  The Status of the Controversy Regarding Slavery at the Time Virginia Seceded from the Union In considering the status of the controversy with respect to slavery just prior to the Civil War, and whether Virginia in seceding was actuated by a desire to extend or perpetuate the institution, it will assist to a clearer understanding if we present in detail the several phases over which conflicts had arisen, and the parties to the same. The right and obligation of the Federal Government to prevent, by legislation, slaveholders from emigrating into the territories with their slaves; the duty of the Federal Government to provide through its officials for the capture and return to their owners of fugitive slaves; and the existence or abolition of slavery in the Southern States—these constituted the three principal subjects of discussion and points of conflict. Coupled with this three-fold aspect of the problem, Virginia was confronted by four factors, more or less potential in their relation to the subject—the Federal Government, the Republican Party, certain of the Northern States, and the Abolitionists. With respect to the Federal Government, neither Virginia nor her slaveholders could lodge any complaint. The compromise measures of 1850 had accorded slaveholders the right to carry their slaves into the territories of Utah and New Mexico (which embraced the present Independent of these measures the Supreme Court of the United States had, in 1857, in the Dred Scott case, decided that slaveholders possessed the right under the constitution, to carry their slaves into the territories, and that Congress could not deprive them of it. In like manner, the Federal Government had enacted a fugitive slave law with most efficient provisions for its enforcement by Federal officials, and, finally, the continued existence of slavery in Virginia found a sure defense from illegal assaults in the Federal Constitution and the power and obligation of the National Government to maintain its provisions. ATTITUDE OF REPUBLICAN PARTY With respect to the attitude of the Republican Party, the situation was not so simple. The Republican Party was organized in 1854 to maintain the tenet that Congress had the right, as it was its duty, to exclude slave owners with their slaves from the territories. The Supreme Court of the United States three years later decided that Congress possessed no such power, yet in its platform of 1860 the Republican Party reasserted its position and hence advanced the more portentous claim that Congress had a right to legislate upon the subject in disregard of the mandates of the highest court of the Republic. It must also be borne in mind that the Republican Party was sectional in its origin, membership and spirit. Even its National conventions were composed of representatives gathered practically from only one of the two great divisions of the Union. Its nominees for President and Vice-President in 1856 and 1860 were both taken from the same SLAVEHOLDERS' RIGHTS IN TERRITORIES It is difficult at this distance from the event to appreciate how the question of the right of slaveholders to introduce slaves into the territories could have been the subject of such profound and peace-destroying controversy. That few slaves would ever be carried into the territories was a conclusion easily deducible from the character of slave labor, and the climatic and soil conditions of most of the Western prairies—especially after Southern California, which would have furnished them a congenial home, had been admitted into the Union as part of a free state. EFFECTS OF DISPERSING SLAVES In like manner while we may appreciate the position of slaveholders who insisted upon their constitutional right to carry slaves into the territories, though they might never expect to exercise the privilege, yet it is difficult to realize the reasonableness of objection when coming from friends of emancipation not themselves citizens of the locality which was thus to be burdened. The problem of emancipation was largely a question of the relative numbers "Of one thing I am certain," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "that as the passage of slaves from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionately facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation by dividing the burden upon a greater number of coadjutors." The force of these observations will still further appear when we recall that slavery might be abolished upon the adoption by a territory of its constitution preliminary to statehood, or the new state might at any time in the future so decree—a result most probable because of the small number of slaves and the ever increasing white population within its borders. Mr. Seward in a speech before the United States Senate, in the winter of 1861, pointed out that in the decade during which the territories of Utah and New Mexico had been open to slavery, only twenty-four slaves had been carried into that vast dominion. CONGRESS ORGANIZES TERRITORIES But despite these considerations, an acrimonious controversy had continued with growing bitterness for years. The Republican Party had at length been organized to maintain the tenet that Congress could and must exclude slaves from the territories; and, finally, its candidates for President and Vice-President had been elected to office. By the withdrawal from Congress of the Senators and Representatives from the Cotton States, the party found itself in January, 1861, controlling both branches of the National Legislature. Despite, however, the history and platform of the party, statutes were passed organizing the territories of Colorado, Dakota and Nevada, without any provision prohibiting slavery therein. Thus months before the date of Virginia's secession, the Republican Party gave this unequivocal assurance of its purpose to accord slaveholders the right to carry slaves into the territories. The Hon. James G. Blaine, writing twenty-five years after the happening, thus characterizes the action of his party: "When the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the territories of the United States north of the line 35 degrees, 30 minutes were left without slavery inhibition or restriction, the agitation began which ended in the overthrow of the Democratic Party and the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States. It will, therefore, always remain as one of the singular contradictions in the political history of the country, that after seven years of almost Mr. Blaine, in asserting that the Republican Party "unanimously abandoned" this cardinal article of its political creed, probably overstates the case. There were thousands of the party, and many of its foremost leaders, who had not surrendered their contention. At all events, the abandonment had not been made in such an authoritative and formal way as to commend itself to men yearning for peace and desiring an end of the controversy over the territories. This action, however, of the Republican Congress, in organizing the territories of Colorado, Dakota and Nevada without prohibitions as to slavery, constituted such a recognition of the constitutional rights of the slaveholders and a determination to abide by the decision of the Supreme Court, as to render baseless the charge that Virginia seceded in order to establish the right of her citizens to carry their slaves into the territories. As we shall hereafter see, Virginia was willing to re-enact the Missouri Compromise; make it a part of the constitution and thus forever exclude slavery from all the territory north of the historic line established by that settlement. REPUBLICANS AND FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW The position of the Republican Party, with reference to the Fugitive Slave Law, presented some striking contradictions. Thus, in those Northern States where statutes had been enacted to nullify the law, the dominant political forces constituted the controlling element in the membership ATTITUDE OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN While a member of Congress, Mr. Lincoln had, on the 16th of January, 1849, introduced a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, with the consent of its voters and with compensation to the slaveholders. The fifth section of this bill provided: "The municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to provide active and efficient means to arrest and deliver up to their owners all fugitive slaves escaping into said district." It was because of the authorship of this proposed Fugitive In his inaugural address, after alluding to what he terms "the plainly written" clause of the constitution relating to fugitive slaves, he declared: "It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call 'fugitive slaves' and the intention of the law giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole constitution—to this provision as much as any other. To the proposition then that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause 'shall be delivered up' their oaths are unanimous.... "There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by National or by state authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath should go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?"
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