Coming Fury, Volume 1 Read Free Page B

Douglas’s hopes were concerned. The Douglas men were confident, insisting that “the universal world is for the Little Giant,” but there seemed to be no iron in them: Halstead felt that these Northwesterners were “not so stiff in their backs nor so strong in the faith” as the hard-core Southerners who wanted Douglas beaten. An Alabama delegate, doubtless strongly infected by Yancey-ism, explained the case to him. There was going to be a showdown; once and for all the South would find out whether Northern Democrats would stand squarely with the South on true Constitutional principles. Both platform and candidate would have to be explicit; “there must be no Douglas dodges—no double constructions—no janus-faced lying resolutions—no double-tongued and doubly damned trifling with the people.” Of all Northern Democrats, said the Alabaman, Douglas was the most obnoxious to Southerners. His nomination would be an insult which the South would repay by defeating him in the election, no matter what it might cost.
    The truth of the matter was that the American political system, which can survive almost any storm because of its admirable flexibility, was in 1860 breaking down because it had been allowed to become rigid. Senator Douglas’s offense was that he had relied on the flexibility after it had ceased to exist. Finding America facing a sectional issue too hot to handle, he had proposed a subtle adjustment. Accept the obvious (he had said, in effect), admit that the people can always nullify an unpopular law by refusing to permit it to be enforced, and then give the territories, in respect to slavery, any law you choose; in the end the people will have things as theywant them, in the meantime you will have the legislation you want, and, all in all, much argument and bitter feeling will be avoided.… It was the politician’s recourse, one of the things that make democracy work; avert a crisis long enough and it often becomes manageable. The trouble now was that men increasingly wanted to meet the crisis, to have a final showdown no matter what it might cost. 11
    The situation had grown intolerable. What the delegates did at Charleston would be done in a hot twilight where nothing could be seen clearly and in which action of any sort might seem better than a continuation of the unendurable present. They acted under the shadow of things done earlier, at other places—in Congress, in Kansas, at Harper’s Ferry—and they were ceasing to be free agents. A storm was rising, and there were leaders who proposed to meet it with stiff backs.
2: “
The Impending Crisis
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    If the Democratic convention was meeting in an irrational atmosphere, the reason is clear. During the last few years events themselves had been irrational; politics in America could no longer be wholly sane. Here and there, like flickers of angry light before a thunderstorm, there had been bursts of violence, and although political debate continued, the nearness of violence—the reality of it, the mounting threat that it would monstrously grow and drown out all voices—made the debaters shout more loudly and appeal more directly to emotions that made reasonable debate impossible. Men put special meaning on words and phrases, so that what sounded good to one sounded evil to another, and certain slogans took on their own significance and became portentous, streaming in the heated air like banners against the sunset; and even the voices that called for moderation became immoderate. American politicians in 1860 could do almost anything on earth except sit down and take a reasoned and dispassionate view of their situation.
    Four months before the Charleston convention opened, the House of Representatives at Washington had tried to elect a speaker—a routine task, done every two years since the birth of the Republic, done ordinarily without jarring the foundations of the nation. Its furious inability to do this until it had exhausted itself by long weeks