The Democratic candidate in his letter of acceptance did not seek to resolve the mystery of the platform, but left the question just as he found it in the resolutions of the convention. The result was that Northern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the belief, so energetically urged by Mr. Douglas, that the people of the Territories had the right to determine the slavery question for themselves at any time. The Southern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the full faith that slavery was to be protected in the Territories until a State government should be formed and admission to the Union secured. The Democratic doctrine of the North and the Democratic doctrine of the South were, therefore, in logic and in fact, irreconcilably hostile. By the one, slavery could never enter a Territory unless the inhabitants thereof desired and approved it. By the other slavery had a foot-hold in the Territories under the Constitution of the United States, and could not be dislodged or disturbed by the inhabitants of a Territory even though ninety-nine out of every hundred were opposed to it. In the Territorial Legislatures laws might be passed to protect slavery but not to exclude it. From such contradictory constructions in the same party, conflicts were certain to arise.

MR. BUCHANAN ELECTED PRESIDENT.

The Democrats of the North sought, not unsuccessfully, to avoid the slavery question altogether. They urged other considerations upon popular attention. Mr. Buchanan was presented as a National candidate, supported by troops of friends in every State of the Union. Fremont was denounced as a sectional candidate, whose election by Northern votes on an anti-slavery platform would dissolve the Union. This incessant cry exerted a wide influence in the North and was especially powerful in commercial circles. But in spite of it, Fremont gained rapidly in the free States. The condition of affairs in Kansas imparted to his supporters a desperate energy, based on principle and roused to anger. An elaborate and exciting speech on the "Crime against Kansas," by Senator Sumner, was followed by an assault from Preston S. Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, which seriously injured Mr. Sumner, and sensibly increased the exasperation of the North. When a resolution of the House to expel Brooks was under consideration, he boasted that "a blow struck by him then would be followed by a revolution." This but added fuel to a Northern flame already burning to white- heat. Votes by tens of thousands declared that they did not desire a Union which was held together by the forbearance or permission of any man or body of men, and they welcomed a test of any character that should determine the supremacy of the Constitution and the strength of the government.

The canvass grew in animation and earnestness to the end, the Republicans gaining strength before the people of the North every day. But Buchanan's election was not a surprise. Indeed, it had been generally expected. He received the electoral votes of every Southern State except Maryland, which pronounced for Fillmore. In the North, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California voted for Buchanan. The other eleven free States, beginning with Maine and ending with Iowa, declared for Fremont. The popular vote was for Buchanan 1,838,169, Fremont 1,341,264, Fillmore 874,534. With the people, therefore, Mr. Buchanan was in a minority, the combined opposition outnumbering his vote by nearly four hundred thousand.

The Republicans, far from being discouraged, felt and acted as men who had won the battle. Indeed, the moral triumph was theirs, and they believed that the actual victory at the polls was only postponed. The Democrats were mortified and astounded by the large popular vote against them. The loss of New York and Ohio, the narrow escape from defeat in Pennsylvania, the rebuke of Michigan to their veteran leader General Cass, intensified by the choice of Chandler as his successor in the Senate, the absolute consolidation of New England against them, all tended to humiliate and discourage the party. They had lost ten States which General Pierce had carried in 1852, and they had a watchful, determined foe in the field, eager for another trial of strength. The issue was made, the lines of battles were drawn. Freedom or slavery in the Territories was to be fought to the end, without flinching, and without compromise.

Mr. Buchanan came to the Presidency under very different auspices from those which had attended the inauguration of President Pierce. The intervening four years had written important chapters in the history of the slavery contest. In 1853 there was no organized opposition that could command even a respectable minority in a single State. In 1857 a party distinctly and unequivocally pledged to resist the extension of slavery into free territory had control of eleven free States and was hotly contesting the possession of the others. The distinct and avowed marshalling of a solid North against a solid South had begun, and the result of the Presidential election of 1856 settled nothing except that a mightier struggle was in the future.

DECISION IN THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT.

After Buchanan's inauguration events developed rapidly. The Democrats had carried the House, and therefore had control of every department of the government. The effort to force slavery upon Kansas was resumed with increased zeal. Strafford's policy of "thorough" was not more resolute or more absolute than that now adopted by the Southern leaders with a new lease of power confirmed to them by the result of the election. The Supreme Court came to their aid, and, not long after the new administration was installed, delivered their famous decision in the Dred Scott case. This case involved the freedom of a single family that had been held as slaves, but it gave occasion to the Court for an exhaustive treatment of the political question which was engrossing public attention. The conclusion of the best legal minds of the country was that the opinion of the Court went far beyond the real question at issue, and that many of its most important points were to be regarded as obiter dicta. The Court declared that the Act of Congress prohibiting slavery in the Territories north of 36 deg. 30' was unconstitutional and void. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was therefore approved by the highest judicial tribunal. Not only was the repeal approved, its re-enactment was forbidden. No matter how large a majority might be returned to Congress in favor of again setting up the old landmark which had stood in peace and in honor for thirty-four years, with the sanction of all departments of the government, the Supreme Court had issued an edict that it could not be done. The Court had declared that slavery was as much entitled to protection on the national domain as any other species of property, and that it was unconstitutional for Congress to decree freedom for a Territory of the United States. The pro-slavery interest had apparently won a great triumph. They naturally claimed that the whole question was settled in their favor. But in fact the decision of the Court had only rendered the contest more intense and more bitter. It was received throughout the North with scorn and indignation. It entered at once into the political discussions of the people, and remained there until, with all other issues on the slavery question, it was remanded to the arbitrament of war.

Five of the judges—an absolute majority of the court—were Southern men, and had always been partisan Democrats of the State-rights' school. People at once remembered that every other class of lawyers in the South had for thirty years been rigidly excluded from the bench. John J. Crittenden had been nominated and rejected by a Democratic Senate. George E. Badger of North Carolina had shared the same fate. They were followers of Clay, and not to be trusted by the new South in any exigency where the interests of slavery and the perpetuity of the Union should come in conflict. Instead, therefore, of strengthening the Democratic party, the whole effect of the Dred Scott decision was to develop a more determined type of anti-slavery agitation. This tendency was promoted by the lucid and exhaustive opinion of Benjamin R. Curtis, one of the two dissenting judges. Judge Curtis was not a Republican. He had been a Whig of the most conservative type, appointed to the bench by President Fillmore through the influence of Mr. Webster and the advice of Rufus Choate. In legal learning, and in dignity and purity of character, he was unsurpassed. His opinion became, therefore, of inestimable value to the cause of freedom. It represented the well-settled conclusion of the most learned jurists, was in harmony with the enlightened conscience of the North, and gave a powerful rallying-cry to the opponents of slavery. It upheld with unanswerable arguments the absolute right of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the Union. Every judge delivered his views separately, but the dissenting opinion of Judge McLean, as well as of the six who sustained the views of the Chief Justice, arrested but a small share of public attention. The argument for the South had been made by the venerable and learned Chief Justice. The argument for the North had been made by Justice Curtis. Perhaps in the whole history of judicial decisions no two opinions were ever so widely read by the mass of people outside the legal profession.

DECISION IN THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT.

