Charles Sumner and the coming of the Civil War by Donald David Herbert 1920-2009

Author:Donald, David Herbert, 1920-2009 [Donald, David Herbert, 1920-2009]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sumner, Charles, 1811-1874, United States. Congress. Senate, American Civil War (1861-1865), Legislators, Antislavery movements, Politics and government, War
Publisher: Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks
Published: 2009-02-14T13:00:00+00:00

Outside of Any Healthy Political Organization 209

therein, and that the states to be formed from the territory, when applying for admission to the Union, shc^uld be received “with or without slavery” as their constitutions provided.

Instantly alarmed, Sumner proposed an amendment that would reaffirm the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in the Nebraska territory. His maneuver was a hopeless one, intended to arouse public opinion against Douglas’s bill; in fact, his amendment may have inadvertently been a disservice to freedom, as it also alerted Southern senators to the ambiguities of Douglas’s proposal. Yielding to their pressure, Douglas, on January 23, introduced a substantially revised version of his bill, providing for two separate territorial governments in the region, and specifically asserting that the prohibition on slavery in the Missouri Compromise was “inoperative” because it had been “superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850.”“^

Even before the measure assumed its final form, Sumner was spreading the alarm that “the Nebraska bill opens anew the whole slavery question.” He did not, actually, know very much about these territorial questions, nor had he hitherto exhibited any passionate concern over the fate of Nebraska. Assuming that the Missouri Compromise forever barred slavery from the region, he had failed to vote for its organization as a free territory in the previous Congress."^ Nor did Sumner have any comprehension of the “whole broad complex of reasons, half-reasons, and quarter-reasons” behind Douglas’s measure: “the disorganized, discontented state of the Democratic party, lacking both leader and policy; the obligation resting upon ‘Young America’ for bold, trenchant action; his own legitimate ambition to become President; the demand of the Northwest for a Pacific Railroad, with the consequent necessity for settling the Kansas-Nebraska country to furnish its future path; the fear of Missouri slaveholders lest they be surrounded on three sides by freesoil territory; [Missouri Senator David R.] Atchison’s stubborn assertion that he would let Nebraska ‘sink in hell’ before he would see it organized on a basis excluding slaveholders with their property; and Atchison’s ability to rally a solid block of Southern Senators behind him.”-‘^ But to Sumner most of these factors were not merely unknown; they were irrelevant. All that mattered was that Douglas’s bill permitted slaves in territory hitherto dedicated to liberty.

He needed no further evidence of the atrocity of Douglas’s proposal, and even before the Southerners pushed the “Little Giant” into

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