HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK The Election Neither the Democratic nor Whig sympathizers with anti-slavery principles were to any considerable extent disposed to repeat their previous third party experiments. Leaving the slavery question out of consideration, party convictions and affections were strong. As both the great parties had fully accepted the Compromises, there was no real question between them. The Democrats were again united. Among the northern Whigs there was felt much dejection and disgust on account of the purposeless position of the party, and in the south the greatly superior strength of the Democrats was from the beginning of the canvass beyond doubt. The Whig party suffered a crushing defeat. For President and Vice-President, Electoral vote: Franklin Pierce and William R. King, Democrats:-Alabama, 9; Arkansas, 4; California, 4; Connecticut, 6; Delaware, 3; Florida, 3; Georgia, 10; Illinois, 11; Indiana, 13; Iowa, 4; Louisiana, 6; Maine, 8; Maryland, 8; Michigan, 6; Mississippi, 7; Missouri, 9; New Hampshire, 5; New Jersey, 7; New York, 35; North Carolina, 10; Ohio, 23; Pennsylvania, 27; Rhode Island, 4; South Carolina, 8; Texas, 4; Virginia, 15; Wisconsin, 5. Total, 254. Elected. Winfield Scott and William A. Graham, Whigs:-Kentucky, 12; Massachusetts, 13; Tennessee, 12; Vermont, 5. Total, 42. Popular vote: Pierce, 1,601,474; Scott, 1,386,578; Hale, 156,149. 1856 Thoughtful men at the north had not failed to realize the grave import of the new principle of neutrality on the part of the national government concerning slavery extension which was made the distinguishing feature of the legislation for erecting the Territories of Utah and New Mexico. Recognition was thereby given slavery as having, to the extent that the legislation territorially applied, an equal right to future expansion altogether without either the prejudice of an unfriendly predisposition toward the institution itself or the circumspection of a politic and discriminating treatment of it as a local system requiring to be geographically constricted. This recognition was generally supposed, until the year 1854, to have been in intent and probable effect only a nominal concession to the south in return for freedom in California; but its great potentialities for trouble were manifest if the south should decide to urge an aggressive claim to more territory for slavery upon the basis of accepted principles. In all the debate on the Compromise measures there had occurred no serious reference to a possible imperilment of the Missouri compact as the result of the slavery-neutrality policy for the new Territories carved out of the Mexican cession. The guarantee by the Missouri compact of complete and perpetual slavery prohibition in all the unorganized territory of HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK the Louisiana Purchase north of the line 36° 30′ was consequently assumed to remain inviolate and inviolable. Already, pursuant to the compact, Iowa and Minnesota, fronting the Mississippi River on the west and running northward from Missouri, had been organized with free institutions: Iowa had been admitted as a State (1846), and Minnesota had been organized as a Territory (1849). To the westward of the tier Missouri-Iowa-Minnesota, the region guaranteed to freedom by the Missouri compact stretched to the crest of the Rocky Mountains (where it joined the Mexican cession and Oregon Territory)—with an area of nearly 500,000 square miles, comprehending the present States of Kansas and Nebraska, parts of South and North Dakota1 and Colorado, and nearly all of Wyoming and Montana. In this entire country no Territory had yet been established. It was still dedicated to the aborigines, and so devoid was it of any pretension to settlement that it contained at the beginning of 1854 hardly a thousand white people. At that time the free and slave States, and their respective representations in the two houses of Congress, were as follows: Free States. California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Total States, 16. United States Senators, 32. Members of the House of Representatives, 144. 1The larger part of the Dakotas was originally included in the Territory of Minnesota, which extended to the Missouri River. Slave States. Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Total States, 15. United States Senators, 30. Members of the House of Representatives, 90. In addition, Oregon and Minnesota were in process of development into free States, and were expected to be qualified for admission in the near future. But there was not in the whole nation a single unit of erected territory to which the south could turn as an available element for reinforcing its declining strength in the Union. In the Louisiana Purchase south of 36° 30′ there remained only that strip of "Indian Country" bounded on the east by Arkansas and on the south and west by Texas which later took the official name of Indian Territory and now constitutes the main part of Oklahoma; it was rigidly closed to settlement. Neither of the huge new Territories of Utah and New Mexico was regarded by the country as adaptable to early statehood. Utah had a troublesome Mormon population, and New Mexico, on account of its remote situation and lack of inducements to immigrants, was not likely to show the requisite development for many years. Both Utah and New Mexico, moreover, as arid and mountainous regions, were unsuited to the employment of slave labor. A national situation both politically and territorially, therefore, had become fully established which placed the south at a distinct and increasing disadvantage, subject only to the moderate disposition of the north HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK concerning sectional and slavery questions existing or to arise. It was the fact of this situation that led to the Compromises of 1850 and induced the conservative elements of both sections to regard them as conclusive. The possibilities of any other solution than that of compromise with subsequent complete observance of its principles and arrangements, were felt to be too appalling even to be thought of. Already there was an insistent sentiment at the south, represented by young leaders of great ability and popularity, that demanded the full measure of southern interests regardless of consequences, even to the extremity of disunion. At various southern State elections as early as 1850-51 this sentiment had been strongly manifested. But the influence of the older southern leaders (both Democrats and Whigs) and of the more substantial classes generally, was wholly for Unionism and continued accommodation in accord with the similar spirit that unquestionably controlled the north at that period. There exists no evidence of any new overt intentions, except in relation to Cuba, on the part of the prevailing forces at the south from the time of the settlement of 1850 until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854.1 During the brief Congressional session extending from December, 1852, to March, 1853 (the close of Fillmore's administration), an attempt was made to organize out of the Louisiana Purchase a Territory which it was at first proposed to call Platte and later 1See James F. Rhodes's History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850; also Theodore Clarke Smith, Parties and Slavery, vol. xviii of The American Nation. |