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Regiment: 15th Michigan Infantry
Battles Mentioned:
Historical Figures: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, John M. Oliver, Stephen A. Douglas
LETTER
FROM
HON. C. C. CLAY, JR.
Washington, May 21, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR: Severe illness, which has confined me to my room for
ten days, has prevented my answering your letter sooner. And such is
my prostration at this time that I feel I am not equal to the mental or
physical effort necessary to reply fully to each of the questions you sug-
gest. The action of our delegates in the Charleston Convention meets my
cordial approval. It evinced a fidelity to principle and an unconquerable
intrepidity in its maintenance that merits the admiration. and gratitude
of every true Southern heart. I am happy to state that their course is
approved by nearly all the Senators of the seceding States(I am not sure
that I should except one) and a large majority of the Representatives of
those States. I know it it is approved by four of my colleagues—Messrs.
Moore, Curry, Clopton, and Pugh.
They claimed the right of the citizens of the South to carry. and hold
slaves in any of the common Territories of the United States during their
territorial status. If they have such right, it seems an obvious and inevi-
table corollary that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can pro
hibit, destroy, or impair it.
To admit the right, and yet assert the power in a territorial government
to prevent its enjoyment, is to deny that the Southern people are entitled
to the protection of their common Federal Government, and to concede
that the many,of the North may rob the few of the South whenever they
meet on their joint domain—the Territories of the United States. Such
is squatter or territorial sovereignty.
It differs not so much in kind as in degree from black republicanism.
The latter concedes that Congress may confer on a territorial legislature
the power to exclude slave property, but also asserts the power and duty
of congressional interposition to exclude it. Whilst both are fatal to us
in practice, the doctrine of the black-republicans has certainly the ad-
vantage in consistency of logic and openness of purpose. Mr. Lincoln
(the Chicago nominee for President) and his supporters maintain that.
the extension of slavery into the Territories is contrary to the principles
of the Federal Constitution and the purpose of its framers; and, there-
fore, that we have no right to carry and hold slaves in them, and that
Congress has the power, and is bound by the Constitution, to prohibit the
use and enjoyment of such property in them; or that it may confer that
power and enjoin that duty on a territorial legislature. If they expound
2
the Constitution and explain the design of its framers correctly, the South
cannot complain of the exclusion of slave property from the Territory by
Congress or a territorial legislature. Judge Douglas and his followers
deny that the Constitution forbids our carrying or holding slaves in the
Territories, or that such was the purpose of its framers, or that it is the
duty of Congress to prevent our doing so, yet assert that the mere creature
of Congress, a territorial legislature, “can, by lawful means, exclude
slavery from their limits prior to the formation of the State constitution,”
and, “no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be
on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make
it a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete
under the Nebraska Bill.” Thus our constitutional rights, as ex-
pounded by the United States Supreme Court, are to be snatched from us
by squatter sovereigns in all the Territories. Can any dogma be more
absurd, illogical, or unjust? To deny a right and prevent its enjoyment
may be only a wrong; but to admit the right and prevent its enjoyment
is adding insult to injury. If this doctrine be conceded by the South,
fanaticism will surely exclude her from all the Territories with emigrant
hirelings, as was done in Kansas. Black-republicans will compromise on
it; indeed, Ely Thayer and other prominent members of that party are as
ardent advocates of territorial sovereignty as Judge Douglas, because, as
they allege, it will prove as efficient in freesoiling the Territories as congres-
sional prohibition. Hence the favor with which his nomination is regarded
by leading presses and persons of the Republican party; the assertion of
his Northern democratic friends that he will gain as many votes in the
North as he will lose in the South, if nominated, and their adherence to
him and resistance of the Southern and Pacific States’ platform at Charles-
ton. They urge us not to insist upon our equality in the Union, our
right to enter and occupy the public domain with our property, and the
duty of our common Federal Government to protect us in its use and
enjoyment again fraud, violence, or the legislation of territorial govern-
ments, for the sake of the peace, harmony, and triumph of the democratic
party!
The Northern people dislike our negro property; therefore we should
not claim its protection in common Territories won, to say the least of it,
equally by the prowess of our arms and the contribution of our treasure.
