1858.

KANSAS FOR FREEDOM.

399

public land; and, working upon this desire, the new bill with sly insidiousness proposed a vote of the people on the question of accepting or rejecting a handsome largess. Should a majority vote to accept, Kansas would enter the Union as a State without further formalities, with the Lecompton Constitution fastened as a logical sequence. But if a majority should reject, admission as a State was postponed indefinitely, or at least until a census should show that Kansas had a full representative population of ninety-three thousand.

This degrading and dishonorable substitute, soon known as "Lecompton junior," was exposed in its weak parts as soon as presented. It simply proposed to bribe the harassed settlers into accepting a pro-slavery Constitution. which they loathed, under the added penalty of being left out in the cold if they refused. The pitfall was carefully covered over, and admission as a State was made contingent extraordinary postulate upon taking a gift out of the national domain. Yet such was the facile disposition of Congress that the new report and substitute were accepted by both Houses on the last day of the month,' and the President's ready approval erected the bill into a law.†

But if the national legislature could be thus cajoled into an attempt to juggle Kansas into the Union under a discredited charter, not so was it with the intelligent free farmers, whose sense of independence had been insulted. The superficial victory of the Executive proved barren of gain; for when the polls were opened in August under the President's proclamation, pursuant to this act, the free-State voters of Kansas rallied, and, spurning both bribes and threats, they trampled under foot the largess of public lands and the Lecompton Constitution together, by a majority of ninety-five hundred.

August 3.

* The Senate accepted by 30 to 22, Pugh now joining the majority; the House, by 112 to 103. Of the original force of Northern Democrats in the popular branch of Congress, scarcely half could resist this new Lecompton experiment.

† 11 Stats. at Large, 269.

They chose rather to wait in temporary exile than enter the Union under an imposture, and in that choice the administration and the ruling Southern set indulged them to their full bent. The most fatal of legislation - and may it ever prove in this republic the most fatuous - is that which seeks to usurp and corrupt the honest conscience of the governed.*

Southern leaders of slavery extension found cause for anxiety in the shifting fortunes of their young knighterrant, William Walker, whose type of the American crusader was wholly peculiar to these years. And m the ambition to appropriate misgoverned countries to the south of us whose fertile soil invited the cultivation of staples raised by slave labor, an ambition baffled constantly by the solid repugnance of the North, — might be traced an impulsion to independence and a new Southern confederacy more powerful even, though less perceptible, than the humiliating defeat which impended in Kansas. Walker's star we have seen declining after a brief brilliancy, during which he shone as military ruler of Nicaragua.† Under a treaty of capitulation procured from the Costa Ricans through the mediation of one of our naval officers in the vicinity, Walker and his principal officers were taken to Panama, whence they proceeded to New Orleans; the miserable remnant of his forces, many of whom had already perished, being aided in their return by the charity of those against whom their arms had been directed.

1857, AprilDecember

Undaunted by his failure, Walker now traversed the Union to organize all who sympathized with him into a league for furnishing the sinews of a new expedition of invasion. Ministers from the Central American republics showed great alarm, and he was closely watched by our government in consequence. In early November, just as

*Buchanan seems to have found some philosophic comfort in his present failure. See his Defence, cited 2 Curtis's Buchanan, 208. ↑ Supra, p. 365.

1857.

FILIBUSTER WALKER'S FAILURES.

401

his preparations were completed, he was arrested in New Orleans on a charge of violating the neutrality laws, but was released upon giving bail, which he afterwards forfeited. Overtaking his steamer, which, with some two hundred followers on board, had already cleared at the custom house, he took arms and supplies on board at Mobile bay, and then pointed his course to Greytown, where, after having landed a detachment twenty miles farther south, he arrived on the 25th of the month.

December 6.

In early December, the United States frigate "Wabash" sailed into Greytown harbor. Commodore Paulding, an honest and brave officer, who interpreted his orders as they were issued, made short work with Walker's new enterprise. He dispersed the camp of the filibusters, and shipped the men home disarmed, permitting Walker upon his own parole to take the regular steamer from Aspinwall to New York. The detachment which had been landed below Greytown was similarly dealt with.

