MR. WEBSTER'S 7TH OF MARCH SPEECH.

Continuing the discussion invited by Mr. Clay's resolutions, Mr. Webster delivered, on the 7th of March, the memorable speech which cost him the loss of so many of his staunch and lifelong friends. The anti-slavery Whigs of the North, who, as the discussion went on, had waited to be vindicated by the commanding argument of Mr. Webster, were dismayed and cast down by his unexpected utterance. Instead of arraigning the propagandists of slavery, he arraigned its opponents. Instead of indicting the Disunionists of the South, the poured out his wrath upon the Abolitionists of the North. He maintained that the North had unduly exaggerated the dangers of slavery extension at this crisis. California was coming in as a free State. Texas, north of 36 deg. 30', if her boundary should extend so far, had been declared free in the articles of annexation. In the mountainous and sterile character of New Mexico and Utah he found a stronger prohibition of slavery than in any possible ordinance, enactment, or proviso placed on the statute-book by Congress. He would not, therefore, "re-enact the Law of God." He would not force a quarrel with the South when nothing was to be gained. He would not irritate or causelessly wound the feelings of those who were just beginning to realize that they had lost in the issue put at stake in the Mexican war. The speech undoubtedly had great influence in the North, and caused many anti-slavery men to turn back. But on the other hand, it embittered thousands who pressed forward with sturdy principle and with a quickened zeal, not unmixed with resentment and a sense of betrayal. In many parts of the country, and especially in the Middle and Southern States, the speech was received with enthusiastic approval. But in New England, the loss of whose good opinion could not be compensated to Mr. Webster by the applause of a world outside, he never regained his hold upon the popular affection. New friends came to him, but they did not supply the place of the old friends, who for a lifetime had stood by him with unswerving principle and with ever-increasing pride.

Excitement and passion do not, however, always issue decrees and pronounce judgments of absolute right. In the zeal of that hour, Northern anti-slavery opinion failed to appreciate the influence which wrought so powerfully on the mind of Mr. Webster. He belonged with those who could remember the first President, who personally knew much of the hardships and sorrows of the Revolutionary period, who were born to poverty and reared in privation. To these, the formation of the Federal Government had come as a gift from Heaven, and they had heard from the lips of the living Washington in his farewell words, that "the Union is the edifice of our real independence, the support of our tranquillity at home, our peace abroad, our prosperity, our safety, and of the very liberty which we so highly prize, that for this Union we should cherish a cordial, habitual, immovable attachment, and should discountenance whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned." Mr. Webster had in his own lifetime seen the thirteen colonies grow into thirty powerful States. He had seen three millions of people, enfeebled and impoverished by a long struggle, increased eightfold in number, surrounded by all the comforts, charms, and securities of life. All this spoke to him of the Union and of its priceless blessings. He now heard its advantages discussed, its perpetuity doubted, its existence threatened. A convention of slave-holding States had been called, to meet at Nashville, for the purpose of considering the possible separation of the sections. Mr. Webster felt that a generation had been born who were undervaluing their inheritance, and who might, by temerity, destroy it. Under motives inspired by these surroundings, he spoke for the preservation of the Union. He believed it to be seriously endangered. His apprehensions were ridiculed by many who, ten years after Mr. Webster was in his grave, saw for the first time how real and how terrible were the perils upon which those apprehensions were founded.

When the hour of actual conflict came, every patriot realized that a great magazine of strength for the Union was stored in the teachings of Mr. Webster. For thirty years preceding the Nullification troubles in South Carolina, the government had been administered on the States'-rights theory, in which the power of the nation was subordinated, and its capacity to subdue the revolt of seceding States was dangerously weakened. His speech in reply to Hayne in 1830 was like an amendment to the Constitution. It corrected traditions, changed convictions, revolutionized conclusions. It gave to the friends of the Union the abundant logic which established the right and the power of the government to preserve itself. A fame so lofty, a work so grand, cannot be marred by one mistake, if mistake it be conceded. The thoughtful reconsideration of his severest critics must allow that Mr. Webster saw before him a divided duty, and that he chose the part which in his patriotic judgment was demanded by the supreme danger of the hour.

Mr. Clay's resolutions were referred to a special committee of thirteen, of which he was made chairman. They reported a bill embracing the principal objects contemplated in his original speech. The discussion on this composite measure was earnest and prolonged, and between certain senators became exasperating. The Administration, through its newspapers, through the declarations of its Cabinet minsters, through the unreserved expressions of President Taylor himself, showed persistent hostility to Mr. Clay's Omnibus Bill, as it was derisively and offensively called. Mr. Clay, in turn, did not conceal his hostility to the mode of adjustment proposed in the messages of the President, and defended his own with vigor and eloquence. Reciting the measures demanded for a fair and lasting settlement, he said there were five wounds, bleeding and threatening the body politic, all needing to be healed, while the President proposed to heal but one. He described the wounds, numbering them carefully on his fingers as he spoke. Colonel Benton, who was vindictively opposed to the Omnibus Bill, made sport of the five gaping wounds, and believed that Mr. Clay would have found more wounds if he had had more fingers. This strife naturally grew more and more severe, making for a time a somewhat serious division among the Democrats, and rending the Whig party asunder, one section following Mr. Clay with great zeal, the other adhering with tenacity to the administration.

DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.

The quarrel was growing fiercer day by day, and involving all shades of political opinion, when it was suddenly arrested by the death of General Taylor on the 9th of July (1850). This sad event gave the opportunity for the success of the Compromise measures. Had General Taylor lived, their defeat was assured. As a Southern man, coming from a Gulf State, personally interested in the institution of slavery, he had a vantage-ground in the struggle which a Northern President could never attain. He had, moreover, the courage and the intelligence to uphold his principles, even in a controversy with Mr. Clay. His ignorance of political and civil affairs has been grossly exaggerated. Without taking part in politics, he had been a close observer of events, and his prolonged services at frontier posts had afforded the leisure and enforced the taste for reading. He knew not only the public measures, but the public men of his time closely and appreciatively. He surprised a member of his cabinet on a certain occasion, by objecting to a proposed appointment on the ground that the man designated had voted for Benton's expunging resolution at the close of Jackson's administration, —an offense which the President would not condone. The seven members of his cabinet, actively engaged in politics all their lives, had forgotten an important fact which the President instinctively remembered.

Long before General Taylor's death it was known that Mr. Fillmore did not sympathize with the policy of the administration. He had been among the most advanced of anti-slavery Whigs during his service in the House of Representatives, and was placed on the Taylor ticket as a conciliatory candidate, to hold to their allegiance that large class of Whigs who resented the nomination of a Louisiana slave-holder. But from the day he was sworn in as Vice-President his antipathy to Mr. Seward began to develop. With the conceded ability of the latter, and with his constant opportunity on the floor of the Senate, where he won laurels from the day of his entrance, Mr. Fillmore felt that he would himself be subordinated and lost in the crowd of followers if he coincided with Seward. Older in years, long senior to Mr. Seward in the national service, he apparently could not endure to see himself displaced by a more brilliant and more capable leader. The two men, therefore, gradually separated; Mr. Fillmore using what influence he possessed as Vice- President in favor of Mr. Clay's plan of compromise, while Mr. Seward became the Northern leader of the Administration Whigs,—a remarkable if not unprecedented advance for a senator in the first session of his service.

In succeeding to the Presidency, Mr. Fillmore naturally gave the full influence of his administration to the Compromise. To signalize his position, he appointed Mr. Webster secretary of State, and placed Mr. Corwin of Ohio at the head of the Treasury. Mr. Corwin, with a strong anti-slavery record, had been recently drifting in the opposite direction, and his appointment was significant. It was too late, however, to save the Omnibus Bill as a whole. The Taylor administration had damaged it too seriously to permit an effectual revival in its favor. It was finally destroyed the last week in July by striking out in detail every provision except the bill for the organization of the Territory of Utah. After the Utah bill had been enacted, separate bills followed;—for the admission of California; for the organization of New Mexico, with the same condition respecting slavery which had been applied to Utah; for the adjustment of the Texas boundary, and the payment to that State of ten millions indemnity; for the more effectual recovery of fugitive slaves; for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Congress thus enacted separately the bills which it refused to enact together, and the policy outlined by Mr. Clay at the beginning of the session had triumphed. Several Southern senators joined Jefferson Davis in strenuous resistance to the admission of California with the boundaries prescribed. After seeking ineffectually to make the line of 36 deg. 30' the southern limit of the State, they attempted with equal lack of success to enter a solemn protest on the journal of the Senate against the wrong done to the slave-holding States in giving the entire Pacific coast to freedom. It was a last and hopeless movement of the Southern Hotspurs. The protest, at first discredited, was speedily forgotten, and California entered the Union after ten months of angry controversy, with slavery forever excluded from her imperial domain.

THE FINALITY OF THE COMPROMISE.

