THE LECOMPTON CONVENTION. 47 CHAPTER II. THE LECOMPTON CONVENTION. The Washington correspondent of the Charleston Mercury had said of Buchanan, in a report on the cabinet which Polk had formed: "He is known to be an able, moderate old Hunker- very timid and hates trouble." The twelve years which had passed since then had thinned and bleached Buchanan's hair, and now a glance at the full, closely shaved face sufficed to convince one of the correctness of this description. In private life he could unquestionably knock at every door with the assurance of being accorded an honest welcome; for his carriage and stately form, no less than the expression of his not unremarkable countenance, showed him at once to be a gentleman, even to the unpracticed eye. In the line that lay over his heavily arched brows above his clear, bright eyes, unstudied dignity and self-consciousness too highly strung vied with each other for the mastery, but he neither awed nor repelled one, for the good humor and the enjoyment of physical comfort stamped on the lower half of his face, and his broad, double chin, acted as a counterpoise to it. One could believe his admiring friends that the figure he cut at the court of Queen Victoria met with the applause of even the exacting English aristocracy, and that his skill and tact as a diplomate were recognized by English statesmen; while the fact that, at the well-provided table and the chatty tea, he was a stimulating and winning talker- too inclined to teach, at times did not fail to make him some enemies. But the person who, judging from Buchanan's appearance, saw in him a great statesman, must have been either a very bad physiognomist or have had a very unclear idea as to what the requirements of a statesman are. If this man was a great character, nature in framing him must have been taken with the strange whim to make the form a mask to hide the contents. This flesh was evidently too sensitive not to be always very much inclined to purchase freedom from trouble, care and danger, at a high price. But, at the same time, his vanity was great enough, notwithstanding all this, to play for the highest prize, and his vain self-reliance could not but grow, through his great degree of weakness, to senescent wilfulness, and this all the more the deeper he was dragged into the whirlpool of the conflict of overpowerful actual events, promoted as much by his marrowlessness as by his blind self-reliance. Weakness, self-overestimation and wilfulness a more disastrous combination of qualities could, under existing circumstances, be scarcely imagined. Self-overestimation was the warp of his unfortunate policy, weakness and wilfulness its woof. That he did not hope for a stormless future as confidently as one might suppose from his inaugural address is undoubted. According to this, it might appear as if, after the publication of the announced Dred Scott decision, he could descry no darker cloud in the heavens than the overflowing coffers of the treasury, for the relief of which he made various propositions. Little as one might think of his statesmanlike capacity, to impute such a lack of judgment to him as to assume that that was his real opinion was simply absurd. But he evidently cherished the happy belief that he would succeed, by his superior diplomatic skill, in so moulding and directing things that, gradually, the ship of state would sail in smoother waters, and that at least his administration would re BUCHANAN'S DIFFICULTY. 49 main free from the more violent perturbations which might portend some great catastrophe. The politician who knew not how to introduce the moral powers of the national life as an element into his calculations, but considered the solution of every problem possible, by means of art debased into a trade, might find some ground for this illusion. Buchanan's first difficulty and danger grew out of the split in his own party in respect to the authentic interpretation of its creed on the territorial question. Although he knew perfectly well that he owed his nomination to the circumstance that, to use the felicitous expression of the New Orleans Delta, he could prove “an alibi" in the case of the Kansas bill, he had, even before the election, frankly declared in favor of the view taken of it by the south. But he was cautious enough to so declare himself only before his neighbors who had come to congratulate him on the result of the state elections in October; and, although he may not himself have brought it to pass, it was certainly very agreeable to him, that his remarks did not find their way into the press, although he had carefully committed them to writing. Now he could, in accordance with his whole conception of the controversy, harbor the fond hope that, so far as the democratic party was concerned, this attitude of his would have no serious and permanent consequences. The leaders, in the debates on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and then again in Cincinnati, agreed to recognize the courts as the competent forum, wherein to settle the contro 1 The New Orleans Delta, Dec. 19, 1857. 2" This does no more than ... recognize the right of a majority of the people of a territory, when about to enter the Union as a state, to decide for themselves whether domestic slavery shall or shall not exist among them." Curtis, Life of J. Buchanan, II, 176. verted question, when the right of self-determination of the territorial population in respect to slavery came into force. Now the supreme court of the United States had decided, in the sense of the south, and even if the republicans denied this part of the judgment the binding force of law, because obiter dicta, still the Douglas democrats were bound in honor by that agreement to submit to the decree. That the submission would be unreserved and uncomplaining Buchanan scarcely expected, spite of his selfcomplacent optimism. He knew very well that Douglas and his associates had not stopped at squatter sovereignty because their own convictions were an insurmountable barrier, but because they had considered it impossible to draw the majority of their constituents beyond that line. If, in this matter, these cool, calculating, political wirepullers, with their aridity of heart and their ice-bound consciences, were not involved in an inconceivable delusion, the manoeuvering even now could not be too cautious, for a judicial decree was not a charm by means of which convictions could be obliterated. For this reason it was deemed advisable, so far as the internal state of the party was concerned, to act as if the controversy had to do with a purely theoretical question. Would not the vanquished become all the more rapidly and more easily reconciled to their defeat, the less they were made to feel formally and materially that a deadly blow had been dealt them? The more the internal dissensions in the democratic party threatened to grow, in consequence of the Dred Scott decision, the more necessary it was to have it outwardly appear that the party presented a united front. If its disruption could be prevented at all, the first pre-condition thereto was the knitting of bonds so firm and lasting that the time needed for a new intergrowth would be obtained. These must have been the considerations that guided Buchanan in the formation of his cabinet, if in forming it he was guided by any general political ideas at all. Cass was secretary of state. He was certainly not chosen for the first place because he was the father of squatter sovereignty; but he was its father none the less, and therefore the suspicion that the adherents of that doctrine were to be treated henceforth as democrats of the second class could be warded off by pointing to the selection made of him. But whether they would consider this guaranty sufficient was all the more doubtful, as Douglas, although he had adopted the Cass changeling, was by no means Cass's political twin brother, and had long since acquired an incomparably more important position in the party than the one-time leader of the north western democracy. The New York Tribune dispatched the latter with the declaration that he was "the most venerable office-seeker in America." Even from the mouth of an acrimonious opponent, Cass might well have claimed a somewhat less depreciatory judgment, but there was much truth in the statement. He had always been greatly overestimated, and now he was really little more than a great name. People did not criticise or rebel against the tradition which made him one of the giants of a generation of whom only a few still remained on the stage; but no one looked upon his name as a programme; he was the stately figure-head of the ship of the administration. The conduct of the treasury department was confided to Howell Cobb. He had, for a long time, been numbered among the magnates of the first rank of the party, and even his opponents readily admitted that he was a man of real talent; but it could not be inferred from his 1 The N. Y. Tribune, March 7, 1857. |