1858 (10 page)

In November, he traveled to Jackson and Vicksburg to deliver two important speeches. There, in the two largest cities in his home state, he made it very clear what he felt about slavery, the abolitionists, and the Northerners, and it was not friendship.

He began his speech in a packed Representatives Hall in Jackson in which, the
Jackson Mississippian
reported, “the lobby, the aisles, and every part of the Hall were densely thronged.” There was sustained applause from the crowd when he walked into the hall and even louder cheering when he rose to address it. Davis began his speech by reminding the gathering that he had almost died of “protracted, violent disease” the previous spring and that he only went to Maine to recuperate. He then carefully explained that his kind remarks in New England were spoken to thank the people there for the generosity extended to his family, not as political forgiveness, and insisted that he had been misquoted in the
Joseph Whitney
. The senator explained, too, that he was a politician and party leader and many of his remarks were meant to help Democrats in Maine and Massachusetts get elected in the fall contests. He then delivered a blistering defense of slavery and a fierce admonition to Northerners to stop their harassment of the South. He not only denounced the “black Republicans,” but savaged members of his own Democratic Party, particularly Stephen Douglas, who he said had been far too conciliatory to the North on the questions of slavery and states’ rights.
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He repeated his condemnation of Northerners who opposed slavery in a second speech in Vicksburg a few days later. Then, in a blistering finale, he told the crowd that if the Republicans gained control of the Senate, House, and the presidency in 1860 it would serve as a “revolution” that would destroy the U.S. government. That done, he told the crowd, the South would have no other choice than to secede from the Union. An antislavery president should not be allowed to take office, Davis told the crowd in a speech that became increasingly aggressive as he continued. The senator called Northerners “hostile” and “enemies,” and said he would be in “favor of holding the city of Washington…and the glorious star-spangled banner, declaring the government at an end and maintaining our rights and honor, even though blood should flow in torrents throughout the land.” He concluded, “As for himself…[he] would rather appeal to the God of Battles at once than to attempt to live longer in such a union.”

He warned that if an abolitionist was elected president in 1860, “Let the star of Mississippi be snatched from the constellation to shine by its inherent light, if it must be so, through all the storms and clouds of war.” And, he added ominously, Southerners would have to begin building armories, hoarding weapons, and expanding railroad lines in case the Northerners attacked them.
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The two speeches in Mississippi had not only placated his supporters and critics, but renewed the faith of Southerners in the Mississippi senator. He had not swung over to the other side after all. The editor of the
Montgomery (Ala.) Confederation
wrote that Davis had shown that he was a “distinguished and beloved son of the South.” The editor of the
Oxford (Miss.) Mercury
promptly forgave all of his sins in New England, telling his readers that the speech “effectually clears away all doubts about his fidelity to the South and shows that he is still as true to her as the needle to the pole. [Critics] will now be forced to acknowledge that he is the champion of principles…inimical to the glory and honor of the South.”
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His brush with death, his recuperation in Maine, and the stinging denunciation of Southern editors and leaders over his conciliatory remarks in the autumn of 1858 had led him down a path of physical, emotional, and mental transformation. The man who had toyed with the idea of secession for years had now made up his mind that it was necessary if the 1860 elections gave the country a radical Republican president. Jefferson Davis had become, with his two scalding speeches in Mississippi in the last days of 1858, the unquestioned leader of the secession movement.

Chapter Three

Dred Scott was an obscure sixty-two-year-old slave who accompanied his Virginia owner, Peter Blow, from the slave state of Virginia to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1830. Blow died there two years later. Scott was then bought by an army doctor, John Emerson, who took him to Illinois, a free state, where they lived for two and a half years. Emerson then took Scott with him to a U.S. Army fort in the free territory of Wisconsin, where Scott married another slave, Harriet Robinson, whose ownership was transferred to Dr. Emerson. The army physician was transferred to St. Louis and then Louisiana. After Emerson died in 1843, his widow, who was living in St. Louis, unsuccessfully tried to hire Scott and his wife out to others for income.

In 1847, Dred Scott went to court in St. Louis and filed suit, contending that since he had lived with Emerson in a free state, and both he and his wife had lived in a free territory, they were therefore free. John Sanford, her brother, represented Mrs. Emerson in the suit. Scott lost in the initial verdict, but won on an appeal. The Missouri Supreme Court reversed that decision and that court’s ruling was upheld by a federal court. Scott then took his case, and final appeal, to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856 for a legal fight that did not end until March 1857.

In Washington, the Scotts faced an uphill legal battle. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by presidents from slave states and five of them were from families that had owned slaves. The two attorneys who would argue the case for Sandford against Scott before the court, Reverdy Johnson and Henry Geyer, were not only staunch antislavery advocates, but two of the best courtroom lawyers in the country.

The case was also more complicated than it appeared. The court not only had to rule on Scott’s freedom, but whether, as a slave, he had the legal standing to file a suit, whether residency in a free state or territory meant that a slave was free, whether the government could prevent an owner from bringing a slave into a free state or territory if, in fact, the slave was “property.”

Even more important, the ruling would determine whether slaves could be brought into the new territories, such as Kansas, where slavery had become an incendiary political issue and triggered violent wars between proslavery and antislavery factions. It could also result in a federal ruling that since all slaves were property, Congress could not ever free them as human beings.

