, of forcing it upon New York, upon New England, and upon every other free State, and that they shall keep up the warfare until it has been formally established in them all. In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free States against the slave States, a war of extermination to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the States shall either become free or become slave.34

Perhaps this was merely harsh, negative campaign rhetoric and fear-mongering; perhaps it was sincerely believed. Either way, it was a prophetic statement! The lines had been clearly drawn. Lincoln was portrayed as lawless and as advocating dissolution of the Union, as calling for civil war; Douglas as law abiding and willing to try to finesse the difficulties created by the Dred Scott decision.

Divide and Conquer: The Election of 1860

LINCOLN’S ATTACK AGAINST DOUGLAS IN 1858 HELPED FORGE HIS famously slim electoral victory in 1860. To see how his call for a United States that was all slave or all free shaped his electoral victory, it is useful to compare the electoral college maps of 1852, 1856 (that is, the first time the Republicans ran a candidate for president), and 1860, when Lincoln prevailed over a heavily divided field.