It was popularly believed that the whole case was made up in order to afford an opportunity for the political opinions delivered by the Court. This was an extreme view not justified by the facts. But in the judgment of many conservative men there was a delay in rendering the decision which had its origin in motives that should not have influenced a judicial tribunal. The purport and scope of the decision were undoubtedly known to President Pierce before the end of his term, and Mr. Buchanan imprudently announced in his Inaugural address that "the point of time when the people of a Territory can decide the question of slavery for themselves" will "be speedily and finally settled by the Supreme Court, before whom it is now pending." How Mr. Buchanan could know, or how he was entitled to know, that a question not directly or necessarily involved in a case pending before the Supreme Court "would be speedily and finally settled" became a subject of popular inquiry. Anti-slavery speakers and anti-slavery papers indulged in severe criticism both of Mr. Buchanan and the Court, declaring that the independence of the co-ordinate branches of the government was dangerously invaded when the Executive was privately advised of a judicial decision in advance of its delivery by the Court. William Pitt Fessenden, who always spoke with precision and never with passion, asserted in the Senate that the Court, after hearing the argument, had reserved its judgment until the Presidential election was decided. He avowed his belief that Mr. Buchanan would have been defeated if the decision had not been withheld, and that in the event of Fremont's election "we should never have heard of a doctrine so utterly at variance with all truth, so utterly destitute of all legal logic, so founded on error, and so unsupported by any thing resembling argument."

Mr. Lincoln, whose singular powers were beginning to be appreciated, severely attacked the decision in a public speech in Illinois, not merely for its doctrine, but for the mode in which the decision had been brought about, and the obvious political intent of the judges. He showed how the Kansas-Nebraska Act left the people of the Territories perfectly free to settle the slavery question for themselves, "subject only to the Constitution of the United States!" That qualification he said was "the exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to come in and declare the perfect freedom to be no freedom at all." He then gave a humorous illustration by asking in homely but telling phrase, "if we saw a lot of framed timbers gotten out at different times and places by different workmen,—Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James,—and if we saw these timbers joined together and exactly make the frame of a house, with tenons and mortises all fitting, what is the conclusion? We find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan before the first blow was struck." This quaint mode of arraigning the two President, the Chief Justice and Senator Douglas, was extraordinarily effective with the masses. In a single paragraph, humorously expressed, he had framed an indictment against four men upon which he lived to secure a conviction before the jury of the American people.

The decision was rendered especially odious throughout the North by the use of certain unfortunate expressions which in the heat of the hour were somewhat distorted by the anti-slavery press, and made to appear unwarrantably offensive. But there was no misrepresentation and no misunderstanding of the essential position of the Court on the political question. It was unmistakably held that ownership in slaves was as much entitled to protection under the Constitution in the Territories of the United States as any other species of property, and that Congress possessed no power over the subject except the power to legislate in aid of slavery. The decision was at war with the practice and traditions of the government from its foundation, and set aside the matured convictions of two generations of conservative statesmen from the South as well as from the North. It proved injurious to the Court, which thenceforward was assailed most bitterly in the North and defended with intemperate zeal in the South. Personally upright and honorable as the judges were individually known to be, there was a conviction in the minds of a majority of Northern people, that on all issues affecting the institution of slavery they were unable to deliver a just judgment; that an Abolitionist was, in their sight, the chief of sinners, deserving to be suppressed by law; that the anti- slavery agitation was conducted, according to their belief, by two classes,—fanatics and knaves,—both of whom should be promptly dealt with; the fanatics in strait-jackets and the knaves at the cart's tail.

Chief Justice Taney, who delivered the opinion which proved so obnoxious throughout the North, was not only a man of great attainments, but was singularly pure and upright in his life and conversation. Had his personal character been less exalted, or his legal learning less eminent, there would have been less surprise and less indignation. But the same qualities which rendered his judgment of apparent value to the South, called out intense hostility in the North. The lapse of years, however, cools the passions and tempers the judgment. It has brought many anti-slavery men to see that an unmerited share of the obloquy properly attaching to the decision has been visited on the Chief Justice, and that it was unfair to place him under such condemnation, while two associate Justices in the North, Grier and Nelson, joined in the decision without incurring special censure, and lived in honor and veneration to the end of their judicial careers. While, therefore, time has in no degree abated Northern hostility to the Dred Scott decision, it has thrown a more generous light upon the character and action of the eminent Chief Justice who pronounced it. More allowance is made for the excitement and for what he believed to be the exigency of the hour, for the sentiments in which he had been educated, for the force of association, and for his genuine belief that he was doing a valuable work towards the preservation of the Union. His views were held by millions of people around him, and he was swept along by a current which with so many had proved irresistible. Coming to the Bench from Jackson's Cabinet, fresh from the angry controversies of that partisan era, he had proved a most acceptable and impartial judge, earning renown and escaping censure until he dealt directly with the question of slavery. Whatever harm he may have done in that decision was speedily overruled by war, and the country can now contemplate a venerable jurist, in robes that were never soiled by corruption, leading a long life of labor and sacrifice, and achieving a fame in his profession second only to that of Marshall.

CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY AND MR. SUMNER.

The aversion with which the extreme anti-slavery men regarded Chief Justice Taney was strikingly exhibited during the session of Congress following his death. The customary mark of respect in providing a marble bust of the deceased to be placed in the Supreme Court room was ordered by the House without comment or objection. In the Senate the bill was regularly reported from the Judiciary Committee by the chairman, Mr. Trumbull of Illinois, who was at that time a recognized leader in the Republican party. The proposition to pay respect to the memory of the judge who had pronounced the Dred Scott decision was at once savagely attacked by Mr. Sumner. Mr. Trumbull in reply warmly defended the character of the Chief Justice, declaring that he "had added reputation to the Judiciary of the United States throughout the world, and that he was not to be hooted down by exclamations about an emancipated country. Suppose he did make a wrong decision. No man is infallible. He was a great, learned, able judge."

Mr. Sumner rejoined with much temper. He said that "Taney would be hooted down the pages of history, and that an emancipated country would fix upon his name the stigma it deserved. He had administered justice wickedly, had degraded the Judiciary, and had degraded the age." Mr. Wilson followed Mr. Sumner in a somewhat impassioned speech, denouncing the Dred Scott decision "as the greatest crime in the judicial annals of the Republic," and declaring it to be "the abhorrence, the scoff, the jeer, of the patriotic hearts of America." Mr. Reverdy Johnson answered Mr. Sumner with spirit, and pronounced an eloquent eulogium upon Judge Taney. He said, "the senator from Massachusetts will be happy if his name shall stand as high upon the historic page as that of the learned judge who is now no more." Mr. Johnson directed attention to the fact that, whether wrong or right, the Dred Scott decision was one in which a majority of the Supreme Court had concurred, and therefore no special odium should be attached to the name of the venerable Chief Justice. Mr. Johnson believed the decision to be right, and felt that his opinion on a question of law was at least entitled to as much respect as that of either of the senators from Massachusetts, "one of whom did not pretend to be a lawyer at all, while the other was a lawyer for only a few months." He proceeded to vindicate the historical accuracy of the Chief Justice, and answered Mr. Sumner with that amplitude and readiness which Mr. Johnson displayed in every discussion involving legal questions.