The black-republicans base their refusal to give this protection upon the
assumption that the Federal Constitution does not recognise slaves as
property, and that slavery owes its existence and maintenance exclusively
to State laws.
Now, Judge Douglas concurs with black-republicans in refusing pro-
tection by the Federal Government, not upon the ground, however, that
the Constitution does not recognise slaves as property. But admitting
that to be true, he co-operates in the denial, holding that “It matters
not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as
to the Abstract question whether slavery may or not go
into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have
the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they
please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or
an hour without local police regulations!”
3
had the control of the Federal Government. And yet we are to be told
that if we do not support Douglas we must take Lincoln.
The South will hurl contempt upon the miserable alternative.
The fifteen slaveholding and the two Pacific States united on a platform,
asserting that all property within any of the States may be carried into
the Territories and held there, and that the Federal Government should,
through all of its departments, protect it there, when necessary, until the
sovereignty of the people therein is acknowledged by their admission into
the Union as a State. A proposition so simple and so just none could
misunderstand or should deny. It had the support of a majority of States
–of the only democratic States (according to the last general election)-
and of the real majority of all the delegates. The apparent majority of
votes that defeated it was obtained by a rule artfully sprung upon the
Convention and inconsiderately adopted, the operation of which was to
deprive us of votes n New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and other North-
ern States, that would have changed the result. The proposition laid
down in that platform is maintained by the opinion of the Supreme Court;
by every democratic Senator in Congress, excepting only Mr. Douglas and
Mr. Pugh; by the President, Vice President, and Cabinet; by all the
Southern Representatives in Congress, excepting, I believe, not more than
six; and by the Administration democracy of the Northern States.
It has been maintained by each democratic convention of the State of
Alabama, assembled in ’48, ’52, ’56, and ’60; by the last two opposition
conventions of the State; by the unanimous vote of the senate of our
Legislature. It is not denied by more than three presses, I believe, in
the State. In the last democratic convention, our of more than 450 del-
egates, only 12 votes were cast again it. No proposition has ever received
a support more nearly approaching unanimity by any free people than that
has received in the Southern States, and especially in Alabama. The rea-
son is obvious: All governments are framed and instituted to protect per-
sons and property, and none can refuse it without dishonoring itself and
wronging its citizens and forfeiting their allegiance.
Shall the united South, backed by the Pacific States, the United States
Supreme Court, and the Federal Administration, and the sound democracy
of all the non-slaveholding States, agree to make her citizens and their
property an exception to the general rule of all the civilized governments
of earth? If she does she will sacrifice her equality in the Union, her
rights, her honor, and her future welfare. She will sacrifice every true
friend she has in the North, and prostrate every barrier to the progress of
black-republicanism. She will lose the respect of both her friends and her
enemies, and can never regain it.
And for what shall we make so great a sacrifice? Those Northern dem-
ocrats who deny us this mere modicum of justice assure us that we can
thereby elect Judge Douglas to the presidency, and protest that we cannot
defeat the black-republicans with any other candidate, or upon any other
platform than that adopted at Cincinnati, which may be construed in oppo-
site ways, so as to please the pro-slavery South and the anti-slavery North.
What would the South gain by his election? As President he would
be in honor bound to veto any bill that Congress might pass to protect
slave property in any organized Territory, however indispensable to pre-
vent its confiscation by the mere force of the majority of inhabitants, not-
withstanding the United States Supreme Court should decide that such
legislation was necessary and proper to secure a constitutional right of
4
the slaveholder; for he maintains that the South and North are pledged
that Congress shall not intervene, and that, despite the Supreme Court,
the people of the Territories may, by lawful means, exclude slavery from
their limits.