The news of this naval prowess reached Washington at the time when Kansas and Lecompton were the 1858, great topics of excitement. Walker went thither January in person on landing, and presented himself as a prisoner of State; but Secretary Cass refused to consider him as such, alleging that jurisdiction belonged to the courts. Buchanan sent to Congress a special message on the subject, which betrayed a sense of the difficulty he labored under in trying to please the Southern annexationists, and at the same time perform his official duties according to statute law, his own manifestoes, and the expectation of the Union at large. Private filibustering he had strongly condemned in his opening message. But Paulding, it appears, had cast aside rigid formalities in order to apply an international rule with honor and effect, regarding Walker and his followers simply as outlaws who had escaped the vigilance of the courts. Southern fire-eaters challenged the right of making such an arrest on foreign.

* President's special message, January 7, 1858.

soil, and the President in his message declared that our commodore had committed "a great error." But the capture, he added, had been made with pure motives; Walker's expedition was lawless and mischievous; and as Nicaragua had sustained no injury, these invaders had no right to complain in her name.

This comment and this mode of handling the subject did not please the Southern leaders in Congress; but they held back from denouncing the President, lest his support should be endangered in the pending Lecompton bill.* Their strong sympathies were with Walker; and of course they expected that Walker, if successful, would introduce African slavery into Central America.† Quitman, whose sands of life had nearly run out, signalized his brief career in the House by trying to procure the repeal of our neutrality laws, that thorn in the flesh of all private conquests like the Cuban which had dazzled his own imagination. He had believed, and it was fast becoming a fixed article in the Southern faith, that empire moved much too slowly under the public direction, that neither Mexico, Central America, nor precious Cuba, could come under the stars and stripes, unless private crusaders broke the way. Walker himself, as he journeyed through the Gulf States, where he found enthusiastic welcome, avowed that he would persevere at all hazards in his Nicaraguan invasion. "I have not," he fervidly protested, "violated the laws of the United States; my only crime is that I was born in the South, and have endeavored to advance her interests." But it was in vain that he demanded redress for his ignominious capture.‡

*Johnston's A. H. Stephens, c. 31.

† Ib.

Newspapers; Congressional Globe. After some spirited debate in the Senate, where Brown and Slidell took decided ground against the President, a sanctimonious report was made by the committee of foreign relations, which allowed Commodore Paulding to escape with a mild censure. Walker, in a Mobile speech, asserted (whether truthfully or not) that one of Buchanan's cabinet, whose name he did not give, had sanctioned his expedition, advised him as to the details of landing, and assured him that our vessels of war would give him countenance.

1857.

REBELLION IN UTAH.

403

Rebellion in Utah- that far-off territory where a popu lation of aliens submitted to a strange hierarchy was an issue that forced comparisons with Kansas. It was not the suppression of polygamous practices that our administration cared for, for the Republicans might engross all moral agitation for their own party benefit, but to keep these strange settlers obedient to the Constitution and the laws. Even in the latter sense alone, Utah contradicted that pompous formula of non-intervention by the general government which had been preached up so strongly for Kansas. For what boots it to spill the nation's blood and treasure in acquiring new territory, that hostile and treacherous systems may be planted and reared there by those who colonize? National indulgence here had made Mormonism more defiant and disaffected to the Union. All the tenets and policy of that church, under its despotic leaders, had tended to secure an Israelitish seclusion, in contempt of all external and temporal authority. To this would-be "State of Deseret "* President Fillmore had assigned Brigham Young, the spiritual head of the church, as territorial governor; and by 1857, when a Democratic President showed the disposition to apply the usual temporal rule of rotation to the office, Young was rebellious, and the whole Mormon population, refusing allegiance to any one but their consecrated head, began to drill and gird on their armor for resistance. Judges of the territorial courts had to flee for their lives; justice, which had long been tampered with to absolve church members from punishment, was deprived of process. It was charged that the Mormon hierarchy had leagued with Indian tribes to impel them to atrocities against the Gentile inhabitants, while their own Danites, or destroying angels, were secretly set apart and bound by horrid oath to pillage and murder such as made themselves obnoxious to the theocracy. This was popular sovereignty with a vengeance.

* Supra p 147.

1857