Ironically, the case should never have involved President Buchanan. The justices were prepared to issue an opinion in February, a month prior to the inauguration, but the death of Justice Peter Daniels’s wife caused a delay in all court business and the Scott case was pushed back for a month.

The five Southern justices were against Scott’s plea and in favor of maintaining slavery’s status quo. The two announced dissenters were Justice John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin Curtis of Massachusetts, both Republicans, who told Chief Justice Roger Taney that they would not only vote for Scott’s freedom but, if he lost the case, would publish their minority opinion, denouncing slavery in the territories. The other two justices, Democrats Samuel Nelson of New York and Robert Grier of Pennsylvania, seemed noncommittal. The Southerners had the votes to turn down Scott, 5–4, and wanted Taney to write the official court opinion. The jurists, though, and many Southern congressmen—and especially President Buchanan—were emphatic that one of the two Northern Democrats had to be convinced to vote with the Southerners for a 6–3 decision to give the appearance that justices North and South were in favor of upholding the slave laws. A slender, five-vote majority ruling with all Southerners voting against Scott would appear too regional and bolster Republican charges that a slave conspiracy ruled the nation’s capital.

To gain that crucial Northern vote, President Buchanan secretly wrote his fellow Pennsylvanian, Justice Grier, who was also a graduate of Dickinson College, as were Buchanan and Taney, lobbying him to vote against Dred Scott. He did so because Justice John Catron of Tennessee had discreetly written him in early February that he should pressure Grier in order to facilitate a proslavery decision. Grier had frequently defended the Fugitive Slave Act and the president thought he could convince him to vote against Scott too. The seemingly unethical behavior by the president was successful; Grier did so. Grier admitted his role in the executive/judicial impropriety in a letter to Buchanan, in which Grier said, “We will not let any others of our brethren know anything about the cause of our anxiety to produce the result,” and that what he was doing in writing Buchanan was “contrary to our usual practice.”
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The Catron-Grier-Buchanan correspondence was fact, but there was a rumor that Buchanan’s whip in the House, J. Glancy Jones, also knew that the Court was going to rule against Scott and had told Buchanan so. Another rumor was that somehow Buchanan had been shown an advance copy of Taney’s decision.
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The final vote against Scott was 7–2 (Curtis and McLean dissented).

In his majority opinion, written in scathing language, Chief Justice Taney, one of the many who believed that the Northern aggressors would not be content until they had eliminated slavery, declared that slaves were not humans and therefore had no standing to file legal suits. He went further, writing that residence in a free state or territory did not mean that Scott or any slave was free, and in twenty-one pages, ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The decision angered Northerners, but what really enraged them was Chief Justice Taney’s harsh language. He wrote that Negroes were “unfit to associate with the white race…and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
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At his inauguration, prior to his swearing in, President Buchanan and Justice Taney met on the inauguration platform and whispered to each other. No one knows what was said, but Taney might have told the president what the
Dred Scott
ruling was going to be and that it would be made public in two days. Critics of the president were certain that happened because in his speech the president, pretending he did not know what the
Dred Scott
decision was, told the crowd that he would abide by whatever the court ruled. “To their decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully submit, whatever this may be.”
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Buchanan, of course, was pleased with the ruling. He had favored that view for years, writing that “all American citizens have an equal right to take into the territories whatever is held as property under the laws of any of the states…”
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The reaction to the landmark court ruling was predictable. Southerners and proslavery Democrats and their newspapers endorsed it and the Republicans blasted it. The editor of the official Democratic Party organ, the
Washington Union
, said that the ruling would “[restore] harmony and fraternal concord throughout the country.” The
New York Journal of Commerce
said the decision was the “authoritative and final settlement of grievous sectional issues,” and asserted that it was “almost the greatest political boon which has been vouchsafed to us since the foundation of the Republic.” The
Richmond Enquirer
chortled that the abolitionists had now been “staggered and stunned.” The
Richmond Whig
went even further, predicting that the
Dred Scott
decision had “set at rest all those vexed Constitutional questions” and decided the legality of slavery forever.
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The Republicans were outraged by the decision, and President Buchanan’s unethical role in it, as soon as it was announced and continued to criticize the high court’s ruling throughout 1857 and 1858. They were joined by numerous newspaper editors, who denounced the decision in their columns. Horace Greeley, editor of the
New York Tribune
, called it “atrocious,” “wicked,” and “abominable,” described the judges who voted against Scott guilty of a “detestable hypocrisy,” and labeled Taney the Supreme Court’s “cunning chief.” Other Northern editors wrote of the ruling with equal venom. The editor of the
Chicago Democratic-Press
declared that he had a “feeling of shame and loathing” for the Court, that he termed “this once illustrious tribunal, toiling meekly and patiently through this dirty job.” The
Chicago Tribune
editor wrote that the decision had hurled America back into “the barbarian ages.” It was, he wrote, “shocking to the sensibilities and aspirations of lovers of freedom and humanity.” Dozens of public figures, some at their own expense, printed pamphlets on the court case; the Northerners attacked it and the Southerners embraced it.
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