The Life of Lyman Trumbull. Horace White
East. He speaks of Greeley's "puffs" of Douglas, which he regards as demoralizing to the Republicans of Illinois. "I heard Greeley handled quite roughly by the candidate for lieutenant-governor of Wisconsin, a very intelligent German. He spoke to Greeley in my presence and said that Wisconsin stood by Illinois and was not for sale."
E. Peck, Chicago, April 15: "Dr. Brainard has had a talk with Dr. Ray, the substance of which was that we should consent to run Douglas as our candidate for the House of Representatives from this district. What does this mean? Can Brainard have any authority to make such a proposition? Ray has been advising with me, and we are both in the clouds. I requested permission to write to you for your opinion before any opinions were expressed here. Mr. Colfax may be able to tell you something of the opinions of Douglas. I am shy in believing, and more shy in confiding, … yet Ray believes that Brainard was authorized by Douglas to make the proposition."
N. B. Judd, Chicago, April 19, says that if the Lecompton Bill is passed, Douglas is laid on the shelf. The Buchanan party in Chicago is of no consequence, "great cry and little wool." We shall have to fight the Democratic party as a unit. "How Douglas is to be the Democratic party in Illinois and the ally of the Republicans outside of the state is a problem which those, who are arranging with him, ought to know how to work out."
Overtures to the Republicans of Illinois did not come from Douglas only. Here is one of a different hue:
George T. Brown, Alton, February 24, urges the appointment of J. E. Starr (Buchanan Democrat) as postmaster at Alton. "Slidell opened the way for you to talk to him and you can easily do so. The Administration is very desirous that you should not oppose their appointments, and will give you anything."
The foregoing letter betokens a sudden change of mind in administration circles at Washington, as is evidenced by the following communication which Trumbull had received from one of his constituents a few weeks earlier:
B. Werner, Caseyville, January 4, refers to a former letter enclosing a petition for the establishment of a post-office at Caseyville. Hearing nothing of the matter, he went to see Mr. Armstrong, the postmaster at St. Louis, narrated the facts, and asked whether any order had been received by him respecting it. "He asked me to whom I had sent the petition. I told him to you. He replied if I had sent the petition to Robert Smith (Dem. M.C.) the matter would have been attended to, but as Mr. Trumbull was a Black Republican, the department would not pay any attention to it."
On the 2d of February, 1858, President Buchanan sent a special message to Congress with a copy of the Lecompton Constitution, and recommended that Kansas be admitted to the Union as a state under it. In this message he made reference to the Dred Scott decision, which had been pronounced by the Supreme Court in the previous March. On this point the message said:
It has been solemnly adjudged by the highest tribunal known to our laws that slavery exists in Kansas by virtue of the Constitution of the United States. Kansas is, therefore, at this moment as much a slave state as Georgia, or South Carolina.
Trumbull made a speech on the special message as soon as the reading of it was finished by the secretary. He reviewed the action of Governor Walker, which, in the beginning, had been avowedly taken with the view of creating and promoting a Free State Democratic party in Kansas, to which end he had made use of the soldiers placed at his disposal by the President. That this was an act of usurpation was conclusively shown by Trumbull, although Walker claimed that it had served the desirable purpose of preventing an armed collision between the contending factions. Trumbull then touched upon the Dred Scott case and maintained that the Supreme Court had likewise usurped authority by pronouncing an opinion on a case not before it. The court had virtually dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction. It had decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen and had no right to bring this action. There was no longer any case before the judges who so held. "Their opinions," said Trumbull, "are worth just as much as, and no more than, the opinions of any other gentlemen equally respectable in the country." Consequently, President Buchanan's assertion that Kansas was then as much a slave state as Georgia or South Carolina was unfounded and preposterous. Seward, Fessenden, and the Republican Senators generally held to this doctrine, but Senator Benjamin, of Louisiana, replied with considerable force that it was competent for the court to decide on what grounds it would give its decision, and that it did, in so many words, elect to decide the question of slavery in the territories, which was the principal question raised by the counsel of Dred Scott. That the decision had an aim different from the settlement of Dred Scott's claim, and that this aim was political, is now sufficiently established. It is also established that Dred Scott never took any steps consciously to secure freedom, but that the action was brought in his name by some speculating lawyers in St. Louis to secure damages or wages from the widow of Scott's master, Dr. Emerson.33 One additional fact is supplied by a letter in the Trumbull correspondence, showing how the money was collected to pay the plaintiff's court costs.
G. Bailey, Washington, May 12, 1857, writes, that when the case of Dred Scott was first brought to the notice of Montgomery Blair, he applied to him (Bailey) to know what to do. Blair said he would freely give his services without charge if Bailey would see to the necessary expenses of the case. Not having an opportunity to confer with friends, Bailey replied that he would become responsible. He had no doubt the necessary money could be raised. On this assurance he proceeded, the case was tried, and the result was before the country. Mr. Blair had just rendered the bill of costs: $63.18 for writ of error and $91.50 for printing briefs; total, $154.68. "May I be so bold, my dear sir, as to ask you to contribute two dollars toward the payment of this bill. I am now writing to seventy-five of the Rep. Members of the late Congress, and if they will answer me promptly, each enclosing the quota named, I can discharge the bill by myself paying a double share."
Mem.: $2 sent by Trumbull June 20th, '57.
The debate in the Senate on the Lecompton Bill continued till March 23. The best speech on the Republican side was made by Fessenden, of Maine, than whom a more consummate debater or more knightly character and presence has not graced the Senate chamber in my time, if ever. On the administration side the laboring oar was taken by Toombs, who spoke with more truculence than he had shown in the Thirty-fourth Congress. Jefferson Davis, who had been returned to the Senate after serving as Secretary of War under Pierce, bore himself in this debate with decorum and moderation.
The Lecompton Bill passed the Senate, but was disagreed to by the House, and a conference committee was appointed which adopted a bill proposed by Congressman English, of Indiana, which offered a large bonus of lands to Kansas, for schools, for a university, and for public buildings, if she would vote to come into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution now. If she would not so vote, she should not have the lands and should not come into the Union until she should have a population sufficient to elect one member of Congress on the ratio prescribed by law. The form of submission to a popular vote was to be: "Proposition accepted," or "Proposition rejected." If there was a majority of acceptances, the territory should be admitted as a state at once. Senator Seward and Representative Howard, Republican members of the conference committee, dissented from the report. This bill passed the House.
Douglas made a dignified speech against the English Bill, showing that it was in the nature of a bribe to the people to vote in a particular way. Although he did not think that the bribe would prevail, he could not accept the principle. The bill nevertheless passed on the last day of April, and on the 2d of August the English proposition was voted down by the people of Kansas by an overwhelming majority. The Lecompton Constitution thus disappeared from sublunary affairs, and John Calhoun disappeared from Kansas as soon as steps were taken to look into the returns of previous elections canvassed by him.
The opinion of a man of high position on the attitude of President Buchanan toward Lecomptonism is found in another letter to Trumbull:
J. D. Caton, chief justice of the supreme court of Illinois, Ottawa, March 6, 1858, does not think all the Presidents and all the Cabinets and all the Congresses and all the supreme courts and all the slaveholders on earth, with all the constitutions that could be drawn, could ever make Kansas a slave state. "No, there has been no such expectation, and I do not believe desire on the part of the present administration to make it a slave state, but as he [Buchanan] had already been pestered
Frederick Trevor Hill in