Mr. Sumner's protest was vigorously seconded by Mr. Hale of New Hampshire and Mr. Wade of Ohio. The former said that a monument to Taney "would give the lie to all that had been said by the friends of justice, liberty, and down-trodden humanity," respecting the iniquity of the Dred Scott decision. Mr. Wade violently opposed the proposition. He avowed his belief that the "Dred Scott case was got up to give judicial sanction to the enormous iniquity that prevailed in every branch of our government at that period." He declared that "the greater you make Judge Taney's legal acumen the more you dishonor his memory by showing that he sinned against light and knowledge." He insisted that the people of Ohio, whose opinion he professed to represent, "would pay two thousand dollars to hang the late Chief Justice in effigy rather than one thousand dollars for a bust to commemorate his merits."

Mr. McDougall of California spoke in favor of the bill, and commented on the rudeness of Mr. Sumner's speech. Mr. Carlile of West Virginia spoke very effectively in praise of the Chief Justice. If the decision was harsh, he said, no one was justified in attributing it to the personal feelings or desires of the Chief Justice. It was the law he was expounding, and he did it ably and conscientiously. Mr. Sumner concluded the debate by a reply to Reverdy Johnson. He said that, in listening to the senator from Maryland, he was "reminded of a character, known to the Roman Church, who always figures at the canonization of a saint as the Devil's advocate." He added that, if he could help it, "Taney should never be recognized as a saint by any vote of Congress." The incidents of the debate and the names of the participants are given as affording a good illustration of the tone and temper of the times. It was made evident that the opponents of the bill, under Mr. Sumner's lead, would not permit it to come to a vote. It was therefore abandoned on the 23d of February, 1865.

HONORS TO TWO CHIEF JUSTICES.

Nine years after these proceedings, in January, 1874, the name of another Chief Justice, who had died during the recess, came before Congress for honor and commemoration. The Senate was still controlled by a large Republican majority, though many changes had taken place. All the senators who had spoken in the previous debate were gone, except Mr. Sumner, who had meanwhile been chosen for his fourth term, and Mr. Wilson, who had been elevated to the Vice-Presidency. Mr. Howe of Wisconsin, a more radical Republican than Mr. Trumbull, reported from the Judiciary Committee a bill originally proposed by Senator Stevenson of Kentucky, paying the same tribute of respect to Roger Brooke Taney and Salmon Portland Chase. The bill was passed without debate and with the unanimous consent of the Senate.

Mr. Taney was appointed Chief Justice in 1836, when in his sixtieth year. He presided over the court until his death in October, 1864, a period of twenty-eight years. The Dred Scott decision received no respect after Mr. Lincoln became President, and, without reversal by the court, was utterly disregarded. When Mr. Chase became Chief Justice, colored persons were admitted to practice in the courts of the United States. When President Lincoln, in 1861, authorized the denial of the writ of habeas corpus to persons arrested on a charge of treason, Chief Justice Taney delivered an opinion in the case of John Merryman, denying the President's power to suspend the writ, declaring that Congress only was competent to do it. The Executive Department paid no attention to the decision, and Congress, at the ensuing session, added its sanction to the suspension. The Chief Justice, though loyal to the Union, was not in sympathy with the policy or the measures of Mr. Lincoln's administration.

CHAPTER VII.

Review (continued).—Continuance of the Struggle for Kansas.— List of Governors.—Robert J. Walker appointed Governor by President Buchanan.—His Failure.—The Lecompton Constitution fraudulently adopted.—Its Character.—Is transmitted to Congress by President Buchanan.—He recommends the Admission of Kansas under its Provisions. —Pronounces Kansas a Slave State.—Gives Full Scope and Effect to the Dred Scott Decision.—Senator Douglas refuses to sustain the Lecompton Iniquity.—His Political Embarrassment.—Breaks with the Administration.—Value of his Influence against Slavery in Kansas. —Lecompton Bill passes the Senate.—Could not be forced through the House.—The English Bill substituted and passed.—Kansas spurns the Bribe.—Douglas regains his Popularity with Northern Democrats. —Illinois Republicans bitterly hostile to him.—Abraham Lincoln nominated to contest the Re-election of Douglas to the Senate.— Lincoln challenges Douglas to a Public Discussion.—Character of Each as a Debater.—They meet Seven Times in Debate.—Douglas re- elected.—Southern Senators arraign Douglas.—His Defiant Answer. —Danger of Sectional Division in the Democratic Party.

The Dred Scott decision, in connection with the Democratic triumph in the national election, had a marked effect upon the struggle for Kansas. The pro-slavery men felt fresh courage for the work, as they found themselves assured of support from the administration, and upheld by the dogmas of the Supreme Court. The Territory thus far had been one continued scene of disorder and violence. For obvious reasons, the administration of President Pierce had selected its governors from the North, and each, in succession, failed to placate the men who were bent on making Kansas a slave State. Andrew H. Reeder, Wilson Shannon, John W. Geary, had, each in turn, tried, and each in turn failed. Mr. Buchanan now selected Robert J. Walker for the difficult task. Mr. Walker was a Southern man in all his relations, though by birth a Pennsylvanian. He had held high stations, and possessed great ability. It was believed that he, if any one, could govern the Territory in the interest of the South, and, at the same time, retain a decent degree of respect and confidence in the North. As an effective aid to this policy, Frederick P. Stanton, who had acquired an honorable reputation as representative in Congress from Tennessee, was sent out as secretary of the Territory.

THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION.

Governor Walker failed. He could do much, but he could not placate an element that was implacable. Contrary to his desires, and against his authority, a convention, called by the fraudulent Legislature, and meeting at Lecompton, submitted a pro-slavery constitution to the people, preparatory to asking the admission of Kansas as a State. The people were not permitted to vote for or against the constitution, but were narrowed to the choice of taking the constitution with slavery or the constitution without slavery. If the decision should be adverse to slavery, there were still some provisions in the constitution, not submitted to popular decision, which would postpone the operation of the free clause. The whole contrivance was fraudulent, wicked, and in retrospect incredible. Naturally the Free-state men refused to have any thing to do with the scandalous device, intended to deceive and betray them. The constitution with slavery was, therefore, adopted by an almost unanimous vote of those who were not citizens of Kansas. Many thousands of votes were returned which were never cast at all, either by citizens of Kansas or marauders from Missouri. It is not possible, without using language that would seem immoderate, to describe the enormity of the whole transaction. The constitution no more represented the will or the wishes of the people of Kansas than of the people of Ohio or Vermont.

Shameful and shameless as was the entire procedure, it was approved by Mr. Buchanan. The Lecompton Constitution was transmitted to Congress, accompanied by a message from the President recommending the prompt admission of the State. He treated the anti-slavery population of Kansas as in rebellion against lawful authority, recognized the invaders from Missouri as rightfully entitled to form a constitution for the State, and declared that "Kansas is at this moment (Feb. 2, 1858) as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina." The Dred Scott decision occupied a prominent place in this extraordinary message and received the most liberal interpretation in favor of slavery. The President declared that "it has been solemnly adjudged by the highest judicial tribunal known to our laws that slavery exists in Kansas by virtue of the Constitution of the United States." This was giving the fullest scope to the extreme and revolting doctrine put forward by the advocates of slavery, and, had it been made effective respecting the Territories, there are many reasons for believing that a still more offensive step might have been taken respecting the anti- slavery action of the States.