The session had been in all respects important and memorable. In the judgment of many it had been critical, and the dangers attending its action were increased by the death of General Taylor. The South would endure from him what they would resent and possibly resist if imposed by an anti-slavery Whig from the North. This fact had, doubtless, great influence in shaping the policy of Mr. Fillmore, both as Vice-President and President. The events of the session marred and made the reputation of many. Four senators especially, of the younger class, had laid the foundation of their prominence in the struggles of after years,—Mr. Seward as an anti- slavery Whig, Mr. Chase as a Free-Soiler, previously of Democratic affiliations, Mr. Jefferson Davis as a Southern Democrat, and Mr. Douglas as a Northern Democrat. Calhoun was dead. Clay and Webster and Cass and Benton were near the end of their illustrious careers. New men were thenceforth to guide the policy of the Republic, and among the new men in a Senate of exceptional ability these four attained the largest fame, secured the strongest constituencies, and exerted the widest influence.

Both political parties began at once to take ground in favor of the Compromise measures as a final and complete adjustment of the slavery question. The Southern Whigs under Mr. Clay's lead eagerly assumed that conclusion. Mr. Fillmore, having approved all the bills separately which taken together formed the Compromise, was of course strongly in favor of regarding these measures as a finality. Mr. Webster took the same view, though from a bill he had prepared before he left the Senate for the rendition of fugitive slaves, guaranteeing jury-trial to the fugitive, it is hardly conceivable that he would have voted for the harsh measure that was enacted. Mr. Corwin to the surprise of his friends had passed over from the most radical to the ultra-conservative side on the slavery question, and it was his change, in addition to that of Mr. Webster, which had given so brilliant an opportunity to Mr. Seward as the leader of the Northern Whigs. Mr. Corwin was irretrievably injured by a course so flatly in contradiction of his previous action. He lost the support and largely forfeited the confidence of the Ohio Whigs, who in 1848 had looked upon him as a possible if not probable candidate for the Presidency.

But against this surrender to the Compromise measures of 1850, the Whigs who followed Seward and Wade and Thaddeus Stevens and Fessenden were earnest and active. Stevens was then a member of the House and had waged bitter war against the measures. Wade and Fessenden had not yet entered the Senate, but were powerful leaders in their respective States. These men had not given up the creed which demanded an anti-slavery restriction on every inch of soil owned by the United States. They viewed with abhorrence the legislation which had placed freedom and slavery on the same plane in the Territories of Utah and New Mexico. They believed that Texas had been paid for a baseless claim ten millions of dollars, one-half of which, as a sharp critic declared, was hush-money, the other half blood-money. They regarded the cruel law for the return of fugitive slaves as an abomination in the sight of God and man. In their judgment it violated every principle of right. It allowed the personal liberty of a man to be peremptorily decided by a United- States commissioner, acting with absolute power and without appeal. For a claim exceeding twenty dollars in value, every citizen has the right to a trial by jury; but by this law the body, the life, the very soul of a man, possibly a free-born citizen, might be consigned to perpetual enslavement on the fallible judgment of a single official. An apparently slight, yet especially odious feature of the law which served in large degree to render it inoperative was that the United-States commissioner, in the event of his remanding the alleged fugitive to slavery, received a fee of ten dollars, and, if he adjudged him to be free, received only five dollars.

It soon became evident that with the Whigs divided and the Democrats compactly united upon the finality of the Compromise, the latter would have the advantage in the ensuing Presidential election. The tendency would naturally be to consolidate the slave-holding States in support of the Democratic candidates, because that party had a large, well-organized force throughout the North cherishing the same principles, co-operating for the same candidates, and controlling many, if not a majority, of the free States. The Southern Whigs, equally earnest with the Democrats for the Compromise, were constantly injured at home by the outspoken anti-slavery principles of leading Northern Whigs. Just at that point of time and from the cause indicated began the formation of parties divided on the geographical line between North and South. But this result was as yet only foreshadowed, not developed. Both the old parties held their national conventions as usual, in 1852, with every State represented in both by full delegations. There were peculiar troubles in each. In the Democratic convention the dissensions had been in large part inherited, and had reference more to persons than to principles, more to the candidate than to the platform. While something of the same trouble was visible in the Whig ranks, the chief source of contention and of party weakness was found in the irreconcilable difference of principle between all the Southern Whigs and a large number of the Northern Whigs. In the South they were unanimous in support of the Compromise. In the North they were divided.

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.

The Democratic National Convention met in Baltimore on the first day of June, 1852. General Cass, though he had reached his seventieth year, was again in the field. Mr. Buchanan, then sixty-one years of age, was the candidate next in strength, and Stephen A. Douglas was third. Douglas was but thirty-nine years old, the youngest man ever formally presented for the Presidency by a State delegation in a National convention. Governor Marcy was fourth in the order of strength. There were scattering votes for other candidates, but these four were seriously and hopefully urged by their respective supporters. Marcy was in many respects the fittest man to be nominated, but the fear was that the old dissensions of the New- York Democracy, now seemingly healed, would open afresh if the chief of one of the clans should be imposed on the other. Douglas was injured by his partial committal to what was known as the doctrine of "manifest destiny,"—the indefinite acquisition of territory southward, especially in the direction of the West Indies. Cass was too old. Buchanan lacked personal popularity; and, while he had the Pennsylvania delegation in his favor, a host of enemies from that State, outside the convention, warred against him most bitterly. No one of these eminent men could secure two-thirds of the delegates as required by the iron rule, and on the forty-ninth ballot Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, who had been among the "scattering" on several preceding votes, was unanimously nominated. The suggestion of Pierce's name was not so spontaneous and sudden as it was made to appear. The precise condition of affairs was discerned before the convention met, and some sagacious and far- seeing men, among whom the late Caleb Cushing was one, and General Benjamin F. Butler another, had canvassed the merits of Pierce before the convention met. They saw that from his record in Congress he would be entirely acceptable to the South, and at the opportune moment their plans were perfected and Pierce was nominated with a great show of enthusiasm. William R. King of Alabama was selected to run as Vice-President.

General Pierce had many qualities that rendered him a strong candidate. He had served with credit if not distinction both in the House and the Senate. He was elected to the House in 1832, when he was but twenty-eight years of age, and resigned his seat in the Senate in 1842. In the ten years which intervened before his nomination for the Presidency, he had devoted himself to the law with brilliant success, leaving it only for his short service in the Mexican war. He was still a young man when he was preferred to all the prominent statesmen of his party as a Presidential candidate. He was remarkably attractive in personal appearance, prepossessing in manner, ready and even eloquent as a public speaker, fluent and graceful in conversation. He presented thus a rare combination of the qualities which attach friends and win popular support.

The platform of principles enunciated by the convention was just what the South desired and demanded. The entire interest centred in the slavery question. Indeed, the declarations upon other issues were not listened to by the delegates, and were scarcely read by the public. Without a dissenting voice the convention resolved that "all efforts of the Abolitionists or others to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences." The Compromise measures, including the fugitive-slave law, which was specially named, were most heartily indorsed, and were regarded as an adjustment of the whole controversy. By way of indicting how full, complete, and final the settlement was, the convention with unrestrained enthusiasm declared that "the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempts may be made." Among the men who joined in these declarations were not a few who had supported Van Buren and Adams in the canvass of 1848. One of the prominent officers of the convention was the author of many of the most extreme anti- slavery declarations put forth at Buffalo.

WHIG NATIONAL CONVENTION.

The Whigs met at Baltimore a fortnight after the Democratic convention had adjourned. The slavery question, upon which the Democrats of all shades had so cordially coalesced, was to the Whigs a dividing sword. Mr. Fillmore was a candidate, supported with almost entire unanimity by the Southern Whigs. Mr. Webster was a candidate, and though in his fear for the Union he had sacrificed more than any other man for the South, he could secure no Southern support. General Scott was a candidate, and though born and reared in Virginia, he was supported by anti-slavery Whigs of every shade in the North, against the two men of Northern birth and Northern associations. On the first ballot, Fillmore received 133 votes, Scott 131, Webster 23. Fillmore received every Southern vote, except one from Virginia given to Scott by John Minor Botts. Scott received every Northern vote except twenty-nine given to Webster, and sixteen given to Fillmore. The friends of Mr. Webster, and Mr. Webster himself, were pained and mortified by the result. Rufus Choate was at the head of the Massachusetts delegation, and eloquently, even passionately, pleaded with the Southern men to support Mr. Webster on a single ballot. But the Southern men stubbornly adhered to Fillmore, and were in turn enraged because the twenty-nine votes thrown away, as they said, on Mr. Webster, would at once renominate the President in whose cabinet Mr. Webster was at that moment serving as Premier. This threefold contest had been well developed before the convention assembled, and one feature of special bitterness had been added to it by a letter from Mr. Clay, who was on his death-bed in Washington. He urged his friends to support Mr. Fillmore. This was regarded by many as a lack of generosity on Mr. Clay's part, after the warm support which Mr. Webster had given him in his contest with Mr. Polk in 1844. But there had been for years an absence of cordiality between these Whig leaders, and many who were familiar with both declared that Mr. Clay had never forgiven Mr. Webster for remaining in Tyler's cabinet after the resignation of the other Whig members. Mr. Webster's association with Tyler had undoubtedly given to the President a measure of protection against the hot wrath of Mr. Clay in the memorable contest of 1841-2, and by natural reaction had impaired the force of Mr. Clay's attack. And now ten years after the event its memory rose to influence the Presidential nomination of 1852.

