Before we
leave the subject of why the Civil War was fought, there’s one little story I’d
like to share. I think it offers some great insight into how much the South valued its Institution.
Have you
ever considered what might’ve happened if Lincoln had lost the election in
1860? Are you familiar at all with the circumstances leading up to it?
The
Republican Party had just been formed out of the anti-slavery remnants of the
Whig Party in 1854. Maybe you’re not aware of this, but Lincoln was not the first presidential candidate the
Republicans forwarded. That honor went to John C. Fremont in 1856. Their slogan
was “Free labor, free land, free men.” From the very beginning, their platform
called not for national abolition of
slavery but opposition to the extension
of slavery into the territories and new states. Unfortunately, Fremont lost
both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote by a huge margin.
In 1860 the
Republicans nominated Lincoln, and popular conventional wisdom said that he
didn’t have a prayer. The Republican Party wasn’t really a national party,
while the Democratic Party was, completely dominating the South and also having
strongholds all over the country. There was practically no chance that Lincoln
would win.
But then. .
.
Well,
before we get to that, I need to back up just a bit.
Please
recall that our country had always had a complicated relationship with slavery.
Anti- and Pro-slavery advocates in Washington had come up with a (supposedly)
mutually agreeable settlement: the Missouri Compromise of 1820. States admitted below the 36°30′
line would be slave states, while states above that line would be free states,
except for the proposed state of Missouri (hence the name). The point was to
basically set up a balance between slave states and free states, so that
neither side would get a decisive advantage in Congress.
Enter one
of the biggest national figures of the 1850’s, Stephen
A. Douglas. He was a U.S. Representative and Senator, and a national
household name. In 1854, he was the main designer and supporter of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which nullified the Missouri
Compromise and instituted the concept of “popular sovereignty.” In other words,
the residents of a state could vote
on whether the newly admitted state would be slave or free.
Slavery
opponents saw the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a belligerent expansion by the “Slave
Power” into new territory (literally and figuratively). It was opposition to
this act which prompted the rise of the newly minted Republican Party, and it
also brought about the return of one Abraham Lincoln out of the private sphere
back into the public. He ran against Stephen Douglas for Senate in Illinois,
and they carried their public disagreements into a famous series of seven debates all over the state. In these
debates, once again I have to point out, Lincoln never called for the national
abolition of slavery. What he stood for was 1) the immorality of slavery, and 2)
against the expansion of slavery into new territories and states. Speaking of slavery, Lincoln said
That is the real issue. That is the issue
that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and
myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two
principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles
that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue
to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine
right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself.
It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and
I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of
a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit
of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another
race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
Lincoln
lost the senatorial election to Douglas, and Douglas’s star continued to rise.
Now we can
finally come to the pivotal election of 1860. Conventional wisdom said that
Stephen Douglas would get the Democratic Party nomination, and that he’d easily
win the general election. But there was a problem.
Southerners
didn’t like the idea of “popular sovereignty.” At all. This legal principle
gave people within a territory the right (gasp!) to exclude slavery within
their borders, and this was unacceptable. And this made Douglas unacceptable to them. The convention hosted a vehemently
divided party, and those who rejected Douglas walked out. That’s right: The
first successful secession of that time wasn’t the South pulling out of the
Union but the anti-Douglas Democrats pulling out of their own party.
Please keep
this in mind: There was absolutely no
division within the Democratic Party on the morality of slavery. Virtually everyone there agreed that
slavery was good and proper and right and that “Negroes” were the innate
inferiors of Whites and always would be. The only dividing question was whether
or not the residents of any particular state had the right to vote on whether
that state was going to allow slavery within its borders or not. The
anti-Douglas Democrats demanded full federal protection for slavery everywhere.
They agreed with the recent Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling
that the federal government had no right to prevent slavery in any territory or
new state.
The
anti-Douglas Democrats walked out on this one issue, and thus there were two competing Democratic candidates on
the ballot in the general election: Stephen A. Douglas and John Breckinridge.
This split the Democratic vote, and that’s
why Lincoln won a very unlikely victory in 1860 and became President.
You see?
The only reason why Lincoln became President at all was because the Southern
Democrats were—yep, I’ll use that word again—obsessed with their
attachment to the institution of slavery. If they’d been willing to compromise
the least little bit on this issue, they’d have nominated Douglas, and most
likely he would’ve become President.
Douglas
agreed with them that slavery was good and proper and right. But he was willing
to accept that the Constitution didn’t demand that slavery be protected
everywhere, and thus he ensured his rejection by the Southern Democrats. Their
utterly zealous dedication to an evil institution ultimately doomed their
chances of winning the election, and thus instigated the eventual downfall of
slavery in America.
“So inexorably thou
On thy shattered
foes pursuing,
Never a respite dost allow
Save what works
their own undoing.”
--C.S.
Lewis
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and
knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
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