The attempt to admit Kansas, under the Lecompton Constitution, proved disastrous to the Democratic party. The first decided break was that of Senator Douglas. He refused to sustain the iniquity. He had gone far with the pro-slavery men, but he refused to take this step. He had borne great burdens in their interest, but this was the additional pound that broke the back of his endurance. When the Dred Scott decision was delivered, Mr. Douglas had applauded it, and, as Mr. Lincoln charged, had assented to it before it was pronounced. With his talent for political device, he had doubtless contrived some argument or fallacy by which he could reconcile that judicial edict with his doctrine of "popular sovereignty," and thus maintain his standing with the Northern Democracy without losing his hold on the South. But events traveled too rapidly for him. The pro-slavery men were so eager for the possession of Kansas that they could not adjust their measures to the needs of Mr. Douglas's political situation. They looked at the question from one point, Mr. Douglas from another. They saw that if Kansas could be forced into the Union with the Lecompton Constitution they would gain a slave State. Mr. Douglas saw that if he should aid in that political crime he would lose Illinois. It was more important to the South to secure Kansas as a slave State than to carry Illinois for Mr. Douglas. It was more important for Mr. Douglas to hold Illinois for himself than to give the control of Kansas to the South. Indeed, his Northern friends had been for some time persuaded that his only escape from the dangerous embarrassments surrounding him was in the admission of Kansas as a free State. If the Missouri Compromise had not been repealed, a free State was assured. If Kansas should become a slave State in consequence of that repeal, it would, in the excited condition of the popular mind, crush Douglas in the North, and bring his political career to a discreditable end.

Mr. Douglas had come, therefore, to the parting of the ways. He realized that he was rushing on political destruction, and that, if he supported the vulgar swindle perpetrated at Lecompton, he would be repudiated by the great State which had exalted him and almost idolized him as a political leader. He determined, therefore, to take a bold stand against the administration on this issue. It was an important event, not only to himself, but to his party; not only to his party, but to the country. Rarely, in our history, has the action of a single person been attended by a public interest as universal; by applause so hearty in the North, by denunciation so bitter in the South. In the debate which followed, Douglas exhibited great power. He had a tortuous record to defend, but he defended it with extraordinary ability and adroitness. From time to time, during the progress of the contest, he was on the point of yielding to some compromise which would have destroyed the heroism and value of his position. But he was sustained by the strong will of others when he himself wavered—appalled, as he often was, by the sacrifice he was making of the Southern support, for which he had labored so long, and endured so much.

SENATOR BRODERICK'S DEATH.

Senator Broderick of California imparted largely of his own courage and enthusiasm to Douglas at the critical juncture, and perhaps saved him from a surrender of his proud position. Throughout the entire contest Broderick showed remarkable vigor and determination. Considering the defects of his intellectual training in early life, he displayed unusual power as a political leader and public speaker. He was a native of Washington, born of Irish parents, and was brought up to the trade of a stone-mason. He went to California among the pioneers of 1849, and soon after took part in the fierce political contests of the Pacific coast. Though a Democrat, he instinctively took the Northern side against the arrogant domination of the Southern wing of the party, led by William H. Gwin. Broderick was elected to the United States Senate as Gwin's colleague in 1856, and at once joined Douglas in opposition to the Lecompton policy of the administration. His position aroused fierce hostility on the part of the Democratic leaders of California. The contest grew so bitter in the autumn of 1859, when Broderick was canvassing his State, as to lead to a duel with Judge Terry, a prominent Democrat of Southern birth. Broderick was killed at the first fire. The excitement was greater in the country than ever attended a duel, except when Hamilton fell at the hands of Burr in 1804. The Graves and Cilley duel of 1838, with its fatal ending, affected the whole nation, but not so profoundly as did the death of Broderick. The oration of Senator Baker, delivered in San Francisco at the funeral, so stirred the people that violence was feared. The bloody tragedy influenced political parties, and contributed in no small degree to Lincoln's triumph in California the ensuing year.

In the peculiar position in which Douglas was placed, still maintaining his membership of the Democratic party while opposing the administration on the Lecompton question, he naturally resorted to arguments which were not always of a character to enlist the approval of men conscientiously opposed to slavery. The effect of the arguments, however, was invaluable to those who were resisting the imposition of slavery upon Kansas against the wish of a majority of her people, and Republicans could be content with the end without justifying the means. Douglas frankly avowed that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down, but he demanded that an honest, untrammeled ballot should be secured to the citizens of the Territory. Without the aid of Douglas, the "Crime against Kansas," so eloquently depicted by Mr. Sumner, would have been complete. With his aid, it was prevented.

The Lecompton Bill passed the Senate by a vote of 33 to 25. Besides Broderick, Douglas carried with him only two Democratic senators, —Stuart of Michigan, and Pugh of Ohio. The two remaining members of the old Whig party from the South, who had been wandering as political orphans since the disastrous defeat of 1852,—Bell of Tennessee, and Crittenden of Kentucky,—honored themselves and the ancient Whig traditions by voting against the bill. In view of the events of the preceding four years, it was a significant spectacle in the Senate when Douglas voted steadily with Seward and Sumner and Fessenden and Wade against the political associations of a lifetime. It meant, to the far-seeing, more than a temporary estrangement, and it foretold results in the political field more important than any which had been developed since the foundation of the Republican party.

The resistance to the Lecompton Bill in the House was unconquerable. The Administration could not, with all its power and patronage, enforce its passage. Anxious to avert the mortification of an absolute and unqualified defeat, the supporters of the scheme changed their ground, and offered a new measure, moved by Mr. William H. English of Indiana, submitting the entire constitution to a vote of the people. If adopted, the constitution carried with it a generous land grant to the new State. If rejected, the alternative was not only the withdrawal of the land grant, but indefinite postponement of the whole question of admission. It was simply a bribe, cunningly and unscrupulously contrived, to induce the people of Kansas to accept a pro-slavery constitution. It was not so outrageous as it would have been to force the constitution upon the people without allowing them to vote upon it at all, and it gave a shadow of excuse to certain Democrats, who did not wish to separate from their party, for returning to the ranks. The bill was at last forced through the House by 112 votes to 103. Twelve Democrats, to their honor be it said, refused to yield. Douglas held all his political associates from Illinois, while the President failed to consolidate the Democrats from Pennsylvania. John Hickman and Henry Chapman honorably and tenaciously held their ground to the last against every phase of the outrage. In New York, John B. Haskin and Horace F. Clarke refused to yield, though great efforts were made to induce them to support the administration. The Senate promptly concurred in the English proposition.

LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION REJECTED.

But Kansas would not sell her birthright for a mess of pottage. She had fought too long for freedom to be bribed to the support of slavery. She had at last a free vote, and rejected the Lecompton Constitution, land grant and all, by a majority of more than ten thousand. The struggle was over. The pro-slavery men were defeated. The North was victorious. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had not brought profit or honor to those who planned it. It had only produced strife, anger, heart-burning, hatred. It had added many drops to the cup of bitterness between North and South, and had filled it to overflowing. It produced evil only, and that continually. The repeal, in the judgment of the North, was a great conspiracy against human freedom. In the Southern States it was viewed as an honest effort to recover rights of which they had been unjustly deprived. Each section held with firmness to its own belief, and the four years of agitation had separated them so widely that a return to fraternal feeling seemed impossible. Confidence, the plant of slowest growth, had been destroyed. Who could restore it to life and strength?