Another explanation is more in consonance with Mr. Clay's magnanimity of character. He was extremely anxious that an outspoken friend of the Compromise should be nominated. He knew when he wrote his letter that the Democrats would pledge themselves to the finality of the Compromise, and he knew the Southern Whigs would be overwhelmed if there should be halting or hesitation on this issue either in their candidate or in their platform. He felt, as the responsible author of the Compromise, that he was himself on trial, and it would be a peculiar mortification if the party which he had led so long should fail to sustain him in this final crisis of his public life. He had been sufficiently humiliated by Taylor's triumph over him in the convention of 1848. It would be an absolutely intolerable rebuke if in 1852 Taylor's policy should be preferred to his own by a Whig national convention. Taylor, indeed, was in his grave, but his old military compatriot, Scott, was a candidate for the Presidency, and the anti-Compromise Whigs under Seward's lead were rallying to his support. Mr. Clay believed that Fillmore, with the force of the national administration in his hands, could defeat General Scott, and that Mr. Webster's candidacy was a needless division of friends. Hence he sustained Fillmore, not from hostility to Webster, but as the sure and only means of securing an indorsement of the Compromise measures, and of doing justice to a Northern President who had risked every thing in support of Mr. Clay's policy.

The contest was long and earnest. Mr. Webster's friends, offended by what they considered the ingratitude of Southern Whigs, persistently refused to go over to Fillmore, though by so doing they could at any moment secure his nomination. They cared nothing for Fillmore's lead in votes, obtained as they thought in large degree from the use of patronage. They scouted it as an argument not fit to be addressed to the friends of Mr. Webster. Such considerations belonged only to men of the lower grades, struggling in the dirty pools of political strife, and were not to be applied to a statesman of Mr. Webster's rank and character. They felt, moreover, that all the popularity which Fillmore had secured in the South, and to a certain degree with the conservative and commercial classes of the whole country, had come from Mr. Webster's presence and pre- eminent service in his cabinet. In short, Mr. Webster's supporters felt that Mr. Fillmore, so far from earning their respect and deserving their applause, was merely strutting in borrowed plumage, and deriving all his strength from their own illustrious chief. This jealousy was of course stimulated with consummate art and tact by the supporters of Scott. They expressed, as they really entertained, the highest admiration for Webster, and no less frankly made known their dislike, if not their contempt, for Fillmore. Webster, as they pointed out, was supported by the voice of his own great State. Massachusetts had sent a delegation composed of her best men, with the most brilliant orator of the nation, to plead their cause at the bar of the convention. In contrast with this, Fillmore had no support from New York. The Whigs of that State had sent a delegation to impeach him before the nation for faithlessness to principle, and to demand that votes of other States should not impose on New York a recreant son to confound and destroy the party.

NOMINATION OF GENERAL SCOTT.

From this attrition and conflict the natural result was Scott's triumph. It was not reached, however, until the fifty-third ballot and until the fifth day of the convention. It was brought about by the votes of some Fillmore delegates, both in the North and the South, who felt that the long contest should be ended. The gossip of the day—with perhaps a shadow of foundation—was, that in the councils of an inner and governing circle of delegates it was finally agreed that the North might have the candidate, and the South should have the platform, and that thus a bold fight could be made in both sections. William A. Graham of North Carolina, formerly a senator in Congress from that State, subsequently its governor, and at the time secretary of the Navy in Mr. Fillmore's cabinet, was nominated for Vice-President, as a wise concession to the defeated party. The platform adopted was strongly Southern, and this fact served to confirm in the minds of many the existence of the suspected agreement for the division of honors between North and South. The convention resolved that the Compromise measures, including the fugitive-slave law (specially designated after the example of the Democratic convention), "are received and acquiesced in by the Whig party of the United States as a settlement in principle and in substance of the dangerous and exciting questions which they embrace." They further declared that this position was "essential to the nationality of the Whig party and the integrity of the Union." Alexander H. Stephens has stated that this resolution was shown to him by Mr. Webster before the convention assembled, and while Mr. Choate was his guest. The inference apparently intended was that Mr. Choate carried it to the convention as the expression of the Northern Whigs, who believed in the Compromise measures. The agreement—if one existed—that this resolution should be adopted, did not involve all the Northern Whigs. Sturdy resistance was made by many, and the final vote disclosed a powerful minority opposed to the resolution.

For the first few weeks of the canvass the Whigs had strong hope of success. The name of General Scott evoked much enthusiasm, and his splendid military reputation, acquired in two wars, was favorably contrasted with that of General Pierce, who was one of President Polk's political brigadiers. But these indications were the bubbles and froth that floated on the surface. The personal characteristics of the candidates were lost sight of in the face of the great issues involved. The people soon perceived that if there was indeed merit in the Compromise measures, it would be wise to intrust them to the keeping of the party that was unreservedly—North and South— in favor of upholding and enforcing them. On this point there was absolutely no division in the Democratic ranks. In New York the friends of Marcy and the political heirs of Wright cordially harmonized in favor of the Compromise. Mr. Van Buren returned to Tammany Hall as fresh and buoyant as if his allegiance had never been broken; and in a great convocation of the Democracy, the prodigal was welcomed, Pierce's nomination applauded, the platform cheered, the anti-slavery creed forsworn, the Whig party roundly abused, and word sent forth to the uttermost parts of the Union that the Empire State had resumed her place at the head of the Democratic line.

The Whigs soon found to their dismay that the platform and the candidate were inseparable. They could not make a canvass upon the one in the South and upon the other in the North. General Scott had indeed heartily assented to all the principles proclaimed at the convention, but so long as Horace Greeley was eulogizing him in the "Tribune," and Seward supporting him on the stump, it was idle to present him as an acceptable candidate to slave-holding Whigs in the South. Supporting the candidate and spitting on the platform became the expressive if inelegant watchword of many Northern Whigs, but for every Whig vote which this phrase kept to his party allegiance in the free States, it drove two over to the Democracy in the slave States. Moreover, spitting on the platform, however effective as an indication of contempt, would not satisfy the conscience or the prejudices of large numbers of Whigs who voted directly for the candidates of the Free-soil party, John P. Hale of New Hampshire for President, and George W. Julian of Indiana for Vice-President.

DEFEAT OF THE WHIG PARTY.

Weakened by personal strife, hopelessly divided on questions of principle, the Whig party was led to the slaughter. Carrying in 1840 every State but seven for Harrison, failing to elect Mr. Clay in 1844 only by the loss of New York, triumphantly installing Taylor in 1848, the Whigs were astounded to find that their candidate had been successful in but four States of the Union, and that twenty- seven States had by large majorities pronounced for General Pierce. Massachusetts and Vermont in the North, Kentucky and Tennessee in the South, had alone remained true to the Whig standard. All the other Whig States that had stood staunch and strong in the fierce contests of the past now gave way. Connecticut and Rhode Island, which never but once failed either Federalist or Whig from the foundation of the government, now voted for a pro-slavery States'- rights Democrat. Delaware, which never in a single instance voted for the Democratic candidate except when Monroe had no opposition in 1820; which had fought against Jefferson and Madison; which had stood firmly against Jackson and Van Buren and Polk and Cass when the Bayards were Whigs and co-operated with the Claytons, now swelled the general acclaim for Pierce. Of 296 electors Pierce received 254 and General Scott only 42. The wide sweep of the Democratic victory was a surprise to both sides, though for several weeks before the election the defeat of Scott was anticipated. He received no support from Mr. Fillmore's administration, was indeed secretly betrayed by it everywhere, and quite openly by its officials in the Southern States. He did not receive the strength of his party, and the strength of his party would have been insufficient to elect him. But overwhelming as was the defeat, it did not necessarily involve destruction. The Whigs had been beaten almost as badly when Clay ran against Jackson in 1832, and yet the party had rallied to four earnest contests and to two signal victories. The Democracy, now so triumphant, had been disastrously beaten in the contest of 1840, but in the next election had regained strength enough to defeat Mr. Clay. The precedents, therefore, permitted the Whigs to be of good cheer and bade them wait the issues of the future. They were not, however, consoled by the philosophy of defeat, and were disposed to gloomy anticipations.

MR. CLAY AND MR. WEBSTER COMPARED.

