The Life Of Walter Q. Gresham
Chapter 4
Marriage and Campaign of 1858
MARRIAGE
AND WEDDING TRIP - NEWSPAPERS
BUCHANAN REPUDIATES
KANSAS / NEBRASKA BILL
ATTEMPTS TO ADMIT KANSAS AS A SLAVE
STATE
DOUGLAS DENOUNCES AND
DEFEATS BUCHANAN
KANSAS
REJECTS ENGLISH BILL.
February 11, 1858, we were married.
The practice of law, and the
Brandenburg affair, one of its incidents, the campaign of 1858, and the
Lincoln Douglas Debate, which all dovetailed together, were of
absorbing interest that year to Walter Q. Gresham.
Our wedding trip was by stage to Louisville, and thence by boat to
Leaven worth, Crawford County, to attend court. On our return to
Corydon we boarded with, or rather were the guests of, Colonel Posey, a
venerable gentleman, dignified and courtly, a Virginian by birth
and a son of one of the territorial governors of Indiana. He was a
client of the firm of Slaughter and Gresham, and a great friend of my
husband.
In a few months we left Colonel Posey's and went to live in a house on
one of the hills at the edge of the town. Here our first-born arrived.
Many were the good suppers we had there with Dr. Mitchell Jones as the
chief guest. Fishing was a great pastime for my husband and for
Doctor Jones. There were then bass in abundance in Indian Creek at the
edge of Corydon, and in Blue River, a larger stream farther west which
was the dividing line between Harrison and Crawford counties. In April,
1859, we purchased a house within a city block of the Constitutional
Elm. The site was most desirable, and with some remodeling we had what
I thought was the most attractive two story cottage of the town. In
those days every one raised his own
vegetables. We had a fine garden.
At this time the office of Slaughter and Gresham was on the second
floor of a small building that stood in the public square near the
court house. It had but one room upstairs, with windows on three sides
and a door on the fourth, which was reached by a flight of stairs from
the outside. My husband was full of jokes, good spirits, and good
humor, and there was not too much shop talk at the home. At night when
it was necessary to work on a case, it was done at the office, which
was not far away.
There were a good many trials before justices of the peace in the
outlying townships in Harrison County. While I never was in court nor
present at the trial of any of these cases, I sometimes rode with my
husband; but instead of attending the trials, would visit, when in the
western part of the county, some of the Davises, relatives of his
mother. On these occasions my husband often took along his rifle, and
while he never professed to be a crack shot, he could easily bring down
a gray squirrel from the top of the tallest poplar tree, often putting
the bullet through its head.
When it came to newspapers we had Horace Greeley's anti-slavery New
York Tribune, the Louisville Journal, edited by George D.
Prentice, and the Louisville Democrat, edited by my friends, the
Harneys.
My husband and my father both knew George D. Prentice personally,
and frequently discussed his future and that of his paper. Prentice, as
we have suggested and shall see, was the most influential political
writer of his time. Of him Henry Watterson said: ' * He not only did
the writing but also the fighting for his party; he was intellectually
the match for any man; he was physically and mentally afraid of no
man." But Mr. Prentice was wanting in that sound judgment that is the
gift of some less favored mortals. Conservative at first as a follower
of Henry Clay, after Mr. Clay's death he drifted to the support or
leadership of the extreme
pro slavery Secessionist propaganda.
The Louisville Democrat, my paper, was pro slavery. It was edited with
ability, discernment, and sound judgment, but not with the
brilliancy that Prentice displayed in the Journal. Prentice, in
advocating the claims of the slave holder, went beyond my father's
paper, the Courier. He attacked Douglas and "Squatter Sovereignty" with
all his logic and sarcasm. The Kansas-Nebraska bill, he said, was
anarchy pure and simple, in that it substituted the rule of the mob,
that of the first few squatters in a territory, for the judgment of the
legislators of the whole people. Major Harney warned his contemporaries
and his readers that Prentice was not a Democrat, and should not be
permitted to undermine the Democratic faith with the old Federal and
Whig principles about the supreme power of Congress over slavery in the
territories, for if that principle was adopted the first Congress that
was in control of the anti-slavery people would at once exclude the
slave holder from the territory. Of course the Harneys and their paper
were partisans of Senator Douglas.
