CHAPTER IV. !

THE SLAVERY QUESTION TO 1848.

When the Whig party came into existence the supporters of the institution of negro slavery had already been placed upon the defensive. (But the Whig party of the South was preeminently, though not exclusively, the party of the slave-holder; in its ranks it included a considerable majority of the large cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar planters. The plotted vote by counties of the presidential elections from 1836 to 1852 reveals, in all the states crossed by the black belt except in North and South Carolina, a decided coincidence between the Whig strongholds and the regions where the slave population was in a majority or nearly so. It may be stated as a rough but conservative estimate that the Whig party in the South, while perhaps not embracing more than a substantial majority of all the slave-holders, included the possessors of from two-thirds to three-fourths of the slave property of the South.'

With definite interests in the "peculiar institution ", state rights Whigs, especially, came out boldly in its defense against the abolitionists and the other antislavery forces. Agitation was bitterly denounced and various remedies to put an end to it were suggested, many of them of the more extreme sort. From the Richmond Whig and other journals came the proposal, seri

1 Cf. Montgomery Alabama Journal, Sept. 2, 1850; Richmond Whig, Feb. 4, 1850; Richmond Republican, in Washington Republic, Aug. 18, 1851; see also maps in appendix, below.

ously considered for a time, to suspend commercial intercourse with the northern states as one way of forcing a discontinuance of the activity of the abolitionists." The northern political journals were challenged to speak out and to reveal their attitude toward the cause of the agitators. Senator Preston of South Carolina, moreover, was reported to have declared in the Senate that if the people in his state could catch an abolitionist there they would most certainly try him and hang him. In the House, Wise was the advocate of the extreme southern view in denying the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Acting in connection with the party, too, in its early years was Calhoun who, seeing the danger that threatened the institution. of slavery, came to the rescue as its foremost champion.

The southern Whigs claimed to be the special friends of southern interests. In 1836 they made good use of the argument that they were offering a slave-holder as their candidate for president. The abolition question had an important influence on that contest, leading many to support White who felt that sides must be taken at once on this new issue.' Virginia Democrats complained that the Whigs were trying to embroil them with their northern friends."

In defining their political relations, however, the character of the northern wing of the party had to be taken

Richmond Whig, Sept. 10, New Orleans Bee, Sept. 11, 1835, U. S. Telegraph, in Niles' Register, XLIX, 77-78.

Richmond Whig, in National Intelligencer, June 2, 1837. The National Intelligencer, however, considered it its duty to exclude the discussion of the slavery question from its columns, March 1, 1837. I. E. Morse to J. B. Kerr, March 12, May 10, 1836, Kerr MSS. R. H. Parker to Van Buren, Dec. 25, 1835, Van Buren MSS. The Whigs of eastern Virginia were extremely hostile to the abolition movement. Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, 224.

into consideration. Within it there was a tendency toward hostility to slavery in a much greater degree than could be noted in the northern Democracy. The ultra-southern Whigs were not long in seeing this. The motive behind Calhoun's abandonment of the Whig coalition was in part the desire to place himself in a position more favorable to a defense of slavery, which he saw would soon be the leading political question before the country.' More independent than most of the southern Whigs, Calhoun refused to continue in the opposition when he found that he could not bring the northern members into a sound position. He then forced them to show their hands by introducing his famous slavery resolutions of December, 1837, into the Senate.

The southern members who had reasons for remaining in the party, which overbalanced this and other disadvantages, were not allowed to close their eyes to the situation in the North. The Democrats in their section kept them informed and denounced them as traitors to their own interests and enemies of their own institutions for leaguing themselves with abolitionists. Involuntarily, perhaps, but very perceptibly, the southern Whigs, especially after Calhoun and his radicals left, became more moderate in their defense of slavery.

Here again they had the example of their leader before them. Clay had tried to reconcile northern and southern interests when he offered his resolutions in the Senate as substitutes for the more radical state rights ones of Calhoun. These calmed the solicitude of

Clay, Private Correspondence, 434, 438; Calhoun Correspondence, 409. Ibid., 408-409.

8 Ibid., 386-390.

"Memoir of S. S. Prentiss, I, 379; Raleigh Standard, March 21, 1837.

10

the more moderate southerners, many of whom were unwilling to believe that the South had no other friends besides Calhoun and his little party. Others, however, demanded more, and when Clay saw the importance of securing the endorsement of the southern senators to his presidential aspirations, he found it necessary to take more advanced ground. So, after he had consulted with such southern members as Preston, by whom he was probably advised to take this step," he came out in the Senate in February, 1839, with a speech against abolitionism which defined an attitude sufficiently proslavery to receive some approval from Calhoun."

But the example had already been set and the other leaders were not very slow in following. In December, 1837, the southern Whig members had taken part in the meeting which produced the Patton gag resolution and had assisted in the work of securing its passage in the House; a year later when the Whigs from the northern states unanimously opposed the Atherton gag resolutions, they were aided, in part intentionally, by the negative votes of four southern Whigs and the refusal of several others to cast their votes."

In so far as the slavery question entered into the campaign of 1840, the Whigs were at a disadvantage on

10 C. M. Noland to Crittenden, Feb. 4, 1838, Crittenden MSS.

11 See Preston's speech before the Democratic Whig Association in Philadelphia, National Intelligencer, March 13, 1839; Wm. C. Preston to H. M. Bowyer, Feb. 3, 1839, Preston MSS.

12 Calhoun Correspondence, 424.

13 House Journal, 25 Cong., 3 sess., 56-71; Niles' Register, LV, 312. Several of these explained their votes on the ground that the resolutions did not go far enough to protect the South. Wise and Stanly later offered more southern "resolutions. House Journal, 25 Cong., 3 sess., 167-168. On Jan. 28, 1840, when the gag was applied and inserted as the twenty-first rule, Bell, Gentry, and Underwood voted with the northern Whigs. Id., 26 Cong., 1 sess., 241-243.

account of the record of the northern wing. The southern Democratic members of Congress, noting this opening, drew up an address to the people of the slave-holding states in which they reminded their constituents of the votes of the northern Whigs on the various resolutions that had come before Congress. They showed how the compact front of the South had been broken by the votes of the southern Whigs against the gag resolutions and predicted further results from the political coalition which had brought about the nomination of General Harrison." The success of the latter was followed by the very results that had been anticipated. As John Quincy Adams continued the struggle for the right of petition, he was steadily supported by a handful of Whigs from the border states of the South. In the special session of 1841 they held the balance of power and assisted in striking out the twenty-first rule of the House and in preventing a reconsideration of the vote which had accomplished this." In 1844, five of them shared in Adams's final triumph." Another instance of great significance, in which the sectional line yielded to that of party, came in the ratification of the nomination of Edward Everett as minister to England. After having entered into a secret understanding to reject him on account of his anti-slavery convictions, the southern Whig senators, placing duty and justice before their own honor, broke the pledge of secrecy and made ratification possible by their votes." Many southern Whigs

14 McMaster, History of the People of the United States, VI, 579-580. 15 Five held firm on the vote to reconsider: Botts, Stuart, Kennedy, T. F. Marshall, and Underwood. House Journal, 27 Cong., 1 sess., 81-82. See Botts' and Stuart's cards to their constituents, National Intelligencer, June 9, 1841.

16 Clingman, Kennedy, Preston, Wethered, and White of Kentucky. House Journal, 28 Cong., 2 sess., 10-12.

17 Weed, Autobiography, I, 510; Senate Journal, 27 Cong., 1 sess., 267.