Douglas had, in large degree, redeemed himself in the North from the obloquy to which he had been subjected since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The victory for free Kansas was perhaps to an undue extent ascribed to him. The completeness of that victory was everywhere recognized, and the lawless intruders who had worked so hard to inflict slavery on the new Territory gradually withdrew. In the South, Douglas was covered with maledictions. But for his influence, Southern men felt that Kansas would have been admitted with a pro-slavery constitution, and the senatorial equality of the South firmly re-established. Northern Republicans, outside of Illinois, were in a forgiving frame of mind toward Douglas; and he had undoubtedly regained a very large share of his old popularity. But Illinois Republicans were less amiable towards him. They would not forget that he had broken down an anti-slavery barrier which had been reared with toil and sanctified by time. He had not, as they alleged, turned back from any test exacted by the South, until he had reached the point where another step forward involved political death to himself. They would not credit his hostility to the Lecompton Constitution to any nobler motive than the instinct of self-preservation. This was a harsh judgment, and yet a most natural one. It inspired the Republicans of Illinois, and they prepared to contest the return of Douglas to the Senate by formally nominating Abraham Lincoln as an opposing candidate.

The contest that ensued was memorable. Douglas had an herculean task before him. The Republican party was young, strong, united, conscious of its power, popular, growing. The Democratic party was rent with faction, and the Administration was irrevocably opposed to the return of Douglas to the Senate. He entered the field, therefore, with a powerful opponent in front, and with defection and betrayal in the rear. He was everywhere known as a debater of singular skill. His mind was fertile in resources. He was master of logic. No man perceived more quickly than he the strength or the weakness of an argument, and no one excelled him in the use of sophistry and fallacy. Where he could not elucidate a point to his own advantage, he would fatally becloud it for his opponent. In that peculiar style of debate, which, in its intensity, resembles a physical contest, he had no equal. He spoke with extraordinary readiness. There was no halting in his phrase. He used good English, terse, vigorous, pointed. He disregarded the adornments of rhetoric,—rarely used a simile. He was utterly destitute of humor, and had slight appreciation of wit. He never cited historical precedents except from the domain of American politics. Inside that field his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical. Beyond it his learning was limited. He was not a reader. His recreations were not in literature. In the whole range of his voluminous speaking it would be difficult to find either a line of poetry or a classical allusion. But he was by nature an orator; and by long practice a debater. He could lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions. He could, if he wished, incite a mob to desperate deeds. He was, in short, an able, audacious, almost unconquerable opponent in public discussion.

LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS AS DEBATERS.

It would have been impossible to find any man of the same type able to meet him before the people of Illinois. Whoever attempted it would probably have been destroyed in the first encounter. But the man who was chosen to meet him, who challenged him to the combat, was radically different in every phase of character. Scarcely could two men be more unlike, in mental and moral constitutions, than Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Mr. Lincoln was calm and philosophic. He loved the truth for the truth's sake. He would not argue from a false premise, or be deceived himself or deceive others by a false conclusion. He had pondered deeply on the issues which aroused him to action. He had given anxious thought to the problems of free government, and to the destiny of the Republic. He had for himself marked out a path of duty, and he walked in it fearlessly. His mental processes were slower but more profound than those of Douglas. He did not seek to say merely the thing which was best for that day's debate, but the thing which would stand the test of time and square itself with eternal justice. He wished nothing to appear white unless it was white. His logic was severe and faultless. He did not resort to fallacy, and could detect it in his opponent, and expose it with merciless directness. He had an abounding sense of humor, and always employed it in illustration of his argument,—never for the mere sake of provoking merriment. In this respect he had the wonderful aptness of Franklin. He often taught a great truth with the felicitous brevity of an AEsop fable. His words did not flow in an impetuous torrent as did those of Douglas, but they were always well chosen, deliberate, and conclusive.

Thus fitted for the contest, these men proceeded to a discussion which at the time was so interesting so as to enchain the attention of the nation,—in its immediate effect so striking as to affect the organization of parties, in its subsequent effect so powerful as to change the fate of millions. Mr. Lincoln had opened his own canvass by a carefully prepared speech in which, after quoting the maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand, he uttered these weighty words: "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, north as well as south."

Mr. Lincoln had been warned by intimate friends to whom he had communicated the contents of his speech, in advance of its delivery, that he was treading on dangerous ground, that he would be misrepresented as a disunionist, and that he might fatally damage the Republican party by making its existence synonymous with a destruction of the government. But he was persistent. It was borne into his mind that he was announcing a great truth, and that he would be wronging his own conscience, and to the extent of his influence injuring his country, by withholding it, or in any degree qualifying its declaration. If there was a disposition to avoid the true significance of the contest with the South, he would not be a party to it. He believed he could discern the scope and read the destiny of the impending sectional controversy. He was sure he could see far beyond the present, and hear the voice of the future. He would not close the book; he would not shut his eyes; he would not stop his ears. He avowed his faith, and stood firmly to his creed.

Mr. Douglas naturally, indeed inevitably, made his first and leading speech against these averments of Mr. Lincoln. He had returned to Illinois, after the adjournment of Congress, with a disturbed and restless mind. He had one great ambition,—to re-instate himself as a leader of the national Democracy, and, as incidental and necessary to that end, to carry Illinois against Mr. Lincoln. The issue embodied in Mr. Lincoln's speech afforded him the occasion which he had coveted. His quick eye discerned an opportunity to exclude from the canvass the disagreeable features in his own political career by arraigning Mr. Lincoln as an enemy of the Union and as an advocate of an internecine conflict in which the free States and the slave States should wrestle in deadly encounter. Douglas presented his indictment artfully and with singular force. The two speeches were in all respects characteristic. Each had made a strong presentation of his case, but the superior candor and directness of Mr. Lincoln had made a deep impression on the popular mind.

THE LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS DEBATE.

In the seven public debates which were held as the result of these preliminary speeches, the questions at issue were elaborately and exhaustively treated. The friends of each naturally claimed the victory for their own champion. The speeches were listened to by tens of thousands of eager auditors; but absorbing, indeed unprecedented, as was the interest, the vast throngs behaved with moderation and decorum. The discussion from beginning to end was an amplification of the position which each had taken at the outset. The arguments were held close to the subject, relating solely to the slavery question, and not even incidentally referring to any other political issue. Protection, free trade, internal improvements, the sub-treasury, all the issues, in short, which had divided parties for a long series of years, and on which both speakers entertained very decided views, were omitted from the discussion. The public mind saw but one issue; every thing else was irrelevant. At the first meeting, Douglas addressed a series of questions to Mr. Lincoln, skillfully prepared and well adapted to entrap him in contradictions, or commit him to such extreme doctrine as would ruin his canvass. Mr. Lincoln's answers at the second meeting, held at Freeport, were both frank and adroit. Douglas had failed to gain a point by his resort to the Socratic mode of argument. He had indeed only given Mr. Lincoln an opportunity to exhibit both his candor and his skill. After he had answered, he assumed the offensive, and addressed a series of questions to Mr. Douglas which were constructed with the design of forcing the latter to an unmistakable declaration of his creed. Douglas had been a party to the duplex construction of the Cincinnati platform of 1856, in which the people of the South had been comforted with the doctrine that slavery was protected in the Territories by the Constitution against the authority of Congress and against the power of the Territorial citizens, until the period should be reached, when, under an enabling act to form a constitution for a State government, the majority might decide the question of slavery. Of this doctrine Mr. Breckinridge was the Southern representative, and he had for that very reason been associated with Mr. Buchanan on the Presidential ticket. On the other hand, the North was consoled, it would not be unfair to say cajoled, with the doctrine of popular sovereignty as defined by Mr. Douglas; and this gave to the people of the Territories the absolute right to settle the question of slavery for themselves at any time. The doctrine had, however, been utterly destroyed by the Dred Scott decision, and, to the confusion of all lines of division and distinction, Mr. Douglas had approved the opinion of the Supreme Court.

