Two Roads to Sumter: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and the March to the Civil War by William Catton & Bruce Catton

Author:William Catton & Bruce Catton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Native American Studies, Social Science, Presidents & Heads of State, General, United States, Biography & Autobiography, Historical, Ethnic Studies, History, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9780785815976
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Published: 2003-04-15T07:00:00+00:00

These Northwestern Democrats who had closed ranks so firmly behind the Senator from Illinois were convinced that their very survival depended on getting what they wanted at this convention. They could no longer remain a tail to the Southern kite. For years they had seen the issues closest to the heart of the expand ing, dynamic Northwest—popular sovereignty, free homesteads, internal improvements, a Pacific railroad—blocked by Southern Democratic votes in Congress or vetoed by Southern-oriented Democratic presidents, and they had seen their strength dwindle steadily at home as a result. Now it was about gone, and whatever happened to the Southern wing, Northwestern Democrats were de termined to reorient the party in their direction. In this matter they were more royalist than the king; Douglas would probably

THE CAMPAIGN OF i860

have withdrawn before letting the party break in half, but in his absence his followers ignored all such suggestions, even when they came from Douglas himself, and pushed his candidacy with blind zeal until they got him nominated—at the irredeemable cost of Democratic unity. To the Douglasites this was secondary: if prop erly handled the Southern bolters would probably return soon enough, and the fact of their leaving made the party's chances in the North all the stronger. And the party's chances in one's home district, to these as to nearly all of the hapless men at Charleston, counted for more than the party as a whole.

Without quite intending it that way, the Southerners saw their cherished weapon of a bolt transform itself with dismaying rapid ity from a threat to a gesture, and from a gesture to an ac complished fact. After due deliberation, the platform committee not surprisingly put forth a slave code (or Southern) and a popular sovereignty (or Douglas) platform. The confident Doug lasites outmaneuvered their opponents in parliamentary tactics, forced the platform to a vote, held their majority in line—the hoped-for Eastern switch away from Douglas did not occur—and voted approval of the popular sovereignty version.

For a few moments everything hung in the balance. The Ala bama delegation, in particular, had been instructed by the state legislature to withdraw from the convention if a slave-code plank were not adopted, and other Gulf state delegations were poised to follow Alabama, but some of the leaders hesitated. Only the extremists really wanted to bolt; the majority of the anti-Douglas group, including a few Democratic Senators actually on hand and others, notably Jefferson Davis, who were keeping in touch with the Charleston proceedings by telegraph from Washington, now realized that a bolt would merely ensure Douglas's nomination. Alarmed, they tried to persuade the wavering Alabamians that only by remaining in the convention could the South hope to keep the Little Giant away from the necessary two-thirds.

It appeared for a time that the logic of this argument was not altogether lost on the men from the cotton states. Then the city of Charleston, aided by another outbreak of overconfidence from the Douglas bloc, fanned Southern intransigence back into

full flame. In

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