As if to emphasize the disaster to the Whigs, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster both died during the canvass; Mr. Clay in June, a few days after Scott's nomination, Mr. Webster in October, a few days before his defeat. They had both lived long enough to see the work of their political life imperiled if not destroyed. They had held the same relation to the Whigs that the elder Adams and Hamilton had held to the Federalists, that Jefferson and Madison had held to the Republicans. Comparison between them could not be fairly made, their inherent qualities and personal characteristics differed so widely. Each was superior to the other in certain traits, and in our public annals thus far each stands unequaled in his sphere. Their points of contrast were salient and numerous. Mr. Clay was born in Virginia. Mr. Webster was born in New England. Mr. Clay was a devoted follower of Jefferson. Mr. Webster was bred in the school of Hamilton. Mr. Clay was an earnest advocate of the second war with Great Britain. Mr. Webster was its steady opponent. Mr. Clay supported Madison in 1812 with great energy. Mr. Webster threw all his strength for De Witt Clinton. Mr. Clay was from the first deeply imbued with the doctrine of protection. Mr. Webster entered public life as a pronounced free-trader. They were not members of the same political organization until after the destruction of the old Federal party to which Mr. Webster belonged, and the hopeless divisions of the old Republican party to which Mr. Clay belonged. They gradually harmonized towards the close of Monroe's second term, and became firmly united under the administration of John Quincy Adams. Modern political designations had their origin in the Presidential election of 1824. The candidates all belonged to the party of Jefferson, which had been called Democratic- Republican. In the new divisions, the followers of Jackson took the name of Democrats: the supporters of Adams called themselves National Republicans. They had thus divided the old name, each claiming the inheritance. The unpopularity of Mr. Adams's administration had destroyed the prospects of the National-Republican party, and the name was soon displaced by the new and more acceptable title of Whig. To the joint efforts of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster more than to all others the formation of the Whig party was due. It was not, however, in Mr. Webster's nature to become a partisan chief. Mr. Clay on the other hand was naturally and inevitably a leader. In all the discussions of the Senate in which constitutional questions were involved, Mr. Clay instinctively deferred to Mr. Webster. In the parliamentary debates which concerned the position of parties and the fate of measures, which enchained the Senate and led captive the people, Mr. Clay was facile princeps. Mr. Webster argued the principle. Mr. Clay embodied it in a statute. Mr. Webster's speeches are still read with interest and studied with profit. Mr. Clay's speeches swayed listening senates and moved multitudes, but reading them is a disappointment. Between the two the difference is much the same as that between Burke and Charles James Fox. Fox was the parliamentary debater of England, the consummate leader of his party. His speeches, always listened to and cheered by a crowded House of Commons, perished with their delivery. Burke could never command a body of followers, but his parliamentary orations form brilliant and permanent chapters in the political literature of two continents.

While Mr. Webster's name is so honorably perpetuated by his elaborate and masterly discussion of great principles in the Senate, he did not connect himself with a single historic measure. While Mr. Clay's speeches remain unread, his memory is lastingly identified with issues that are still vital and powerful. He advanced the doctrine of protection to the stately dignity of the American system. Discarding theories and overthrowing the dogma of strict construction, he committed the General Government irrevocably to internal improvements. Condemning the worthless system of paper money imposed upon the people by irresponsible State banks, he stood firmly for a national currency, and he foreshadowed if he did not reach the paper money which is based to-day on the credit and the strength of the government.

Mr. Clay possessed extraordinary sagacity in public affairs, seeing and foreseeing where others were blinded by ignorance or prejudice. He was a statesman by intuition, finding a remedy before others could discover the disease. His contemporaries appreciated his rare endowments. On the day of his first entrance into the House of Representatives he was chosen Speaker, though but thirty-four years of age. This was all the more remarkable because the House was filled with men of recognized ability, who had been long in the public service. It was rendered still more striking by the fact that Mr. Clay was from the far West, from one of the only two States whose frontiers reached the Mississippi. In the entire House there were only fifteen members from the Western side of the Alleghanies. He was re-elected Speaker in every Congress so long as he served as representative. He entered the Senate at thirty, and died a member of it in his seventy-sixth year. He began his career in that body during the Presidency of Jefferson in 1806, and closed it under the Presidency of Fillmore in 1852. Other senators have served a longer time than Mr. Clay, but he alone at periods so widely separated. Other men have excelled him in specific powers, but in the rare combination of qualities which constitute at once the matchless leader of party and the statesman of consummate ability and inexhaustible resource, he has never been surpassed by any man speaking the English tongue.

[NOTE.—The Committee of Thirteen, to which reference is made on p. 94, and which attained such extraordinary importance at the time, was originally suggested by Senator Foote of Mississippi. His first proposition was somewhat novel from its distinct recognition of the sectional character of the issues involved. He proposed that the committee be chosen by ballot, that six members of it should be taken from the free States and six members from the slave States, and that the twelve thus chosen should select a thirteenth member who should be chairman of the committee. All propositions touching any of the questions at issue between the North and the South were to be referred to this committee with the view of securing a general and comprehensive compromise. The subject was debated for several weeks. Mr. Foote submitted his proposition on the 25th of February, 1850, and it was not adopted until the 18th of April. The committee was chosen on the 19th. Mr. Clay had objected to the open avowal of a division of the committee on the line of North and South, and the proposition was so modified as to simply provide for a committee of thirteen to be chosen by ballot,—the chairman to be first selected, and the other twelve members on a second ballot. The change of the resolution was one of form only; for, when the Senate came to select the members, they adhered to the plan originally suggested by Mr. Foote. Mr. Clay was made chairman, which had been the design from the first, and then six senators were taken from the free States and six from the slave States,— the first, if not the only, time this mode of appointment was adopted. The membership of the committee was highly distinguished. From the free States the Senate selected Mr. Webster, General Cass, Mr. Dickinson of New York, Mr. Bright of Indiana, Mr. Phelps of Vermont, and Mr. Cooper of Pennsylvania. From the slave States, Mr. King of Alabama, Mr. Mason of Virginia, Mr. Downs of Louisiana, Mr. Mangum of North Carolina, Mr. Bell of Tennessee, and Mr. Berrien of Georgia. The twelve were equally divided between the Whigs and the Democrats, so that, with Mr. Clay as chairman, the Whigs had the majority in numbers as they had the overwhelming superiority in weight and ability. The composition of the committee was remarkable when it is remembered that the Democrats had a majority of ten in the Senate.]

CHAPTER VI.

Review (continued).—The Strength of the Democratic Party in 1853.—Popular Strength not so great as Electoral Strength.—The New President's Pledge not to re-open the Slavery Question.—How he failed to maintain that Pledge.—The North-west Territory.—Anti- slavery Restriction of the Missouri Compromise.—Movement to repeal it by Mr. Clay's Successor in the Senate.—Mr. Douglas adopts the policy of repealing the Restriction.—It is made an Administration Measure and carried through Congress.—Colonel Benton's Position. —Anti-slavery Excitement developed in the Country.—Destruction of the Whig Party.—New Political Alliances.—American Party.—Know- Nothings.—Origin and Growth of the Republican Party.—Pro-slavery Development in the South.—Contest for the Possession of Kansas.— Prolonged Struggle.—Disunion Tendencies developing in the South. —Election of N. P. Banks to the Speakership of the House.—The Presidential Election of 1856.—Buchanan.—Fremont.—Fillmore.— The Slavery Question the Absorbing Issue.—Triumph of Buchanan.— Dred Scott Decision.—Mr. Lincoln's Version of it.—Chief Justice Taney.

The Democratic party, seeing their old Whig rival prostrate, naturally concluded that a long lease of power was granted them. The victory of Pierce was so complete that his supporters could not with closest scrutiny descry an opponent worthy of the slightest consideration. If the leaders of that party, however, had deigned to look below the surface, they would have learned a fact which, if not disquieting, was at least serious and significant. This fact was contained in the popular vote, which told an entirely different story from that disclosed by the Presidential electors. From the people Pierce received a total of 1,601,274 votes, Scott 1,386,580, Hale 155,825. It will be noted that, while receiving only one-sixth as many electoral votes as Pierce, Scott received more than five-sixths as many votes at the polls. Adding the vote of Hale, it will be observed that out of a total exceeding three millions, Pierce's absolute majority was but 58,896. Thoughtful men, wise in the administration of government, skilled in the management of parties, would have found in these figures food for reflection and abundant reason for hoisting cautionary signals along the shores of the political sea. The Democratic leaders were not, however, disturbed by facts or figures, but were rather made stronger in the confidence of their own strength. They beheld the country prosperous in all its material interests, and they saw the mass of the people content in both sections with the settlement of the slavery question. Since the Compromise measures were enacted in 1850, and especially since the two political parties had pledged themselves in 1852 to accept those measures as a finality, the slavery agitation had to a very large extent subsided. Disturbance was not indeed infrequently caused by the summary arrest of fugitive slaves in various parts of the North, under the stringent and harsh provisions of the new law on that subject. But though these peculiarly odious transactions exerted a deeper influence on public opinion than the Democratic leaders imagined, they were local and apparently under control. There was no national disquietude on the vexed question of slavery when Franklin Pierce was installed as President.

