BUCHANAN AND HIS PARTY.

57

In this calculation Buchanan had overlooked only one thing. Would the democracy fold their arms and allow him to carry out his laudable resolutions? And if they, with the same brutal shamelessness with which they, on the occasion of the first territorial election in Kansas, tore the principle of popular sovereignty to tatters, should oppose him and, despite all law and right, seek a practical decision in their favor, what would become of his virtuous intentions? He wanted to be neutral, but in the drawing up of his programme he did not go so far as to ask himself what side he would take if the slavocracy, by overt acts, forced him to become a partisan. But the programme he had drawn up for himself contained nothing to warrant the assumption that, with regard to this question, the unanimous opinion of his slavocratic friends and his republican opponents, on what was to be expected from him, would prove to be erroneous.

Buchanan, in the address referred to above, delivered to his neighbors after the happy result of the October elections, had given them the consoling assurance that this baleful episode had been brought to an end through the calm restored by Governor Geary and General Smith in Kansas. Geary himself, in a letter of December 31, 1856, to Marcy, proudly claimed that, in proportion to its area and population, fewer crimes were committed in Kansas than in any other part of the Union. One, however, would have to be more than an optimist if a nine days' earlier report of the secretary of state did not

1" We shall hear no more of bleeding Kansas. There will be no more shrieks for her unhappy destiny. The people of this fine country, protected from external violence and internal commotion, will decide the question of slavery for themselves, and then slide gracefully into the Union and become one of the sisters of our great confederacy." Curtis, Life of J. Buchanan, II, p. 176.

2 Sen. Doc., 35th Congr., 1st Sess., vol. VI, No. 17, p. 101.

awaken the fear that the "happy state of things" which, according to the letter of the 31st, had reigned during the last three months in the territory, would not be lasting. The governor complained that there was still, in both parties, a minority who violently maligned him. While he was reproached by the one because, without regard for the constitution and the laws, he did not hasten the formation of a state government, he was slandered by the other because he would not consent to "a crusade in support of one idea"- the idea of slavery. If one read no further, one might certainly believe, from the expressions used by Geary,' that both groups were too small to occasion any serious anxiety. But, from the sentences that followed, it appeared that the latter ruled in the legislature, and that, therefore, their importance. should not be measured solely by their numbers. Geary said he had to enter into the crusade obligation by his approval of the resolutions adopted by the legislature on the evening of its last session. These resolutions denounced the proposition "to organize a national democratic party," and declared that every man who did not make the slavery question the sole dividing line between parties was an ally of abolitionism and disunion.2

1"A few ultra men" and "a few violent men."

2" Whereas the signs of the times indicate that a measure is now on foot, fraught with more danger to the interests of the pro-slavery party and to the Union than any that has been agitated, to wit, the proposition to organize a national democratic party; and whereas some of our friends have already been misled by it; and whereas the result will be to divide the pro-slavery whigs from democrats, thus weakening our party one-half; and whereas we believe that on the success of our party depends the perpetuity of the Union; therefore

"Be it resolved by the house of representatives, the council concurring therein, that it is the duty of the pro-slavery party, the Unionloving men of Kansas territory, to know but one issue, slavery; and that any party making or attempting to make any other is and should be held as an ally of abolitionism and disunion." Ibid., p. 94.

KANSAS AND SLAVERY.

59

The report which informed the administration of these resolutions was furnished, scarcely two weeks later, with a very surprising commentary. At a party meeting which the members of the legislature held on the 4th of January, 1857, with the delegates of the counties, the leading men declared, in plain terms, that the pro-slavery party was only a small minority, and that, therefore, there was no hope of success, unless they united with the free-state democrats: that is, unless they renounced making Kansas a slave state, in order to be able to make it at least "a conservative democratic free state."1