Is there anything in his congressional course, even, outside of the
slavery issues, that makes his election desirable to the South? Let us
see. All the questions that come before Congress, except that of slavery,
(which of late years has been brought into all of them,) may be classed
under one of two heads: the acquisition of property and the disposition of
property by the Federal Government. Under the former, the collection
of revenue and the purchase of territory may be classed; under the latter,
the disposition of the territory or public domain and the various modes of
disbursing revenue. If Judge Douglas or the black-republicans prevail in
maintaining (as he did in his Freeport speech) “that slavery cannot
exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police
regulations,” the South must, in self-defence, oppose all future acquisi-
tions of territory on this continent. According to this dogma, no slave-
holder can safely venture into any territory with a slave, until either its
legislature or Congress has provided laws for the protection of such prop-
erty. In other words, he must have notice and invitation to come, by
the enactment of a slave code. This, Judge Douglas and the black-
republicans would not let Congress do. To believe that the non-slave-
holders who first gather in such Territories from the North or foreign
lands, with their educational prejudices against negro slavery, would
invite it in by “local police regulations” for its protection, is to credit a
violent presumption, contradicted by our experience of human nature and
the history of California, Oregon, and Kansas.
Now his policy is to annex all the territory that we can fairly obtain on
this continent. Is it not plain that every such addition, with the aid of
his free soil heresy of territorial sovereignty, will increase the power of
the North and impair that of the South?
Our policy is to restrain Congress from disposing of either land or
money in gratuities or bounties or monopolies, and confine its grants for
both to the few plain and undisputed purposes suggested in the Constitu-
tion; for our legislative history, as that of all other countries, shows that
power will aggrandize itself, whenever unrestrained by law, and the South,
being in a minority in both houses of Congress, has no security against
the exclusive use of both the land and treasure of the Union by the North-
ern majority, save in the strictest construction of the Constitution, and
the enforcement of it by Congress or the President. Besides, the South
contributes more than three-fourths of the revenue of the Government,
and must, therefore, lose by any bounty system that does not return her
three times what is given to the North; whereas that proportion has,
heretofore, been reversed, and the North has gotten more than three times
as much as the South, in internal improvements, pensions, and other
bounties.
The practice of Judge Douglas has been to vote as liberal appropriations
of land and money for almost any purpose as any federal whig, of black-
republican, or other latitudinarian constructionist of the Constitution should
desire.
He has voted for pension bills which, if adopted and followed as good
precedents, would render the system quite as oppressive as that of Great
Britain.
5
He voted for the Collins and other mail steamers enormous bounties,
which have at last been quite broken down by Southern opposition.
He voted for the Atlantic telegraphy bounty.
He favored the bill appropriating lands to Agricultural Colleges with-
in the States, and would have voted for it, if present, when it passed the
Senate, but paired off with Mr. Toombs, who was opposed to it, and
would have voted against it. This land distribution measure—more
obnoxious to constitutional objections than the land distribution bill vetoed
by General Jackson—was vetoed by Mr. Buchanan.
He advocates and votes appropriations by Congress for internal improve-
ments, such as Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan have
vetoed. He supported appropriations for deepening the channel over the
St. Clair flats, which have been vetoed by both Pierce and Buchanan.
He has, this session, voted, almost alone among the democrats, with the
entire black-republican Senators, for a preliminary motion in favor of such
a bill, and, also, for a bill appropriating $50,000 to the harbor of Chicago,
(his residence,) on which nearly $300,000 have already been spent by
Congress. But for the vetoes of Pierce and Buchanan he and other
supporters of such measures would have bankrupted the treasury.
He has been a constant supporter of the free-farm or homestead policy,
having voted for it, in company with but one other Northern democrat,
and all the black-republicans, against the entire Southern Senators, the
other day, as a substitute for that miscalled homestead bill which passed
the Senate. The substitute he voted for received but one Southern vote
when it passed the House of Representatives.
All the above measures command the ardent support of the black-repub-
licans, for they are a sectional party, striving to aggrandize the North and
impoverish the South, conscious of the numerical majority of the former
in Congress and of its ability to seize and sequester all the land and money
subject to its control, if no constitutional hindrance be presented. They
go for free farms-for free labor-for free men, believing, as they avow, that
it will exclude negro slavery from all the Territories. It is the 13
th plank
of their Chicago platform. If Congress will offer 160 acres of land in any
Territory of the United States to every squatter, native or foreign, to be
exempt from taxes for five years, and from execution forever for any debt
contracted prior to obtaining his patent, (as proposed in the homestead
bill for which Judge Douglas voted,) and concede their legislature power
to exclude the Southern man with his slave, it will certainly be done.
