CHAPTER XII.

NOMINATION OF PIERCE AND KING THE RIVAL CANDIDATES-THE CANVASS PARTY SUBSIDIZED-THE WHIG PARTY CRUSHED BY

-DEMOCRATIC

ITS PLATFORM-ELECTION OF PIERCE AND KING-PIERCE'S INAUGURALHIS EXTRAORDINARY VIEWS RESPECTING SLAVERY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION HIS FIRST MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, AND ITS INTERPRETATION-BILL OF DOUGLASS AND RICHARDSON FOR THE ORGANIZATION AND DIVISION OF NEBRASKA AND KANSAS-IT RE-OPENS AGITATION OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION ABSORBS THE ATTENTION OF CONGRESS, AND OBSTRUCTS THE PUBLIC BUSINESS-ASSAULT ON THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE-ITS REPEAL—REASONS ASSIGNED THEREFOR-PASSAGE OF THE BILL-PLEA OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY-INVASION OF KANSAS BY ARMED MARAUDERS-REMOVAL OF GOVERNOR REEDER-THE PEOPLE FRAME A CONSTITUTION-APPLY FOR ADMISSION INTO THE UNION-ASSAULT ON SUMNER.

FRANKLIN PIERCE, of New Hampshire, succeeded Mr. Fillmore in the office of president, and William R. King, of Alabama, was at the same time elected vice president. They were nominated by a Democratic national convention, held in the city of Baltimore on the 1st of June, 1852, under the operation of the famous two-third rule. The competing candidates for nomination to the first of fice, were General Cass, James Buchanan, Stephen A. Douglass, and William L. Marcy; and on the first ballot, the general received one hundred and seventeen, Mr. Buchanan ninety-three, Mr. Douglass twenty, and Mr. Marcy twenty-seven votes. As the balloting was repeated from day to day, the vote of General Cass was increased, but could not be raised to a number sufficient to nominate him. At length, the delegation from Virginia, cast their votes for Mr. Pierce, who, on the forty-ninth ballot, received the unanimous vote of the convention. Mr. King

DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM OF 1852.

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was the general choice for the second office, and was nominated without difficulty.

The convention reäffirmed the Democratic platforms of 1844 and 1848, and specially declared "that congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with, or control, the domestic institutions of the several states, and that such states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists, or others, made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions; that the foregoing proposition covers, and is intended to embrace, the whole subject of slavery agitation in congress; and, therefore, the Democratic party of the Union, standing on this national platform, will abide by, and adhere to, a faithful execution of the acts known as the compromise measures, settled by the last congress, the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor, included; which act being designed to carry out an express provision, cannot, with fidelity thereto, be repealed, nor so changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency. The Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing in congress, or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."

As the Democratic party had been envassaled by the local despotism, from the date of Polk's surrender, it followed that nothing short of the Calhoun doctrine could have passed that convention, as material suitable for its

platform. Fully subjugated, and totally demoralized by the slave power; completely denationalized in respect to all the primary objects of the general government; and utterly regardless of the constitution, whenever it was found to stand in the way of its aggressive policy, it followed the example of its patron saint,* when it proposed to nullify a plain provision of the organic law, investing congress with the power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the public territories, and announced its special approbation of a statute which exacts of free men, in free states, the service of common dogs in its execution.

But as a deep sleep was then upon the people, Mr. Pierce was allowed to ascend to the executive chair without objection, except from the states of Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The Whig party, which, in former days, had been so formidable, was lying crushed beneath the ponderous weight of its own platform. For all the purposes of a political campaign, it was the same as dead. It was utterly powerless for good or evil. Therefore, of the two hundred and ninety-six electoral votes given in the colleges of that year, Messrs. Pierce and King received two hundred and fifty-four.

On the 4th of March, 1853, President Pierce was formally inaugurated. Like his predecessors, he availed himself of that opportunity to pronounce an eulogium upon

*John C. Calhoun, after having won for the slave power an unbroken series of victories over freedom, after having reduced both the Whig and Democratic parties of the nation to the sway of his imperious will, and after having raised to absolute power inside the republic an organized despotism, invested with attributes belonging only to sovereignty, for the defense and propagation of slavery departed this life, at the city of Washington, on the 31st of March, 1850. "The evil that men do lives after them."

ers.

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the government, and the unparalleled wisdom of its found But unlike any of those founders, or any predecessor in office, he boldly declared that negro slavery, in the several states where it existed, was recognized by the constitution; that it existed as an admitted right; and was entitled to efficient remedies to enforce the constitutional provisions by which it was protected. He also announced his opinion, that all the compromise measures, including the fugitive slave law, were strictly constitutional and proper, and ought to be carried into effect. Then rising from his devoir, he expressed the hope that, during his administration, at least, no sectional or fanatical excitement would again threaten the durability of the Union."

In his message to the 33d congress, which assembled in December following, in fair imitation of the example of Mr. Calhoun, in reviving and discoursing upon the topic which he had previously declared must be kept in repose, he said: "It is no part of my purpose to give prominence to any subject which may be properly regarded as set at rest by the deliberate judgment of the people; but whilst the present is bright with promise, and the future full of demand and inducement for the exercise of active intelligence, the past can never be without useful lessons of admonition and instruction. If its dangers serve not as beacons, they will evidently fail to fullfil the objects of a wise design. When the grave shall have closed over all who are now endeavoring to meet the obligations of duty, the year 1850 will be recurred to, as a period filled with anxious apprehension. A successful war had just terminated. Peace brought with it a vast augmentation of territory. Disturbing questions arose, bearing upon the domestic institutions of one portion of the confederacy and involving the constitutional rights of the states. But, notwithstanding differences of opinion and sentiment, which then ex

isted in relation to details and specific divisions, the acquiescence of distinguished citizens, whose devotion to the Union can never be doubted, had given renewed vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense of repose and security to the public mind throughout the confederacy. That this repose is to suffer no shock during my official term, if I have the power to avert it, those who placed me here may be assured."

This, interpreted by his subsequent conduct, must be understood to mean that, as there were people in the north in 1850, who, by opposing the further extension of slavery, offended three hundred and fifty thousand slave owners, and caused them to threaten to go out of the Union, unless slavery were extended, whenever and wheresoever they desired; and as a majority of the people of the United states were made, by distinguished Union savers, to believe that, had those slave owners not been appeased by the fugitive slave law, they would have committed political suicide, by way of revenge; and as the exit from the Union of so many valuable citizens, would be a shocking public calamity, therefore, in order to save those men from the commission of suicide, it was his intention to place all the forces of the government at their disposal; and that if the people of the north could be persuaded to remain entirely quiet and silent, while those men were thus wielding both the sword and the purse of the nation; if they could forget for the time their own manhood, and repress all sympathy for their bleeding brethren in Kansas, there would be, of course, no interruption of the gen eral repose, and the "Union wouldn't be dissolved."

Having placed his message before congress and the country, Mr. Stephen Arnold Douglass, of Illinois, with his full cognizance and approbation, commenced demonstrations for the purpose of opening the territory of Ne