The old leaders of the pro-slavery party who had made a name in the earlier history of the troubles of the territory, like Stringfellow, Dr. Tebbs, A. W. Jones and Whitfield, admitted the fact that the majority of the population would have nothing to do with slavery, and Bell, of Tennessee, subsequently stated in the senate that of the twenty pro-slavery newspapers in the territory nineteen were agreed that after January, 1857, there was no hope of bringing Kansas into the Union as a slave state. As there were scarcely three hundred slaves in the territory, and that small number was continually diminishing; and, as Walker in a letter of June 28, 1857, to Buchanan remarked, a considerable number of the immigrants from the slave states were, in their own interest, which they well understood, free-state people, it

3

1 Governor Walker to Cass, Dec. 15, 1857. Sen. Doc., 35th Congr., 1st Sess., vol. I, No. 8, p. 122.

2 Congr. Globe, Ist Sess. 35th Congr., App., pp. 136, 137.

3 Walker, in the letter of December 15, 1857. Bell said in the speech of May 18, 1858, above referred to, that the number had shrunk in one year to one hundred, and according to some to fifty. A very large majority of the squatters, who came to the territory from the slave states, are said to be for a free state, partly from conviction that their claims would bring a larger price, and partly be

was, indeed, difficult to understand how any one could escape recognizing this fact, if he formed, and wanted to form, his opinions in good faith. But it was, none the less, very questionable whether all these facts warranted Walker's assertion that, long before his arrival in Kansas (May, 1857), the slavery question, as a practical question, had disappeared, and that its place had been taken by the question of self-government.1

In February, 1857, the legislature resolved to call a constitutional convention. Geary vetoed the bill because it contained no express provision that the convention should submit the constitution drafted by it to the people for adoption or rejection. The legislature proceeded immediately to another vote, and the bill was adopted (February 19) by the necessary majority. There was no need of recalling the previous history of the territory to exclude all doubt as to whether the legislature refused to take into account the reasons of the governor or whether it intended to add another to numerous drastic illustrations of the "great principle," surpassing all previous ones in atrocity. The committees of both houses told Geary to his face that they in accord with their friends in the southern states had resolved to limit the co-operation of the people, in the work of giving Kansas a constitution, to the election of delegates to the convention.3

cause many of them came here expressly to settle in a free state. The same is the case, to a limited extent, with pro-slavery men holding town lots, shares and interests in the projected railroads." Rep. of Comm., 36th Congr., 1st Sess., vol. V, No. 648, p. 116.

1 Walker, in the letter of December 15, 1857.

2 See the veto message, Sen. Doc., 35th Congr., 1st Sess., vol. VI, No. 17, p. 167.

3 Geary writes: "In a conference with the committees of the two houses, by whom the bill had been reported, I proposed to sign the bill, provided they would insert in it a section authorizing the sub

The struggle for slavery, therefore, was not given up; on the contrary, it was announced in the most unambiguous manner that it would be continued, regardless of consequences, with the old means.

Seldom has a federal officer as honestly rejoiced as Geary did that, in accordance with the principle of "rotation in office," he had to look upon a change of administration as the natural end of his official life. On the 4th of March he handed in his resignation, and Buchanan chose Robert J. Walker to be his successor. The latter at first declined, but on the repeated request of the presi dent accepted the post.

Walker was born and grew up in Pennsylvania, but when a young man of twenty-five years of age emigrated to Mississippi. Like most northerners who had removed permanently to the "sunny south," he became a decided partisan of slavery. If he had not been so, it is self-evident that his adopted state would not have sent him to the senate in 1836, nor Polk made him secretary of the treasury in 1845. His opinions on this fundamental question of the political life of the Union had undergone no change. He made no secret of his desire. to see Kansas become a slave state. But the southern

mission of the constitution as above indicated. But they distinctly informed me that the bill met the approbation of their friends in the south that it was not their intention the constitution should ever be submitted to the people, and that to all intents and purposes it was like the laws of the Medes and Persians, and could not be altered." Congr. Globe, 1st Sess. 35th Congr., p. 516.

“I should have preferred that a majority of the people of Kansas would have made it a slave state. . . . I never disguised my opinions upon this subject, and I especially reiterated the opinion that I was thus in favor of maintaining the equilibrium of the government by giving the south a majority in the senate, while the north would always necessarily have a majority in the house of representatives, which opinion I have entertained ever since the Mis