Such squatter sovereignty will tempt hordes from the North and all
Europe to rush into the Territories and soon secure for their use all the
public domain worth having, even without the help of Emigrant Aid
Companies throughout the North.
The black-republicans vote bounties for ocean steamers, for pensions,
for internal improvements, &c., &c., because they know that the North
has everything to gain and nothing to lose, and the South everything to
lose and nothing to gain, by the exercise of powers of doubtful constitu-
tionality, and by liberal grants of money or land, so long as the North
can control and dispose of the revenues or lands of the United States.
Hence, some of their leaders have proclaimed on the stump, that it is
necessary to prostrate the slave oligarchy in order to extend the pension
system, make or repair harbors, and achieve all contemplated works of in-
ternal improvements. The 15
th plank of their platform declares such
works “are authorized by the Constitution and justified by the obliga-
6
tions of the government to protect the lives and property of
its citizens”-excepting, of course, slave property, which they deny the
obligation of the Government to protect anywhere, and Mr. Douglas
denies its obligation to protect in the Territories.
Is it surprising that Mr. Douglas’s nomination should be desired by
leading black-republicans? He agrees more with them than with States
rights or strict construction men, whether democrats or oppositionists.
He goes for enlarging the pension system-so do the republicans. He
goes for bounties to mail steamers and telegraph companies-so do the
republicans. He goes for distribution of the public lands among the
States for Agricultural Colleges-so do the republicans. He goes for
giving away the public lands to natives and foreigners, and securing them
against taxes and executions, so as to fill the Territories with squatter sov-
ereigns-so do the republicans. He asserts the right of those squatter
sovereigns to exclude slavery from the Territories-so do the republicans.
He admits the constitutional power of Congress to prohibit slavery from
the Territories-so do the republicans. He regused in 1850 to give power
to the Territorial legislatures of Utah and New Mexico to protect slave
property-refused to remove the obstruction of the Mexican laws-voted
for a proposition to exclude the conclusion that slavery might be taken
into them-and for another expressly prohibiting its introduction into
them-and for yet another to keep in force Mexican laws prohibiting it;
all of which votes he would now excuse by pleading instructions of his
legislature, but which he could not, as an honest man and patriot, have
given if he had not believed the Constitution, which had had sworn to sup-
port, empowered Congress to exclude slavery. All these votes black-
republicans approve.
In view of these accordances, and his co-operation with them in op-
posing the Administration, the South, and the democratic party- by re-
sisting the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution-and
the disorganization and division that he has produced in the Northern wing
of our party, and now threatens in the Southern Wing-is it not natural
that Greeley, Webb, and other black-republicans should sympathize with
him and desire his nomination at Baltimore?
If he should be elected President, millions of dollars might be annually
appropriated for rivers, harbors, ocean steamers, and other works to aid
commerce, and the whole public domain given away to colleges or to native
and foreign squatters for free farms, with his sanction, at the expense of
the planting States; the course of the democratic party as directed by Mon-
roe, Jackson, Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan, be changed, and all the old
State-rights landmarks of the constitutional power of Congress be disregarded
and obliterated. Should the South violate the principles they taught and
she has maintained so long, surrender her right to share in the Territories,
agree to distribution of the public lands among the States, or their dona-
tion in free farms, abandon all future revenue from that source, and endure
the additional taxation imposed thereby, as well as by appropriations to
those works of internal improvement which local interests are always seek-
ing, to insure the election of a President, and secure the spoils for the
democratic party? Will Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and the Gulf
States adopt distribution, internal improvements, and free farm donations
by Congress as democratic measure, or support their advocate? I trust
not. I know that Alabama will not, if the voice of her people be faily
and fully expressed.