Douglas had little trouble in making answer in an ad captandum manner to all Mr. Lincoln's questions save one. The crucial test was applied when Mr. Lincoln asked him "if the people of a Territory can, in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?" In the first debate, when Douglas had the opening, he had, in the popular judgment, rather worsted Mr. Lincoln. His greater familiarity with the arts if not the tricks of the stump had given him an advantage. But now Mr. Lincoln had the opening, and he threw Mr. Douglas upon the defensive by the question which reached the very marrow of the controversy. Mr. Lincoln had measured the force of his question, and saw the dilemma in which it would place Douglas. Before the meeting he said, in private, that "Douglas could not answer that question in such way as to be elected both Senator and President. He might so answer it as to carry Illinois, but, in doing so, he would irretrievably injure his standing with the Southern Democracy." Douglas quickly realized his own embarrassment. He could not, in the face of the Supreme-Court decision, declare that the people of the Territory could exclude slavery by direct enactment. To admit, on the other hand, that slavery was fastened upon the Territories, —past all hope of resistance or protest on the part of a majority of the citizens—would be to concede the victory to Mr. Lincoln without further struggle. Between these impossible roads Douglas sought a third. He answered that, regardless of the decision of the Supreme Court, "the people of a Territory have the lawful means to introduce or exclude slavery as they choose, for the reason that slavery cannot exist unless supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and, if the people are opposed to slavery, they will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction."

This was a lame, illogical, evasive answer; but it was put forth by Douglas with an air of sincerity and urged in a tone of defiant confidence. It gave to his supporters a plausible answer. But Mr. Lincoln's analysis of the position was thorough, his ridicule of it effective. Douglas's invention for destroying a right under the Constitution by a police regulation was admirably exposed, and his new theory that a thing "may be lawfully driven away from a place where it has a lawful right to go" was keenly reviewed by Mr. Lincoln. The debate of that day was the important one of the series. Mr. Lincoln had secured an advantage in the national relations of the contest which he held to the end. At the same time Douglas had escaped a danger which threatened his destruction in the State canvass, and secured his return to the Senate. As to the respective merits of the contestants, it would be idle to expect an agreement among contemporary partisans. But a careful reading of the discussion a quarter of a century after it was held will convince the impartial that in principle, in candor, in the enduring force of logic, Mr. Lincoln had the advantage. It is due to fairness to add that probably not another man in the country, with the disabilities surrounding his position, could have maintained himself so ably, so fearlessly, so effectively, as Douglas.

BUCHANAN'S OPPOSITION TO DOUGLAS.

Douglas was aided in his canvass by the undisguised opposition of the administration. The hostility of President Buchanan and his Southern supporters was the best possible proof to the people of Illinois that Douglas was representing a doctrine which was not relished by the pro-slavery party. The courage with which he fought the administration gave an air of heroism to his canvass and prestige to his position. It secured to him thousands of votes that would otherwise have gone to Mr. Lincoln. For every vote which the administration was able to withhold from Douglas, it added five to his supporters. The result of the contest was, that, while Douglas was enabled to secure a majority of eight in the Legislature in consequence of an apportionment that was favorable to his side, Mr. Lincoln received a plurality of four thousand in the popular vote. In a certain sense, therefore, each had won a victory, and each had incurred defeat. But the victory of Douglas and the means by which it was won proved to be his destruction in the wider field of his ambition. Mr. Lincoln's victory and defeat combined in the end to promote his political fortunes, and to open to him the illustrious career which followed.

This debate was not a mere incident in American politics. It marked an era. Its influence and effect were co-extensive with the Republic. It introduced a new and distinct phase in the controversy that was engrossing all minds. The position of Douglas separated him from the Southern Democracy, and this, of itself, was a fact of great significance. The South saw that the ablest leader of the Northern Democracy had been compelled, in order to save himself at home, to abjure the very doctrine on which the safety of slave institutions depended. The propositions enunciated by Douglas in answer to the questions of Mr. Lincoln, in the Freeport debate, were as distasteful to the Southern mind as the position of Mr. Lincoln himself. Lincoln advocated a positive inhibition of slavery by the General Government. Mr. Douglas proposed to submit Southern rights under the Constitution to the decision of the first mob or rabble that might get possession of a Territorial legislature, and pass a police regulation hostile to slavery. Against this construction of the Constitution the South protested, and the protest carried with it implacable hostility to Douglas.

The separation of the Democratic party into warring factions was, therefore, inevitable. The line of division was the same on which the Republican party had been founded. It was the North against the South, the South against the North. The great mass of Northern Democrats began to consolidate in support of Douglas as determinedly as the mass of Northern Whigs had followed Seward. The Southern Democrats began, at the same time, to organize their States against Douglas. Until his break from the regular ranks in his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, Douglas had enjoyed boundless popularity with his party in the South. In every slave State, there was still a small number of his old supporters who remained true to him. But the great host had left him. He could not be trusted. He had failed to stand by the extreme faith; he had refused to respond to its last requirement. Even at the risk of permanently dissevering the Democratic party, the Southern leaders resolved to destroy Douglas.

To this end, in the session of Congress following the debate with Mr. Lincoln, the Democratic senators laid down, in a series of resolutions, the true exposition of the creed of their party. Douglas was not personally referred to, but the resolutions were aimed so pointedly at what they regarded his heretical opinions, that his name might as well have been incorporated. The resolutions were adopted during the absence of Douglas from the Senate, on a health-seeking tour, after his laborious canvass. With only the dissenting vote of Mr. Pugh of Ohio among the Democrats, it was declared that "neither Congress nor a territorial legislature, whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect or unfriendly character, possesses the power to impair the right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial condition exists." Not satisfied with this utter destruction of the whole doctrine of popular sovereignty, the Democratic senators gave one more turn to the wrench, by declaring that if "the territorial government should fail or refuse to provide adequate protection to the rights of the slave-holder, it will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency." The doctrine thus laid down by the Democratic senators was, in plain terms, that the territorial legislature might protect slavery, but could not prohibit it; and that even the Congress of the United States could only intervene on the side of bondage, and never on the side of freedom.

DOUGLAS AND THE SOUTHERN DEMOCRACY.

