The N. York
Commercial advertiser of May 23d. contains a very complimentary notice of my
letter to the Whig Committee,62 and extracts the part of it against
the rage for foreign acquisition — heading it, Bates versus Fillibusterism [sic]. Such a compliment from such a paper
goes for something.
If my letter does no
other good, I hope it will embolden some men, both North and South, to speak
out boldly against the system of aggression and plunder, whose feelings are
right, but have heretofore been too timid to denounce it. The truculent
impudence of certain buccaneers in the South seems to have taken the start of
public opinion, and silenced the opposition of the timid and the peaceful.
I see by the
Nat:[ional] Intelligencer of May 24. that there is established in Baltimore
(and the 1st. No. actually issued) a Weekly Periodical called "The American Cavalier" which
professes to be — "A Military
Journal, devoted to the extension of American Civilization."
The Cavalier declares that it will "place
its feet upon [on] the broad platform of the [‘]Monroe doctrine[’] and will maintain that the Government of the U[nited]
States is the only legal arbiter of
the destiny of American nationalities." (!)
Sir Knight (the
Editor of the Cavalier) stimulated by the prospect of universal expansion,
talks grandiloquently thus — "This nation is the Empire of the People, and as such we shall advocate its extension
until 1 [sic] every foot of land on the continent
(wonder if he means to leave out the Islands? — Perhaps, as he is a cavalier, he'll go only where [he] can
ride) owns only our flag as the National emblem, and that flag the ["]Stars and stripes["] — Aye, we say,
add star to star until our Republican constellation is a very sun of light[,] throwing its genial rays
into into [sic] the humblest home of the poor man, in the most distant part of the earth[!] — <what! outside
the "Continent!"> Let
not the virgin soil of America be polluted by oppression— [ ;] <Can he mean
to abolish slavery?> Let it not be the continued seat of war and bloodshed;
<No more fighting then I hope> let the great people <and why not the little ones too> rise up as one
man and command peace and love to be enthroned as the presiding genii of this
new world."63
There is a good deal
more of that sort of nonsense —
"And then he
pierc'd his bloody-boiling breast, with blameful — bloody blade!"
It is perhaps
fortunate that such political charlatans do commonly disclose the dangerous
absurdity of their projects, by the stupid folly of their language.
The paper, observe,
is to be military — All this spread
of 'American Civilization' is to be done by martial
law. Buchanan wants to take military possession of Mexico; and Douglas
wants a seabound Republic !
The Louisville Journal of May 26 — sent me
by some one — contains a long article, written with ability (I guess by Judge Nicholas64)
with a view to organize a general Opposition Party. He argues that the only way
to beat the Democrats effectively is for the Republican party to abandon its
separate organization, and unite its elements with the general opposition. He
thinks that the Abolitionists proper, will not go with the Republicans, any how, and that the Republicans, altho' very strong,
are not more numerous than the other elements of opposition ; and that standing
alone, they are, like the Democrats, sectional
— But, fused with the other elements, and thus taking the character of the
general opposition, the party would become essentially national, and would
easily put down the sham Democracy.
I read in the papers
that a Company is formally organized down South, to increase the African labor of the Country — i. e. import
slaves — and that DeBow65
is a head man of it.
This is said to be the
result of the deliberations66 of the "Southern Commercial
Convention"67 at its late session in Mississippi — Vicksburg.
Are these men mad,
that they organize in open defiance of the law, avowedly to carry on a
felonious traf [f]ic, and for an object, tho' not distinctly avowed yet not
concealed, — to dissolve the Union, by cutting off the slave states, or at least the cotton
states ?
Again — are these
men fools ? Do they flatter themselves with the foolish thought that we of the
upper Mississippi will ever submit to have the mouth of our River held by a foreign
power, whether friend or foe? Do they not know that that is a fighting question, and not fit to be debated? The people of the upper
Miss[issip]pi. will make their commerce flow to the Gulf as freely as their
waters. If friendly suasion fail, then war: If common warfare will not suffice,
they will cut the dikes, at every high flood, and drown out the Delta!68
[Marginal Note.] June 4. I see by the
papers, that since the adjournment of the Southern
convention, there has been a great antislave-trade
meeting held at Vicksburg — called to order by Foote69 and presided
over by Judge Sharkey70 — which denounced all that the Convention
had done about the slave trade.
_______________
62 Supra, 1-9.
63 Mr. Bates has quoted inaccurately. The
punctuation and capitalization are changed, and with the exception of
"legal " and “Empire of the People" the italics are Mr. Bates's.
64 Samuel S. Nicholas: judge of the Kentucky
Court of Appeals, 1831-1837; author in 1857 of a series of essays on
Constitutional Law.
65 James D. B. De Bow: economist; short-time
editor of the Southern Quarterly Review published at Charleston, South Carolina;
editor of the Commercial Review of the South and Southeast (later De Bow's
Review) which he founded in New Orleans in 1846 ; superintendent of the U. S.
Census under President Pierce ; and a leader in the Southern Commercial
Conventions.
66 May 9-13, 1859. On May 10, L. W. Spratt of
South Carolina, Isaac N. Davis of Mississippi, and John Humphreys of
Mississippi introduced resolutions urging a reopening of the African
slave-trade, and Humphreys, G. V. Moody of Mississippi, and J. D. B. De Bow of
Louisiana made speeches supporting them. On May 12, the Convention voted 40—19
for repeal of all laws prohibiting the importation of African negroes. A
committee on the "legality and expediency" of the slave-trade was
appointed to report to a later convention.
67 This was one of a series of "commercial
conventions" of the 1850's in which Southerners sought to analyze their
economic and commercial ills and find remedies that would enable them once more
to overtake the North in economic development.
68 The Northwest's need of a free outlet
through the lower Mississippi to the sea had always played an important role in
national history. The South thought that this factor would force the Northwest
to follow it in secession. The editor, however, decided (in a detailed study
made of Southern Illinois in 1860-1861) that railroad building of the 1850's
had made at least that portion of the Northwest which lies east of the
Mississippi equally dependent by .1861 upon rail connections with the
Northwest, and that this importance of both outlets actually forced a strongly
pro-Southern Southern Illinois to defend the Union, since preservation of the
Union was the only way to maintain both the river and the rail outlets. Mr.
Bates's comment throws interesting light upon this same influence of the
Mississippi upon Missouri unionist sentiment.
69 Henry S. Foote of Mississippi: Unionist U.
S. senator, 1847-1852; governor of Mississippi, 1852-1854 ; opponent of states'
rights and secession. He later moved to Memphis. Tennessee. As a member of the
lower house of the Confederate Congress, he criticized Davis severely. When
Lincoln's peace proposals were rejected, he resigned and was imprisoned by the
Confederacy, but finally was allowed to remove to Union territory.
70 William L. Sharkey of Mississippi: elective
chief justice of the Court of Errors and Appeals, 1832-1850 ; president of the
Southern Convention at Nashville in 1850; provisional governor of Mississippi
under the Johnsonian restoration of 1865.
SOURCE: Howard K.
Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For
The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 18-20