In his Inaugural address General Pierce pledged himself with evident zeal to the upholding of the Compromise measures and to the rigid enforcement of the laws. There is no doubt that a large majority of the people of the United States—North and South—were satisfied with the situation and bade God-speed to the popular President whose administration opened so auspiciously. The year 1853 was politically as quiet as Monroe's era of good feeling, and when Congress came together in its closing month, the President dwelt impressively upon the dangers we had passed and upon the blessings that were in store for us. In tones of solemnity he declared that when "the grave shall have closed over all who are now endeavoring to meet the obligations of duty, the year 1850 will be recurred to as a period of anxious apprehension." With high praise of the Compromise legislation of that year he said "it had given renewed vigor to our institutions and restored a sense of repose and security to the public mind." Evidently remembering the pledge given by the convention which nominated him "to resist all attempts at renewing the agitation of the slavery question in or out of Congress," the President gave emphatic assurance that this "repose" should suffer no shock during his term if he "had the power to avert it." These words were addressed to Congress on the fifth day of December, 1853, and it would be uncandid to deny that even in the North they were heartily approved by a large majority of the people,—perhaps by a majority in every State.

OMINOUS MOVEMENT IN CONGRESS.

In precisely one month from the delivery of these words by the President an ominous movement was made in Congress. Notwithstanding all the vows of fealty to the Compromise of 1850, the pro-slavery leaders of the South were not contented with the aspect of affairs. The result of the Mexican war had deeply disappointed them. Its most striking political effect thus far was the addition to the Union of a large and imposing free State on the Pacific,—an empire indeed in prospective wealth and power. In the battle between free institutions and slave institutions, California represented a strong flank movement threatening destruction to slavery. Her vote in the Senate gave a majority of two to the free States. The equality of the sections had been steadily maintained in the Senate since the admission of Louisiana in 1812. The break now was ominous; the claim of equality had been disregarded; the superstition which upheld it was dispelled, and the defenders of slavery could see only a long procession of free States marching from the North-West to re-enforce a power already irresistibly strong. From what quarter of the Union could this anti-slavery aggression be offset? By what process could its growth be checked? Texas might, if she chose to ask for her own partition, re-enforce the slave-power in the Senate by four new States, as guaranteed in the articles of annexation. But the very majesty of her dimensions protested against dismemberment. Texas was as large as France, and from the Sabine to the Rio Grande there was not a cotton-planter or a cattle- herder who did not have this fact before his eyes to inflame his pride and guide his vote against parting with a single square mile of her magnificent domain. New Mexico and Utah were mountainous and arid, inviting only the miner and the grazier and offering no inducement for the labor of the slave. The right guaranteed to these territories in the Compromise of 1850 to come in as slave States was, therefore, as Mr. Webster had maintained, a concession of form and not of substance to the South. Seeing slavery thus hemmed in on all sides by nature as well as law, and sincerely believing that in such a position its final extinction was but a question of time, the Southern leaders determined to break the bonds that bound them. From their own point of reasoning they were correct. To stand still was certain though slow destruction to slavery. To move was indeed hazardous, but it gave them a chance to re-establish their equality in the administration of the government, and for this they determined to risk every thing.

To the westward and north-westward of Missouri and Iowa lay a vast territory which in 1854 was not only unsettled but had no form of civil government whatever. It stretched from the north line of Arkansas to the border of British America,—twelve and a half degrees of latitude,—and westward over great plains and across mountain ranges till it reached the confines of Utah and Oregon. It was the unorganized remainder of the territory of Louisiana, acquired from France in 1803, and in extent was ten times as large as the combined area of New York and Pennsylvania. By the Missouri Compromise every square mile of this domain had been honorably devoted to freedom. At the period named Indian tribes roamed at will throughout its whole extent and lighted their camp-fires on the very borders of Missouri and Iowa. Herds of buffalo grazed undisturbed on lands which to-day constitute the sites of large cities. Fort Leavenworth was a far-western outpost, Council Bluffs was on the frontier of civilization, and Omaha had not been named. Adventurous merchants passed over the plains to the South-West with long caravans, engaged in the Santa-Fe trade, and towards the North- West, hunters, trappers, and a few hardy emigrants penetrated the "Platte country," and through mountain passes pointed out by the trail of the Indian and the buffalo had in many instances safely crossed to Oregon. The tide of emigration which had filled Iowa and Wisconsin, and which by the gold excitement of California had for a time been drawn to the Pacific slope, now set again more strongly then ever to the Mississippi valley, demanding and needing new lands for settlement and cultivation. To answer this requirement a movement was made during the closing weeks of Mr. Fillmore's administration to establish the territory of Nebraska. A bill to that effect was passed by a two-thirds vote in the House. The slight opposition that was made came from the South, but its significance was not perceived. When the bill reached the Senate Mr. Douglas, as chairman of the committee on territories, promptly reported it, and made an apparently sincere effort to pass it. He did not succeed. Every senator from the slave-holding States, except those from Missouri,—which was locally interested in having the territory organized,—voted against it;—and the measure, antagonizing other business in which Northern senators were more immediately interested, was laid upon the table two days before President Pierce was inaugurated. The bill had fully recognized the binding force of the Missouri Compromise, and if it had passed, there could have been no pretense for the introduction of slavery in the territory of Nebraska.

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

Directly after the assurance so impressively given by the President that the "repose" of the country on the slavery question "should suffer no shock during his administration," the bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska was again introduced in the Senate. The motive for its defeat the preceding session was soon made apparent. Mr. Archibald Dixon of Kentucky, the last Whig governor of that State, had been chosen to succeed Mr. Clay in the Senate. But he did not succeed to Mr. Clay's political principles. He belonged to a class of men that had been recently and rapidly growing in the South,—men avowedly and aggressively pro-slavery. Mr. Dixon was the first to strike an open blow against the Missouri Compromise. Mr. Clay had been honorably identified with the pacific work of 1820, and throughout his life believed that it had been effectual in allaying the strife which in his judgment had endangered the Union. It was an alarming fact that his own successor in the Senate —less than two years after Mr. Clay's death—was the first to assail his work and to re-open a controversy which was not to cease till a continent was drenched in blood. Mr. Dixon made no concealment of his motive and his purpose, declaring that he wished the restriction removed because he was a pro-slavery man. He gave notice early in January, 1854, that when the bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska should come before the Senate, he would move that "the Missouri Compromise be repealed, and that the citizens of the several States shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories." It was very soon found that this was not a capricious movement by Mr. Dixon alone, but that behind him there was a settled determination on the part of the pro-slavery men to break down the ancient barrier and to remove the honored landmark of 1820.

The Senate had a large Democratic majority, and there was probably not one among them all who had not in the Presidential contest of 1852 publicly and solemnly vowed that the Compromise measures of 1850 were a final settlement of the slavery question, not in any event, nor upon any pretext, to be disturbed. It was specially embarrassing and perilous for Northern senators to violate pledges so recently made, so frequently repeated. It much resembled the breaking of a personal promise, and seemed to the mass of people in the free State to be a gross breach of national honor. To escape the sharp edge of condemnation, sure to follow such a transaction, a pretense was put forth that the Compromise of 1820 was in conflict with the Compromise of 1850, and that it was necessary to repeal the former in order that the doctrine of non-intervention with slavery in the Territories should become the recognized policy for all the public domain of the United States. Mr. Douglas was the first to adopt this construction. Indeed, to him may fairly be ascribed the credit or the discredit of inventing it. He had a strong hold on the South, and in his Congressional life had steadily voted on the pro-slavery side of all public questions. But he instinctively foresaw that his political future would be endangered by advocating the repeal of the Missouri Compromise on the basis and for the reason announced by Mr. Dixon. Hence the resort to the doctrine of non-intervention under which the South should get all they wished by having the right to carry their slaves into the territory, and the North could be conciliated by the presentation of another final settlement of all issues which threatened the perpetuity of the Union.

Instead of the single Territory of Nebraska, Mr. Douglas reported a measure to organize both Kansas and Nebraska; and in one of the sections of the bill the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was declared to be inoperative and void, because "inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories as recognized by the Compromise measures of 1850." The bill further declared that "its true intent and meaning was not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, and not to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." The North was fairly stunned by the proposition made by Mr. Douglas. Had he proposed to abolish the Constitution itself the surprise could scarcely have been greater. The acting generation had grown to manhood with profound respect and even reverence for the Missouri Compromise, and had come to regard it almost as sacredly as though it were part of the organic law of the Republic. If a Southern man talked of its repeal it was regarded as the mere bravado of an extremist. But now a Northern senator of remarkable ability, a party leader, a candidate for the Presidency, had reported the measure, and made it a test of Democratic faith, of administration fealty. The contest that followed was severe and prolonged. The bill was before Congress for a period of four months, and was finally forced through to the utter destruction of good faith between the sections. More than forty Democratic representatives from the North flatly defied party discipline and voted against the repeal. The Democratic representatives from the slave States were consolidated in its favor, with the exception of John Millson, an able member from Virginia, and the venerable Thomas H. Benton of Missouri.