Anxious as Douglas was to be re-established in full relations with his party, he had not failed to see the obstacles in his way. He now realized that a desperate fight was to be made against him; that he was to be humiliated and driven from the Democratic ranks. The creed laid down by the Southern senators was such as no man could indorse without forfeiting his political life in free States. Douglas did not propose to rush on self-destruction to oblige the Democracy of the slave States; nor was he of the type of men who, when the right cheek is smitten, will meekly turn the other for a second blow. When his Democratic associates in the Senate proceeded to read him out of the party, they apparently failed to see that they were reading the Northern Democracy out with him. Jefferson Davis and Judah P. Benjamin might construct resolutions adapted to the latitude of the Gulf, and dragoon them through the Senate, with aid and pressure from Buchanan's administration; but Douglas commanded the votes of the Northern Democracy, and to the edict of a pro-slavery caucus he defiantly opposed the solid millions who followed his lead in the free States.

Without wrangling over the resolutions in the Senate, Douglas made answer to the whole series in a public letter of June 22, 1859, in which he said that "if it shall become the policy of the Democratic party to repudiate their time-honored principles, and interpolate such new issues as the revival of the African slave-trade, or the doctrine that the Constitution carries slavery into the Territories beyond the power of the people to legally control it as other property," he would not "accept a nomination for the Presidency if tendered him." The aggressiveness of Southern opinion on the slavery question was thus shown by Douglas in a negative or indirect view. It is a remarkable fact, that, in still another letter, Douglas argued quite elaborately against the revival of the African slave-trade, which he believed to be among the designs of the most advanced class of pro-slavery advocates. So acute a statesman as Douglas could not fail to see, that, at every step of his controversy with Southern Democrats, he was justifying the philosophy of Lincoln when he maintained that the country was to become wholly free, or wholly under the control of the slave power.

The controversy thus precipitated between Douglas and the South threatened the disruption of the Democratic party. That was an event of very serious significance. It would bring the conflict of sections still nearer by sundering a tie which had for so long a period bound together vast numbers from the North and the South in common sympathy and fraternal co-operation. Even those who were most opposed to the Democratic party beheld its peril with a certain feeling of regret not unmixed with apprehension. The Whig party had been destroyed; and its Northern and Southern members, who, but a few years before, had worked harmoniously for Harrison, for Clay, for Taylor, were now enrolled in rival and hostile organizations. A similar dissolution of the Democratic party would sweep away the only common basis of political action still existing for men of the free States and men of the slave States. The separation of the Methodist church into Northern and Southern organizations, a few years before, had been regarded by Mr. Webster as a portent of evil for the Union. The division of the Democratic party would be still more ominous. The possibility of such an event showed how deeply the slavery question had affected all ranks,—social, religious, and political. It showed, too, how the spirit of Calhoun now inspired the party in whose councils the slightest word of Jackson had once been law. This change, beginning with the defeat of Van Buren in 1844, was at first slow; but it had afterwards moved so rapidly and so far, that men in the North, who wished to remain in the ranks of the Democracy, were compelled to trample on the principles, and surrender the prejudices, of a lifetime. Efforts to harmonize proved futile. In Congress the breach was continually widening.

FACTIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

The situation was cause of solicitude, and even grief, with thousands to whom the old party was peculiarly endeared. The traditions of Jefferson, of Madison, of Jackson, were devoutly treasured; and the splendid achievements of the American Democracy were recounted with the pride which attaches to an honorable family inheritance. The fact was recalled that the Republic had grown to its imperial dimensions under Democratic statesmanship. It was remembered that Louisiana had been acquired from France, Florida from Spain, the independent Republic of Texas annexed, and California, with its vast dependencies, and its myriad millions of treasure, ceded by Mexico, all under Democratic administrations, and in spite of the resistance of their opponents. That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro, in a region where his labor was not wanted, was, to many of its members, as incomprehensible as it was sorrowful and exasperating. They protested, but they could not prevent. Anger was aroused, and men refused to listen to reason. They were borne along, they knew not whither or by what force. Time might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle subordinated to passion, with judgment displaced by a desire for revenge.

[NOTE.—The following are the questions, referred to on p. 147, which were propounded to Mr. Douglas by Mr. Lincoln in their debate at Freeport. The popular interest was centred in the second question.

First, If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State Constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it before they have the requisite number of inhabitants, according to the English bill— some ninety-three thousand—will you vote to admit them?

Second, Can the people of a United-States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?

Third, If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor or acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action?

Fourth, Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?]

CHAPTER VIII.

Excited Condition of the South.—The John Brown Raid at Harper's Ferry.—Character of Brown.—Governor Wise.—Hot Temper.—Course of Republicans in Regard to John Brown.—Misunderstanding of the Two Sections.—Assembling of the Charleston Convention.—Position of Douglas and his Friends.—Imperious Demands of Southern Democrats. —Caleb Cushing selected for Chairman of the Convention.—The South has Control of the Committee on Resolutions.—Resistance of the Douglas Delegates.—They defeat the Report of the Committee.— Delegates from Seven Southern States withdraw.—Convention unable to make a Nomination.—Adjourns to Baltimore.—Convention divides. —Nomination of both Douglas and Breckinridge.—Constitutional Union Convention.—Nomination of Bell and Everett.—The Chicago Convention.—Its Membership and Character.—Mr. Seward's Position. —His Disabilities.—Work of his Friends, Thurlow Weed and William M. Evarts.—Opposition of Horace Greeley.—Objections from Doubtful States.—Various Candidates.—Nomination of Lincoln and Hamlin.— Four Presidential Tickets in the Field.—Animated Canvass.—The Long Struggle over.—The South defeated.—Election of Lincoln.— Political Revolution of 1860 complete.

The South was unnaturally and unjustifiably excited. The people of the slave States could not see the situation accurately, but, like a man with disordered nerves, they exaggerated every thing. Their sense of proportion seemed to be destroyed, so that they could no longer perceive the intrinsic relation which one incident had to another. In this condition of mind, when the most ordinary events were misapprehended and mismeasured, they were startled and alarmed by an occurrence of extraordinary and exceptional character. On the quiet morning of October, 1859, with no warning whatever to the inhabitants, the United-States arsenal, at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, was found to be in the possession of an invading mob. The town was besieged, many of its citizens made prisoners, telegraph wires cut, railway-trains stopped by a force which the people, as they were aroused from sleep, had no means of estimating. A resisting body was soon organized, militia came in from the surrounding country, regular troops were hurried up from Washington. By the opening of the second day, a force of fifteen hundred men surrounded the arsenal, and, when the insurgents surrendered, it was found that there had been but twenty-two in all. Four were still alive, including their leader, John Brown.

JOHN BROWN AT HARPER'S FERRY.

Brown was a man of singular courage, perseverance, and zeal, but was entirely misguided and misinformed. He had conceived the utterly impracticable scheme of liberating the slaves of the South by calling on them to rise, putting arms in their hands, and aiding them to gain their freedom. He had borne a very conspicuous and courageous part in the Kansas struggles, and had been a terror to the slave-holders on the Missouri border. His bravery was of a rare type. He had no sense of fear. Governor Wise stated that during the fight, while Brown held the arsenal, with one of his sons lying dead beside him, another gasping with a mortal wound, he felt the pulse of the dying boy, used his own musket, and coolly commanded his men, all amid a shower of bullets from the attacking force. While of sound mind on most subjects, Brown had evidently lost his mental balance on the one topic of slavery. His scheme miscarried the moment its execution was attempted, as any one not blinded by fanaticism could have from the first foreseen.

