The American Civil War probably started April 23, 1860 in Charleston, South Carolina when the Democratic Party’s National Convention failed to nominate a candidate. Southern “fire-eaters” like William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama came to Charleston with the intent of secession, according to some historians. But there were other participants equally guilty of driving the nation beyond repair. This included the sitting president James Buchanan, whose personal hatred of Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois played a major role in the breakup of the convention. As historian Damon Wells argues, “America stood in urgent need of a workable compromise and a new infusion of the spirit of political moderation.”

 

Standing on Principle Destroyed any Hope for Compromise

 

Charleston was a poor choice for a national convention in 1860. According to historian Page Smith, it was selected by the Democrats before Stephen Douglas devised his Freeport Doctrine, the “Little Giant’s” answer to the emasculation of popular or squatter sovereignty by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857). Meeting in Institute Hall on April 23, 1860, convention delegates included men of great passion. Wells refers to the “American gift for compromise” as having been subverted by “intransigence.”

 

Douglas, who firmly believed he would be nominated, wrote on June 20, 1860 that, “…each appeals to the passion and prejudices of his own section against the peace of the whole country…” At issue was the convention majority report that included planks to the party platform advocating a slave-code plank. Several Southern delegates even called for a return of the African slave trade and the acquisition of Cuba.

 

Southerners, however, firmly repudiated Douglas’ popular sovereignty notions, eliciting the Illinois Senator’s angry response that he would not accept any “concession of one iota of principle.” This then was the impasse that caused Southern delegates to bolt the convention after the delegates voted to accept the minority report rather than the politically charged majority report. Douglas was viewed by some Southerners as “the most dangerous man in America.” (New York Times, January 2, 1860)

 

Both reports were reported out of the platform committee. The majority report reflected the extremist views of “Ultra” Southern delegates that were vehemently opposed to Douglas’ popular sovereignty and believed that his Freeport Doctrine was a betrayal. The majority report demanded congressional protection of slavery not only where it already existed, but in the western territories.

 

The Role of James Buchanan at the Democratic Party Convention in 1860

 

Buchanan instructed his cronies attending the convention to do whatever it took to deny the nomination to Stephen Douglas. Damon Wells, in his extensive study of Douglas’ final years, writes that, “Buchanan…broke the Democratic Party at Charleston and did more than anyone else to cause the election of Lincoln.”

 

After Southern delegates bolted, Buchanan’s men engineered a change in convention rules. Douglas would need a two-thirds majority to win the nomination, but of the remaining delegates after the bolt. Douglas came close, but was thwarted by border state delegates following the direction of the Buchananites. On April 30, 1860, the New York Times began its coverage of the convention, stating, “The darker the day, the darker the deed…Prayer has been dispensed with, though the same cannot be said of imprecation.”

 

Motivation of the Fire-Eaters at the 1860 Party Convention

 

Some historians believe that secession was the intention all along and that Douglas merely walked into a trap. If so, the hapless Buchanan would have been a pawn designed to neutralize Douglas and enflame the Deep South. Forrest McDonald notes that, “The purpose [Yancey’s slavery plank] was to split the party, thus ensuring a Republican victory and making it possible to enflame feelings to such an extent that secession could be brought about.”

 

One criticism of this view, however, is that the Republicans did not meet until after the debacle in Charleston and Lincoln’s eventual nomination was not a serious consideration in Charleston. The Republican “front-runner” was William Henry Seward of New York. Lincoln was himself a “dark horse,” a compromise candidate.

 

Impact on the Nation of the Failure to Compromise

 

The failure to compromise split the Democratic Party and ultimately enabled Abraham Lincoln to win the Election of 1860. The party divided into three factions, representing the moderate Unionists (many of them former Whigs), Northern Democrats that supported Douglas, and the extremist wing of the party willing to cross the abyss of secession and war in the name of principle.

 

Compromise kept the tenuous peace between the North and South ever since the debates over Missouri statehood in 1820. Henry Clay’s compromise of 1850, reviled by men like Jefferson Davis, postponed for a decade the outbreak of war. But in April 1860 Southerners recalled only too vividly John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859.

 

At a time compromise could have bought time for a lasting solution that did not involve bloodshed, the Democrats failed, allowing party extremists to dictate the course of events. Writing on June 22, 1860, Stephen Douglas penned that, “The Unity of the Party and the maintenance of its principles inviolate are more important than the elevation or defeat of any individual.” But his new-found conclusions were too late; the party was split and the fire-eaters in the South were calling for dissolution.

 

Sources:

 

“Charleston Convention,” New York Times, April 30, 1860

Stephen A. Douglas, Letter to William A. Richardson June 20, 1860; Letter to Dean Richmond June 22, 1820, The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas, Edited by Robert W. Johannsen (University of Illinois Press, 1961)

Forrest McDonald, States’ Rights And The Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876 (University Press of Kansas, 2000)

Page Smith, The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years, Volume Four (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981)

Eric H. Walther, The Fire-Eaters (Louisiana State University Press, 1992)

Damon Wells, Stephen Douglas: The Last Years, 1857-1861 (University of Texas Press, 1971)