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

After Colonel Benton's thirty years' service in the Senate had terminated, the city of St. Louis sent him to the House in the autumn of 1852. He had entered the Senate when Missouri came into the Union as the result of the Compromise of 1820. He had remained there until after the Compromise of 1850 was adopted. He denounced the proceeding of Douglas with unsparing severity, and gave his best efforts, but in vain, to defeat the bill. He pointed out the fact that the original Compromise had been forced upon the North by the South, and that the present proposition to repeal it had been initiated "without a memorial, without a petition, without a request from any human being. It was simply and only a contrivance of political leaders, who were using the institution of slavery as a weapon, and rushing the country forward to excitements and conflicts in which there was no profit to either section, and possibly great harm to both." Colonel Benton belonged to a class of Southern Democrats who were passing away,—of whom he, indeed, was the last in conspicuous stature. He represented the Democracy of Andrew Jackson and of Nathaniel Macon,—not the Democracy of Mr. Calhoun. He placed the value of the Union above the value of slavery, and was a relentless foe to all who plotted against the integrity of the government. But his day was past, his power was broken, his influence was gone. Even in his own State he had been beaten, and David R. Atchison installed as leader of the Democratic party. His efforts were vain, his protest unheard; and amid the sorrow and gloom of thinking men, and the riotous rejoicings of those who could not measure the evil of their work, the Douglas Bill was passed. On the thirtieth of May, 1854, the wise and patriotic Compromise of March 6, 1820, was declared to be at an end, and the advocates and the opponents of slavery were invited to a trial of strength on the public domain of the United States.

No previous anti-slavery excitement bore any comparison with that which spread over the North as the discussion progressed, and especially after the bill became a law. It did not merely call forth opposition; it produced almost a frenzy of wrath on the part of thousands and tens of thousands in both the old parties, who had never before taken any part whatever in anti-slavery agitation. So conservative a statesman as Edward Everett, who had succeeded John Davis as senator from Massachusetts, pointed out the fallacy not to say the falsehood of the plea that the Compromise measures of 1850 required or involved this legislation. This plea was an afterthought, a pretense, contradicted by the discussion of 1850 in its entire length and breadth. In the North, conservative men felt that no compromise could acquire weight or sanction or sacredness, if one that had stood for a whole generation could be brushed aside by partisan caprice or by the demands of sectional necessity. The popular fury was further stimulated by the fact that from the territory included in the Louisiana purchase, three slave States had been added to the Union, and as yet only one free State; and that the solemn guaranty securing all the domain north of 36 deg. 30' was now to be trodden under foot when its operation was likely to prove hostile to slavery and favorable to freedom. From the beginning of the government the slave-holding interest had secured the advantage in the number of States formed from territory added to the original Union. The South had Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri out of the purchase from France in 1803, Florida from the purchase from Spain in 1819, and Texas, with its possibility of being divided into four additional States, from the annexation of 1845. The North had only Iowa from the Louisiana purchase and California from the territory ceded by Mexico. The North would not stop to consider its prospective advantages in the territory yet to be settled, while the South could see nothing else. The South realized that although it had secured five States and the North only two, Southern territory was exhausted, while the creation of free States in the North-West had just begun. Stripped of all the disguises with which it was surrounded by the specious cry of non-intervention by Congress, the majority in the North came to see that it was in reality nothing but a struggle between the slave States and the free States, growing more and more intense and more and more dangerous day by day.

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

The most striking result in the political field, produced by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was the utter destruction of the Whig party. Had the Southern Whigs in Congress maintained the sacredness of the work of 1820, the party throughout the country would have been able to make a sturdy contest, notwithstanding the crushing defeat of Scott two years before. Not improbably in the peculiar state of public opinion, the Whigs, by maintaining the Compromise, might have been able to carry the Presidential election of 1856. But with the exception of John Bell in the Senate and seven members of the House, the entire Whig party of the South joined the Democrats in repealing the Compromise. Of these seven, Emerson Etheridge of Tennessee and Theodore G. Hunt of Louisiana deserve especial and honorable mention for the courage with which they maintained their position. But when John M. Clayton of Delaware, who had voted to prohibit slavery in all the Territories, now voted to strike down the only legal barrier to its extension; when Badger of North Carolina, who had been the very soul of conservatism, now joined in the wild cry of the pro-slavery Democrats; when James Alfred Pearce of Maryland and James C. Jones of Tennessee united with Jefferson Davis, the Whig party of the South ceased to exist. Indeed, before this final blow large numbers of Southern Whigs had gone over to the Democracy. Toombs and Stephens and Judah P. Benjamin had been among the foremost supporters of Pierce, and had been specially influential in consolidating the South in his favor. But the great body of Whigs both in the South and in the North did not lose hope of a strong re-organization of their old party until the destruction of the Missouri Compromise had been effected. That was seen and felt by all to be the end.

Thenceforward new alliances were rapidly formed. In the South those Whigs who, though still unwilling to profess an anti-slavery creed, would not unite with the Democrats, were re-organized under the name of the American party, with Humphrey Marshall, Henry Winter Davis, Horace Maynard, and men of that class, for leaders. This party was founded on proscription of foreigners, and with special hostility to the Roman-Catholic Church. It had a fitful and feverish success, and in 1845-5, under the name of Know-Nothings, enrolled tens of thousands in secret lodges. But its creed was narrow, its principles were illiberal, and its methods of procedure boyish and undignified. The great body of thinking men in the North saw that the real contest impending was against slavery and not against naturalization laws and ecclesiastical dogmas. The Know-Nothings, therefore, speedily disappeared, and a new party sprang into existence composed of anti-slavery Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats. The latter infused into the ranks of the new organization a spirit and an energy which Whig traditions could never inspire. The same name was not at once adopted in all the free States in 1854, but by the ensuing year there was a general recognition throughout the North that all who intended to make a serious fight against the pro-slavery Democracy would unite under the flag of the Republican party. In its very first effort, without compact organization, without discipline, it rallied the anti-slavery sentiment so successfully as to carry nearly all the free States and to secure a plurality of the members of the House of Representatives. The indignation of the people knew no bounds. Old political landmarks disappeared, and party prejudices of three generations were swept aside in a day. With such success in the outset, the Republicans prepared for a vigorous struggle in the approaching Presidential election.

The anti-slavery development of the North was not more intense than the pro-slavery development of the South. Every other issue was merged in the one absorbing demand by Southern slave-holders for what they sincerely believed to be their rights in the Territories. It was not viewed on either side as an ordinary political contest. It was felt to be a question not of expediency but of morality, not of policy but of honor. It did not merely enlist men. Women took large part in the agitation. It did not end with absorbing the laity. The clergy were as profoundly concerned. The power of the Church on both sides of the dividing-line was used with great effect in shaping public opinion and directing political action. The Missouri Compromise was repealed in May. Before the end of the year a large majority of the people of the North and a large majority of the people of the South were distinctly arrayed against each other on a question which touched the interest, the pride, the conscience, and the religion of all who were concerned in the controversy. Had either side been insincere there would have been voluntary yielding or enforced adjustment. But each felt itself to be altogether in the right and its opponent altogether in the wrong. Thus they stood confronting each other at the close of the year 1854.

It was soon perceived by all, as the sagacious had seen from the first, that the Missouri Compromise had not been repealed merely to exhibit unity in the scope of the United-States statutes respecting slavery in the Territories. This was the euphuistic plea of those Northern senators and representatives who had given dire offense to their constituents by voting for it. It was the clever artifice of Douglas which suggested that construction. It was a deception, and it was contradicted and exposed by the logic of argument in the North and by the logic of action in the South. No double- dealing was attempted by the Southern men. They understood the question perfectly and left the apologies and explanations to Northern men, who were hard pressed by anti-slavery constituents. Southern men knew that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave them a privilege which they had not before enjoyed,—the privilege of settling with their slaves on the rich plains and in the fertile valleys that stretched westward from the Missouri River. In maintaining this privilege, they felt sure of aid from the Executive of the United States, and they had the fullest confidence that in any legal controversy the Federal judiciary would be on their side.

THE SOUTHERN STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS.