My father never failed to let us know what extreme views on secession
were foreshadowed in his Louisville Courier and among the business men
of Louisville. He did not quit active business in Louisville until the
Fall of 1862. With all an Irishman's wit and deftness, he was fond of
discussing with his "Abolitionist son-in-law" the current politics of
the day. Every question hinged on secession. My father believed in
secession, and he believed and said, as did most Secessionists, that
the anti-slavery people, "the Abolitionists," would not fight. It was
only when he talked thus that he annoyed my husband, who was a man who
never made threats. He answered my father in a letter which I will
quote later on, written during "the advance on Corinth.'' Always clear
in his ideas, tolerant of the opinions of his fellows, and anxious to
get the standpoints and study the workings of the minds of others, my
husband encouraged my
father and all guests to express their views. It was thus I heard every
phase of the slavery and secession question
discussed. It was a part of our life.
My husband's friend, Judge W. T. Otto, was the Republican
candidate for attorney general in 1858 against Joseph E. MacDonald, the
Democratic candidate. Partisan lines had been drawn, and George A.
Bicknell had defeated Judge Otto for re-election to the bench. In later
years I knew Joseph E. MacDonald well. The personal interest was
heightened by the controversy over the slavery question.
"It will be easy to make a campaign against the Democracy of this
year. said Walter Q. Gresham. "If Kansas is allowed to vote herself
into the Union as a Free State, as she undoubtedly will, the
slave-ocracy will lose its control of the National government; if they
break faith with the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the
Douglas
platform, and keep Kansas out of the Union by denying her a fair
election, it is only a question of time until the control of the
government will pass into the hands of men of reasonable and
conservative views on the slavery question."
One evening Samuel J. Wright came to call. He was no longer auditor of
Harrison County, but proprietor of one of the two flourishing mills of
the town and a general all round business man. He was greatly excited.
His first words were, "Bill English is goin' to flop." Always alert,
"Slick Sammy" had with him a newspaper containing an elaborate speech
by William H. English, who as the member of Congress from our district
had been one of Senator Douglas's friends to block President Buchanan's
efforts to admit Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution.
In this speech Mr. English set forth the advantages of the
representative theory of government, and the disadvantages and
dangers of the referendum. The latter was At the meeting of Congress, 1859, the pro
slavery senators removed
Senator Douglas from the chairmanship of the Committee on
Territories, not in accordance with the Republican theory of
government. While
he would not deny that the Free Soilers in Kansas were in a
majority, two to one, over their opponents, the voice of the people,
he said, was not the voice of God, and the representatives of the
entire people knew what was better for the nation than a few settlers
in a territory.
Finally, on April 3, Mr. English proposed what was called the English
bill. It provided that the people of Kansas could vote on August 3 on
the proposition as to whether they would come into the Union under the
Lecompton Constitution, but they were without power to change its
slave provision to a free one; in other words, they could only come
into the Union by adopting a slave constitution. As an inducement, or
further bribe, as it was called, the English bill provided that if
the Lecompton Constitution was adopted the new State would have a land
grant of 20,000,000 acres; but, on the other hand, if the Lecompton
Constitution were rejected, Kansas would not only lose the land grant
but could not become a State until she had a population of 94,000, the
ratio for a representative in Congress.
Over Senator Douglas's opposition, the English bill became a law.
Mr. English's "flops' almost cost him a renomination and then an
election. It was his good fortune on August 3 to have the people of
Kansas decide by a vote of two to one, 10,000 to 5,000, to stay
out of
the Union rather than adopt the Lecompton Constitution. So long as
Kansas did not actually become a Slave State, and John M. Wilson,
the New Albany lawyer, was the opposition candidate, the masses of the
Democrats of the second congressional district were content to vote for
English's re-election. Mr. Wilson's private and professional life was
vulnerable, and on these lines in their joint discussions, Mr. English,
who was an aggressive and forcible campaigner, as well as a man of
physical courage, pressed the contest.
As a public man Mr. English was thoroughly discredited. Mr. Gresham and
the other stump speakers argued that he had broken his
own plighted faith, as well as that of his party, on the Kansas
question. The strictures that my husband and his friends had passed on
Douglas in the previous campaign were withdrawn, and he and the
principles of his bill were lauded to the skies. The settlers of a
territory, so long as they prepared to organize their government on the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, were a safer guide than
Mr. English and his associates in Congress, who proposed to legislate
on the lines of the slave code of South Carolina. His reduced majority,
the vigor with which he was attacked, which no man could forever
endure, it had been kept up since 1854 , and the bitterness of the
contest that he said privately he knew was to come, led Mr. English to
announce that he would retire at the end of his term in March, 1861. He
did so, and went into the banking business at Indianapolis.
My husband was much disappointed that Mr. Mac-Donald had defeated Judge
Otto for attorney general by a small margin, less than 2,000. In the
legislature the Republicans and the Anti Lecompton Democrats were in a
majority.
