Lewis Cass and Slavery Expansion: "The Father of Popular Sovereignty" and Ideological Infanticide

LEWIS CASS AND SLAVERY EXPANSION: "THE FATHER OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY" AND IDEOLOGICAL INFANTICIDE WiUard Carl Klunder The letterwhich Senator Lewis Cass penned to Alfred O. P. Nicholson on Christmas Eve 1847 was a clever piece of work. It eventually secured for Cass the Democratic presidential .nomination and the sobriquet "The Father of Popular Sovereignty." It appeared that the sixty-five-year-old Michigan politician had hit upon die ideal solution to the dilemma raised during the warwith Mexico by the introduction ofthe Wilmot Proviso. The doctrine of popular sovereignty was adroitly designed by Cass to provide an ideological compromise between the politically perilous positions advocated by free soilers and slavery expansionists; itwould remain afocal point ofthe explosive slavery controversy until the outbreak ofthe Civil War. During the months following the introduction of the Wilmot Proviso, Lewis Cass demonstrated an unstatesmanlike approach to the question of slavery expansion. He originally supported the Wilmot amendment without giving it much thought; his paramount concern was passage of an appropriation bill which would insure the acquisition ofa territorial indemnity from Mexico. When it became clear to Cass that the proviso threatened the American war effort and the unity of the Democratic party, he opposed it for those reasons. Cass privately predicted in February 1847 that the Wilmot Proviso would not pass the Senate because such an action would result in "death to the war—death to all hopes ofgetting an acre of territory—death to the Administration, and deadi to the Democratic Party ." Two weeks later he voted with the Senate majority in defeating a proviso amendment introduced by William Upham ofVermont and then passing the unencumbered appropriation bill. There was as yet no ideological underpinning to Cass's position regarding slavery expansion. That would come in the months to follow, and receive public expression in the Nicholson letter. Instead, the Michigan senator simply warned that the proviso Civil War History, Vol. XXXII, No. 4, ©1986 by The Kent State University Press 294CIVIL WAR HISTORY served no other purpose than to exacerbate sectional feelings, and "of all the questions, that can agitate us, those which are merely sectional in their character, are the most dangerous, and the most to be deprecated."1 The introduction of the Wilmot Proviso and the ensuing national debate over slavery expansion marked an important milestone in the political career of Lewis Cass. He had faithfully represented the sentiments of Northwest Democrats for more than forty years, but for the remainder of his public life an ever-widening gulf would separate Cass from the sensibilities of his constituents on the subject of slavery. The Michiganians in the House of Representatives, for instance, were all Democrats, and they split two to one in favor of the proviso in August 1847 and again the following February. On the very day the Senate defeated the Upham amendment , resolutions were presented from the Michigan legislature in support of the Wilmot Proviso principle. The Detroit Advertiser, the state's largest Whig organ, likewise assailed Cass as a "dough face" on this issue.2 Lewis Cass was an astute politician. He realized he had underestimated the emotional impact, among Democrats and Whigs alike, that the slavery expansion controversy generated in the North. It was no longer feasible to dismiss the proviso as a mere abstraction that served as an impediment to the acquisition of territory from Mexico. By the autumn of 1847, Cass also accepted the southern contention that the proviso principle was unconstitutional —although he was less than candid as to when he came to this conclusion. Jefferson Davis was pleased to report that "Cass is heartily with us, and says he always was but saw the necessity last spring ofcaution, lest the fire which would go out iflet alone should be kindled by attempting to extinguish it too suddenly." Several weeks later, with the publication ofthe Nicholson letter in the Washington Daily Union and other Democratic organs, Cass broadcast to the American electorate his opposition to the Wilmot Proviso and his views on slavery expansion.3 Characteristically, Lewis Cass moved cautiously only after long conversations on the subject with influential Democratic politicians in Washington , including Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis. As late as December...