Thus panoplied they made a desperate contest for the possession of Kansas. They had found that all the crops grown in Missouri by slave labor could be as profitably cultivated in Kansas. Securing Kansas, they would gain more than the mere material advantage of an enlarged field for slave labor. New Mexico at that time included all of Arizona; Utah included all of Nevada; Kansas, as organized, absorbed a large part of what is now Colorado, stretched along the eastern and northern boundary of New Mexico, and, crossing the Rocky Mountains, reached the confines of Utah. If Kansas could be made a slave State it would control New Mexico and Utah, and the South could again be placed in a position of political equality if not of command. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had shown them for the first time that they could absolutely consolidate the Southern vote in Congress in defense of slavery, regardless of differences on all other issues. But this power was of no avail, unless they could regain their equality in the Senate which had been lost by what they considered the mishap of California's admission. While Clay and Benton were in the Senate with their old reverence for the Union and their desire for the ultimate extinction of slavery, California could neither be kept out nor divided on the line of 36 deg. 30'. But the new South, the South of Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens, of Robert Toombs and Judah P. Benjamin, of James M. Mason and John C. Breckinridge, had made new advances, was inspired by new ambitions, and was determined upon the consolidation of sectional power. The one supreme need was another slave State. If this could be acquired they felt assured that so long as the Union should exist no free State could be admitted without the corresponding admission of another slave State. They would perhaps have been disappointed. Possibly they did not give sufficient heed to the influences which were steadily working against slavery in such States as Delaware and Maryland, threatening desertion in the rear, while the defenders of slavery were battling at the front. They argued, however, and not unnaturally, that prejudice can hold a long contest with principle, and that in the general uprising of the South the tendency of all their old allies would be to remain firm. They reckoned that States with few slaves would continue to stand for Southern institutions as stubbornly as States with many slaves. In all the States of the South emancipation had been made difficult, and free negroes were tolerated, if at all, with great reluctance and with constant protest.

The struggle for Kansas was therefore to be maintained and possession secured at all hazards. Although, as the Southern leaders realized, the free States had flanked them by the admission of California with an anti-slavery constitution, the Southern acquisition of Kansas would pierce the very centre of the army of freedom, and would enable the South thenceforth to dictate terms to the North. Instead of the line of 36 deg. 30', upon which they had so frequently offered to compromise, as a permanent continental division, they would have carried the northern boundary of slave territory to the 40th parallel of latitude and even beyond. They slave States in pursuing this policy were directed by men who had other designs than those which lay on the surface. Since the struggle of 1850 the dissolution of the Union had been in the minds of many Southern leaders, and, as the older class of statesmen passed away, this design grew and strengthened until it became a fixed policy. They felt that when the time came to strike, it was of the first importance that they should have support and popular strength beyond the Mississippi. California, they were confident, could be carried in their interest, if they could but plant supporting colonies between the Missouri and the Sierras. The Democratic party was dominant in the State, and the Democracy was of the type personated by William M. Gwin. Both her senators voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and stood by the extremists of the South as steadily as if California bordered on the Gulf of Mexico. Dissolution of the Union on the scale thus projected would, as the authors of the scheme persuaded themselves, be certain of success. From the Mississippi to the Missouri they would carry the new confederacy to the southern line of Iowa. From the Missouri to the line of Utah they would have the 40th degree of latitude; from Utah westward they would have the 42d parallel, leaving the line of Oregon as the southern boundary of the United States on the Pacific.

THE SOUTHERN STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS.

This policy was not absolute but alternative. If the slave-holders could maintain their supremacy in the Union, they would prefer to remain. If they were to be outvoted and, as they thought, outraged by free-State majorities, then they would break up the government and form a confederacy of their own. To make such a confederacy effective, they must not take from the Union a relatively small section, but must divide it from ocean to ocean. They could not acquire a majority of the total population, but they aimed to secure by far the larger share of the vast domain comprised in the United States. The design was audacious, but from the stand-point of the men who were committed to it, it was not illogical. Their entire industrial system was founded upon an institution which was bitterly opposed in the free States. They could see no way, and they no longer desired to see a way, by which they might rid themselves of the servile labor which was at once their strength and their weakness. To abandon the institution was to sacrifice four thousand millions of property specially protected by law. It was for the existing generation of the governing class in the South to vote themselves into bankruptcy and penury. Far beyond this, it was in their judgment to blight their land with ignorance and indolence, to be followed by crime and anarchy. Their point of view was so radically different from that held by a large number of Northern people that it left no common ground for action,—scarcely, indeed, an opportunity for reasoning together. In the South they saw and felt their danger, and they determined at all hazards to defend themselves against policies which involved the total destruction of their social and industrial fabric. They were not mere malcontents. They were not pretenders. They did not aim at small things. They had ability and they had courage. They had determined upon mastery within the Union, or a Continental Empire outside of it.

While the South had thus resolved to acquire control of the large Territory of Kansas, the North had equally resolved to save it to freedom. The strife that ensued upon the fertile plains beyond the Missouri might almost be regarded as the opening battle of the civil war. The proximity of a slave State gave to the South an obvious advantage at the beginning of the contest. Many of the Northern emigrants were from New England, and the distance they were compelled to travel exceeded two thousand miles. There were no railroads across Iowa, none across Missouri. But despite all impediments and all discouragements, the free-State emigrants, stimulated by anti-slavery societies organized for the purpose, far outnumbered those from the slave States. Had the vexed question in the Territory been left to actual settlers it would have been at once decided adversely to slavery. But the neighboring inhabitants of Missouri, as the first election approached, invaded the Territory in large numbers, and, with boisterous disturbance and threats of violence, seized the polls, fraudulently elected a pro-slavery Legislature, and chose one of their leaders named Whitfield as delegate to Congress. Over six thousand votes were polled, of which some eight hundred only were cast by actual settlers. There were about three thousand legal voters in the Territory. The total population was somewhat in excess of eight thousand, and there were between two and three hundred slaves. The governor of the Territory, Andrew H. Reeder, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, tried faithfully and earnestly to arrest the progress of fraud and violence; but he was removed by President Pierce, and Wilson Shannon of Ohio was sent out in his stead. The free-State settlers, defrauded at the regular election, organized an independent movement and chose Governor Reeder their delegate to Congress to contest the seat of Whitfield. These events, rapidly following each other, caused great indignation throughout the country, in the midst of which the Thirty-fourth Congress assembled in December, 1855. After a prolonged struggle, Nathaniel P. Banks was chosen Speaker over William Aiken. It was a significant circumstance, noted at the time, that the successful candidate came from Massachusetts, and the defeated one from South Carolina. It was a still more ominous fact that Banks was chosen by votes wholly from the free States, and that every vote from the slave States was given to Mr. Aiken, except that of Mr. Cullen of Delaware, and that of Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, who declined to vote for either candidate. It was the first instance in the history of the government in which a candidate for Speaker had been chosen without support from both sections. It was a distinctive victory of the free States over the consolidated power of the slave States. It marked an epoch.

CANVASS FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

The year 1856 opened with this critical, this unprecedented condition of affairs. In all classes there was deep excitement. With thoughtful men, both North and South, there was serious solicitude. The country approached the strife of another Presidential election with the consciences of men thoroughly aroused, with their passions profoundly stirred. Three parties were coming into the field, and it seemed impossible that any candidate could secure the approval of a majority of the voters in the Union. In the Democratic ranks there was angry contention. President Pierce, who had risked every thing for the South, and had received unmeasured obloquy in the North, was naturally anxious that his administration should be approved by his own party. With all the patronage at his command, he vigorously sought a renomination. But the party desired victory, and they feared a contest which involved an approval of the President's recreancy to solemn pledges voluntarily given. He had been inaugurated with the applause and confidence of a nation. He was sustained in the end by a helpless faction of a disorganized party.

The distinguished secretary of State suffered with the President. Mr. Marcy had personally disapproved the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but he made no opposition, and the people held him equally if not doubly guilty. It was said at the time that New- York friends urged him to save his high reputation by resigning his seat in the cabinet. But he remained, in the delusive hope that he should receive credit for the evil he might prevent. He was pertinently reminded that the evil he might prevent would never be known, whereas the evil to which he consented would be read of all men. New York had hopelessly revolted from Democratic control, and Mr. Marcy's name was not presented as a Presidential candidate, though he was at that time the ablest statesman of the Democratic party. Mr. Douglas was also unavailable. He had gained great popularity in the South by his course in repealing the Missouri Compromise, but he had been visited with signal condemnation in the North. His own State, always Democratic, which had stood firmly for the party even in the overthrow of 1840, had now failed to sustain him,—had, indeed, pointedly rebuked him by choosing an opposition Legislature and sending Lyman Trumbull, then an anti- slavery Republican, as his colleague in the Senate. General Cass was seventy-four years old, and he was under the same condemnation with Pierce and Marcy and Douglas. He had voted to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and Michigan, which had never before faltered in his support, now turned against him and embittered his declining years by an expression of popular disapproval, which could not have been more emphatic.

