The Life of Stephen A. Douglas | Page 8

Jeffersonian. Their platform consisted mainly of a denial of all
power in the Federal Government to do anything or prevent anything,
the extravagant negations borrowed from the republican philosophers
of England and the French Revolutionists.
But a half century of power had produced a marked diversion of
practice from principles, and, in spite of its open abnegation of power,
the Government had become a personal despotism under Jackson,
which had vainly struggled to perpetuate itself through the
Administration of VanBuren. But notwithstanding the absurd
discrepancy of their practical and theoretical politics, the Democrats
had one great advantage over the Whigs in having a large and
influential body of men united in interest, compelled to defend
themselves against aggression, prepared unflinchingly to take the
initiative, to whom politics was not a philosophic theory but a serious
matter of business.
The slave-holding aristocracy of the South was the only united,
organized, positive political force in the country. With the personal
tastes of aristocrats and the domestic habits of despots, they were
staunchly Democratic in their politics and had full control of the party.
They had positive purposes and aggressive courage. A crisis had come
which they only had the ability and energy to meet. The control of
affairs was in the hands of the timid Whigs. Decisive measures were
needed. By a peaceful revolution they seized the Government out of the

hands of the Whigs in the midst of the Administration and embarked on
a career of Democratic conquest.
President Tyler, having quarreled with his party, eager to accomplish
something striking in the closing hours of his abortive Administration,
with unseemly haste rushed through the annexation of Texas under a
joint resolution of Congress. Mr. Polk, the new President, did not
hesitate in carrying out the manifest will of the people and the
imperious behest of his party. The South was clamoring for more
territory for the extension of slavery. The West was aggressive and
eager for more worlds to conquer. New England, impelled by hatred of
slavery and jealousy of the rising importance of the West, opposed the
entire project and earnestly protested against annexation.
In the feverish dreams of the slavery propagandists rose chimerical
projects of conquest and expansion at which a Caesar or an Alexander
would have stood aghast. Mexico and Central America were
contemplated as possible additions to the magnificent slave empire
which they saw rising out of the mists of the future. They began to talk
of the Caribbean Sea as an inland lake, of Cuba and the West Indies as
outlying dependencies, of the Pacific as their western coast, and of the
States that should thereafter be carved out of South America. The
enduring foundation of this tropical empire was to be African slavery,
and the governing power was to rest permanently in the hands of a
cultured aristocracy of slave-holders. The people of the North-Atlantic
States and heir descendents in the Northwest, who churlishly held aloof
from these intoxicating dreams, were to be treated with generous justice
and permitted to go in peace or continue a minor adjunct of the great
aristocratic Republic. Already the irrepressible conflict had begun.
Douglas heartily accepted the plans of his party. He was by
temperament an ardent expansionist, a firm believer in the manifest
destiny of his country to rule the Western Continent, a pronounced type
of exuberant young Americanism. He was an unflinching partisan
seeking to establish himself in the higher councils of his party, which
was committed to this scheme of conquest. On May 13th, 1846, he
delivered in the House a speech, in which he defended the course of the
Administration in regard to the Mexican War and, in a spirited colloquy,
instructed the venerable John Quincy Adams in the principles of
international law. He based his defense of the war upon the treaty with

Santa Anna recognizing the independence of Texas. Adams suggested
that at the time of its execution Santa Anna was a prisoner incapable of
making a treaty. Douglas insisted that, even though a captive, he was a
de facto government whose acts were binding upon the country, and to
establish his proposition cited the case of Cromwell who, during his
successful usurpation, bound England by many important treaties. The
niceties of international law were not very punctiliously observed. His
arguments were warmly received by men already resolved on a career
of conquest.
The war was a romantic military excursion through the heart of Mexico.
There were battles between the triumphant invaders and the
demoralized natives, which were believed entitled to rank among the
supreme achievements of genius and courage. Americans had not yet
acquired that deep knowledge of carnage, those stern conceptions of
war, which they were destined soon to gain. Military glory and imperial
conquest have rarely been so cheaply won. The war