7
But I am told Judge Douglas asserted the other day (sickness pre-
vented my hearing or reading his speech) that delegates at Charleston
did not truly represent the sentiments of the democratic party of Alabama;
and, in harmony with his assertion, I, see that a call has been made by a
few members of that party—some of them new converts—for a convention
at Selma or Montgomery of democrats and OTHERS who wish the State
represented at Baltimore and will support the nominees there selected for
the purpose of choosing delegates. Thus it is proposed to avoid open dis-
cusssion and a fair trial before the people whether they will sustain their
delegates at Charleston, and what they think “best to be done” and to
gather in a separate convention at Selma not only professed democrats, but
all “others” who agree with them about sending delegates to Baltimore-
summoning, as it were, a packed jury, predetermined to condemn out late
delegates to Charleston, to surrender the principles of the democratic par-
ty, and the rights of the State, to lower her flag, and lend her aid to the
delegates from black-republican States of the South and of the Pacific
coast. Shall the democracy of Alabama accept a squatter-sovereignty or
free soil (for they are synonymous) platform and candidate, such as Mich-
igan and Vermont may dictate? If not, they should prevent this unau-
thorized, irregular, and heterogeneous convention at Selma or Montgomery
from usurping the power to misrepresent them, by directing the delegates
of the democratic party assembled to convention at Montgomery, accord-
ing to usage and by authority, to send the same delegates to both Rich-
mond and Baltimore, with instructions to suspend action at the former place
until the convention at the latter shall have adjourned, and to assert at
both places the principles of the platform of the Southern and Pacific
States Charleston.
If the Baltimore Convention reject the regular and real democratic
delegates from Montgomery, and admit the disorganizing and spurious
delegates from the Selma or Montgomery convention, it will plainly
indicate the purpose of the Northern majority to subdue the South to its
will, regardless of her rights, will demoralize the body, and drive from it
all the true friends of the South. If it admit the regular delegates, chosen
according to our party usage, I think they will be able to obtain a recog-
nition of our rights in both the platform and the candidate. If the
Northern majority persist in refusing both, the delegates of the Southern
States may then at last be brought to stand together in defence of their
constitutional rights, and will be sustained by the Pacific States, and, I
think, but both Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
I would make no concession of principle, but I would mortify my pride,
if necessary, by making another appeal to “the sober second thought” of
our Northern, allies to accord us that universal right of the citizens of all,
even partially free governments, now enjoyed by our Northern brethren
without stint or denial-protection of our property by our common Gov-
ernment.
Were I a member of the Montgomery convention, I would show my
confidence in the integrity, patriotism, and ability of such of the late
delegaets to Charleston as will stand by the State, the South, and the
democratic party and its usages in Alabama, by renewing their commissions
as delegates to the Richmond and Baltimore Conventions. Such a course
would not only defeat the efforts to misrepresent the party at the latter
place, but would go far towards disabusing the public mind of the false
8
impression which Mr. Douglas and his supporters are striving to make,
that the seceding delegates at Charleston and those who sustain them are
disunionists and their withdrawal made for the purpose of effecting a dis-
solution of the Union. He and his followers have borrowed this battles
cry of Union, and denunciation has disunionists of those who love not
the Union less but the Constitution and State rights more than they do,
from the black-republicans; who have made it a plank in their platform,
and who pronounce all Southern men disunionists who stand upon even
the Georgia platform of 1850, and would resist the abolition of slavery in
this District, or the Territories, the repeal of the fugitive slave law, &c., &c.,
If the Southern People can be terrified and driven by this false and
delusive cry—like irrational beast to the slaughter—to forswear their
faith, yield their rights and abandon their own delegates in Convention,
their own Senators and Representatives in Congrets, who have dared to
claim what no just government would refuse, then is the South doomed to
worse shame, subjugation, and vassalage than Ireland or Hungary now
endures.
In conclusion, I hope the delegates to Charleston from Alabama will be
sustained, that the principles of the Southern and Pacific States’ platform
will be maintained, and that the rights and honor of the State will be
preserved by the democracy of the State, both in their primary meetings
and in the convention to be assembled at Montgomery
To save the time and labor necessary to reply severally to many such
letters as yours, I shall publish this answer.
I am, respectfully your friend,
C. C. CLAY, Jr.
E. A. O’Neal, Esq., Florence, Ala.
T. McGill, Printer, Washington, D.C.