The candidates urged for the nomination were all from the North. By a tacit but general understanding, the South repressed the ambition of its leaders and refused to present any one of the prominent statesmen from that section. Southern men designed to put the North to a test, and they wished to give Northern Democrats every possible advantage in waging a waging a warfare in which the fruits of victory were to be wholly enjoyed by the South. If they had wished it, they could have nominated a Southern candidate who was at that moment far stronger than any other man in the Democratic party. General Sam Houston had a personal history as romantic as that of an ancient crusader. He was a native of Virginia, a representative in Congress from Tennessee, and Governor of that State before he was thirty-five. He was the intimate and trusted friend of Jackson. Having resigned his governorship on account of domestic trouble, he fled from civilized life, joined the Indians of the Western plains, roved with them for years, adopted their habits, and was made chief of a tribe. Returning to association with white men, he emigrated to Texas and led the revolt against Mexico, fought battles and was victorious, organized a new republic and was made its President. Then he turned to his native land, bearing in his hand the gift of a great dominion. Once more under the Union flag, he sat in the Capitol as a senator of the United States from Texas. At threescore years he was still in the full vigor of life. Always a member of the Democratic party he was a devoted adherent of the Union, and his love for it had but increased in exile. He stood by Mr. Clay against the Southern Democrats in the angry contest of 1850, declaring that "if the Union must be dismembered" he "prayed God that its ruins might be the monument of his own grave." He "desired no epitaph to tell that he survived it." Against the madness of repealing the Missouri Compromise he entered a protest and a warning. He notified his Southern friends that the dissolution of the Union might be involved in the dangerous step. He alone, of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, voted against the mischievous measure. When three thousand clergymen of New England sent their remonstrance against the repeal, they were fiercely attacked and denounced by Douglas and by senators from the South. Houston vindicated their right to speak and did battle for them with a warmth and zeal which specially commended him to Northern sympathy. All these facts combined—his romantic history, his unflinching steadiness of purpose, his unswerving devotion to the Union—would have made him an irresistibly strong candidate had he been presented. But the very sources of his strength were the sources of his weakness. His nomination would have been a rebuke to every man who had voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and, rather than submit to that, the Southern Democrats, and Northern Democrats like Pierce and Douglas and Cass, would accept defeat. Victory with Houston would be their condemnation. But in rejecting him they lost in large degree the opportunity to recover the strength and popularity and power of the Democratic party which had all been forfeited by the maladministration of Pierce.

NOMINATION OF JAMES BUCHANAN.

With Houston impracticable, other Southern candidates purposely withheld, and all the Northern candidates in Congress or of the administration disabled, the necessity of the situation pointed to one man. The Democratic managers in whose hands the power lay were not long in descrying him. Mr. Buchanan had gone to England as minister directly after the inauguration of Pierce. He had been absent from the country during all the troubles and the blunders of the Democracy, and never before was an alibi so potential in acquitting a man of actual or imputed guilt. He had been a candidate for the Presidency ever since 1844, but had not shown much strength. He was originally a Federalist. He was somewhat cold in temperament and austere in manners, but of upright character and blameless life. He lacked the affability of Cass, the gracious heartiness of Pierce, the bluff cordiality of Douglas. But he was a man of ability, and had held high rank as a senator and as secretary of State. Above all he had never given a vote offensive to the South. Indeed, his Virginia friend, Henry A. Wise, boasted that his record was as spotless as that of Calhoun.

Buchanan's hour had come. He was a necessity to the South, a necessity to his party; and against the combined force of all the ambitious men who sought the place, he was nominated. But he had a severe struggle. President Pierce and Senator Douglas each made a persistent effort. On the first ballot Buchanan received 135 votes, Pierce 122, Douglas 33. Through sixteen ballots the contest was stubbornly maintained, Buchanan gaining steadily but slowly. Pierce was at last withdrawn, and the convention gave Buchanan 168, Douglas 121. No further resistance was made, and, amid acclamation and rejoicing, Buchanan was declared to be the unanimous choice of the convention. Major John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, a young man of popularity and promise, was nominated for the Vice- Presidency.

Before the nomination of Buchanan and Breckinridge another Presidential ticket had been placed in the field. The pro-slavery section of the American party and the ghastly remnant of the Whigs had presented Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency, and had associated with him Andrew Jackson Donelson of Tennessee as candidate for the Vice-Presidency. On the engrossing question of the day Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Fillmore did not represent antagonistic ideas, and between them there could be no contest to arouse enthusiasm or even to enlist interest in the North. The movement for Fillmore afforded a convenient shelter for that large class of men who had not yet made up their minds as to the real issue of slavery extension or slavery prohibition.

The Republican party had meanwhile been organizing and consolidating. During the years 1854 and 1855 it had acquired control of the governments in a majority of the free States, and it promptly called a national convention to meet in Philadelphia in June, 1856. The Democracy saw at once that a new and dangerous opponent was in the field,—an opponent that stood upon principle and shunned expediency, that brought to its standard a great host of young men, and that won to its service a very large proportion of the talent, the courage, and the eloquence of the North. The convention met for a purpose and it spoke boldly. It accepted the issue as presented by the men of the South, and it offered no compromise. In its ranks were all shades of anti-slavery opinion,—the patient Abolitionist, the Free-Soiler of the Buffalo platform, the Democrats who had supported the Wilmot Proviso, the Whigs who had followed Seward.

NOMINATION OF JOHN C. FREMONT.

There was no strife about candidates. Mr. Seward was the recognized head of the party, but he did not desire the nomination. He agreed with his faithful mentor, Thurlow Weed, that his time had not come, and that his sphere of duty was still in the Senate. Salmon P. Chase was Governor of Ohio, waiting re-election to the Senate, and, like Seward, not anxious for a nomination where election was regarded as improbable if not impossible. The more conservative and timid section of the party advocated the nomination of Judge McLean of the Supreme Court, who for many years had enjoyed a shadowy mention for the Presidency in Whig journals of a certain type. But Judge McLean was old and the Republican party was young. He belonged to the past, the party was looking to the future. It demanded a more energetic and attractive candidate, and John C. Fremont was chosen on the first ballot. He was forty-three years of age, with a creditable record in the Regular Army, and wide fame as a scientific explorer in the Western mountain ranges, then the terra incognita of the continent. He was a native of South Carolina, and had married the brilliant and accomplished daughter of Colonel Benton. Always a member of the Democratic party, he was so closely identified with the early settlement of California that he was elected one of her first senators. To the tinge of romance in his history were added the attractions of a winning address and an auspicious name.

The movement in his behalf had been quietly and effectively organized for several months preceding the convention. It had been essentially aided if not indeed originated by the elder Francis P. Blair, who had the skill derived from long experience in political management. Mr. Blair was a devoted friend of Benton, had been intimate with Jackson, and intensely hostile to Calhoun. As editor of the Globe, he had exercised wide influence during the Presidential terms of Jackson and Van Buren, but when Polk was inaugurated he was supplanted in administration confidence by Thomas Ritchie of the State-rights' school, who was brought from Virginia to found another paper. Mr. Blair was a firm Union man, and, though he had never formally withdrawn from the Democratic party, he was now ready to leave it because of the Disunion tendencies of its Southern leaders. He was a valuable friend to Fremont, and gave to him the full advantage of his experience and his sagacity.

William L. Dayton of New Jersey, who had served with distinction in the Senate, was selected for the Vice-Presidency. His principal competitor in the only ballot which was taken was Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. This was the first time that Mr. Lincoln was conspicuously named outside of his own State. He had been a member of the Thirtieth Congress, 1847-9, but being a modest man he had so little forced himself into notice that when his name was proposed for Vice-President, inquiries as to who he was were heard from all parts of the convention.

The principles enunciated by the Democratic and Republican parties on the slavery question formed the only subject for discussion during the canvass in the free States. From the beginning no doubt was expressed that Mr. Buchanan would find the South practically consolidated in his favor. Electoral tickets for Fremont were not presented in the slave States, and Fillmore's support in that section was weakened by his obvious inability to carry any of the free States. The canvass, therefore, rapidly narrowed to a contest between Buchanan and Fremont in the North. The Republican Convention had declared it to be "both the right and imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism,— polygamy and slavery." The Democratic Convention had presented a very elaborate and exhaustive series of resolutions touching the slavery question. They indorsed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and recognized the "right of the people of all the territories to form a constitution with or without domestic slavery." The resolution was artfully constructed. Read in one way it gave to the people of the Territories the right to determine the question for themselves. It thus upheld the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" which Mr. Douglas had announced as the very spirit of the Act organizing Kansas and Nebraska. A closer analysis of the Democratic declaration, however, showed that this "popular sovereignty" was not to be exercised until the people of the Territory were sufficiently numerous to form a State constitution and apply for admission to the Union, and that meanwhile in all the Territories the slave- holder had the right to settle and to be protected in the possession of his peculiar species of property. In fine, the Republicans declared in plain terms that slavery should by positive law of the nation be excluded from the Territories. The Democrats flatly opposed the doctrine of Congressional prohibition, but left a margin for doubt as to the true construction of the Constitution, and of the Act repealing the Missouri Compromise, thus enabling their partisans to present one issue in the North, and another in the South.