The matter was taken up in hot wrath by the South, with Governor Wise in the lead. The design was not known to or approved by any body of men in the North; but an investigation was moved in the Senate, by Mr. Mason of Virginia, with the evident view of fixing the responsibility on the Northern people, or, at least, upon the Republican party. These men affected to see in John Brown, and his handful of followers, only the advance guard of another irruption of Goths and Vandals from the North, bent on inciting servile insurrection, on plunder, pillage, and devastation. Mr. Mason's committee found no sentiment in the North justifying Brown, but the irritating and offensive course of the Virginia senator called forth a great deal of defiant anti-slavery expression which, in his judgment, was tantamount to treason. Brown was tried and executed. He would not permit the plea of unsound mind to be made on his behalf, and to the end he behaved with that calm courage which always attracts respect and admiration. Much was made of the deliverance of the South, from a great peril, and every thing indicated that the John Brown episode was to be drawn into the political campaign as an indictment against anti-slavery men. It was loudly charged by the South, and by their partisans throughout the North, that such insurrections were the legitimate outgrowth of Republican teaching, and that the national safety demanded the defeat and dissolution of the Republican party. Thus challenged, the Republican party did not stand on the defensive. Many of its members openly expressed their pity for the zealot, whose rashness had led him to indefensible deeds and thence to the scaffold. On the day of his execution, bells were tolled in many Northern towns —not in approval of what Brown had done, but from compassion for the fate of an old man whose mind had become distempered by suffering, and by morbid reflection on the suffering of others; from a feeling that his sentence, in view of this fact, was severe; and lastly, and more markedly, as a Northern rebuke to the attempt on the part of the South to make a political issue from an occurrence which was as unforeseen and exceptional as it was deplorable.

The fear and agitation in the South were not feigned but real. Instead of injuring the Republican party, this very fact increased its strength in the North. The terror of the South at the bare prospect of a negro insurrection led many who had not before studied the slavery question to give serious heed to this phase of it. The least reflection led men to see that a domestic institution must be very undesirable which could keep an entire community of brave men in dread of some indefinable tragedy. Mobs and riots of much greater magnitude than the John Brown uprising had frequently occurred in the free States, and they were put down by the firm authority of law, without the dread hand of a spectre behind which might in a moment light the horizon with the conflagration of homes, and subject wives and daughters to a fate of nameless horror. Instead, therefore, of arresting the spread of Republican principles, the mad scheme of John Brown tended to develop and strengthen them. The conviction grew rapidly that if slavery could produce such alarm and such demoralization in a strong State like Virginia, inhabited by a race of white men whose courage was never surpassed, it was not an institution to be encouraged, but that its growth should be prohibited in the new communities where its weakening and baleful influence was not yet felt.

Sentiment of this kind could not be properly comprehended in the South. It was honestly misrepresented by some, willfully misrepresented by others. All construed it into a belief, on the part of a large proportion of the Northern people, that John Brown was entirely justifiable. His wild invasion of the South, they apprehended, would be repeated as opportunity offered on a larger scale and with more deadly purpose. This opinion was stimulated and developed for political ends by many whose intelligence should have led them to more enlightened views. False charges being constantly repeated and plied with incessant zeal, the most radical misconception became fixed in the Southern mind. It was idle for the Republican party to declare that their aim was only to prevent the extension of slavery to free territory, and that they were pledged not to interfere with its existence in the States. Such distinctions were not accepted by the Southern people. Their leaders had taught them that the one necessarily involved the other, and that a man who was in favor of the Wilmot Proviso was as bitter an enemy to the South as one who incited a servile insurrection. These views were unceasingly pressed upon the South by the Northern Democracy, who, in their zeal to defeat the Republicans at home, did not scruple to misrepresent their aims in the most reckless manner. They were constantly misleading the public opinion of the slave States, until at last the South recognized no difference between the creed of Seward and the creed of Gerrit Smith, and held Lincoln responsible for all the views and expressions of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. The calling of a National Republican Convention was to their disordered imagination a threat of destruction. The success of its candidates would, in their view, be just cause for resistance outside the pale of the Constitution.

MEETING OF CHARLESTON CONVENTION.

It was at the height of this overwrought condition of the Southern mind, that the National Convention of the Democratic party met at Charleston on the 23d of April, 1860. The convention had been assembled in South Carolina, as the most discontented and extreme of Southern States, in order to signify that the Democracy could harmonize on her soil, and speak peace to the nation through the voice which had so often spoken peace before. But the Northern Democrats failed to comprehend their Southern allies. In their anxiety to impress the slave-holders with the depth and malignity of Northern anti-slavery feeling, they had unwittingly implicated themselves as accessories to the crime they charged on others. If they were, in fact, the friends to the South which they so loudly proclaimed themselves to be, now was the time to show their faith by their works. The Southern delegates had come to the convention in a truculent spirit,—as men who felt that they were enduring wrongs which must then and there be righted. They had a grievance for which they demanded redress, as a preliminary step to further conference. They wanted no evasion, they would accept no delay. The Northern delegates begged for the nomination of Douglas as the certain method of defeating the Republicans, and asked that they might not be borne down by a platform which they could not carry in the North. The Southern delegates demanded a platform which should embody the Constitutional rights of the slave-holder, and they would not qualify or conceal their requirements. If the North would sustain those rights, all would be well. If the North would not sustain them, it was of infinite moment to the South to be promptly and definitely advised of the fact. The Southern delegates were not presenting a particular man as candidate. On that point they would be liberal and conciliatory. But they were fighting for a principle, and would not surrender it or compromise it.

The supporters of Douglas from the North saw that they would be utterly destroyed at home if they consented to the extreme Southern demand. Their destruction would be equally sure even with Douglas as their candidate if the platform should announce principles which he had been controverting ever since his revolt against the Lecompton bill. For the first time in the history of national Democratic conventions the Northern delegates refused to submit to the exactions of the South. Hitherto platforms had been constructed just as Southern men dictated. Candidates had been taken as their preference directed. But now the Northern men, pressed by the rising tide of Republicanism in every free State, demanded some ground on which they could stand and make a contest at home.

PROCEEDINGS OF CHARLESTON CONVENTION.

Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts was chosen President of the Convention. The political career of Mr. Cushing had not been distinguished for steady adherence to party. He was elected to Congress in 1834, as representative from the Essex district in Massachusetts. He was at that time a zealous member of the Whig party, and was active on the Northern or anti-slavery side in the discussions relating to the "right of petition." He served in the House for eight years. After the triumph of Harrison in 1840, Mr. Cushing evidently aspired to be a party leader. In the quarrel which ensued between President Tyler and Mr. Clay, he saw an opportunity to gratify his ambition by adhering to the administration. This brought him into very close relations with Mr. Webster, who remained in Tyler's Cabinet after his colleagues retired, and threw him at the same time into rank antagonism with Mr. Clay, to whose political fortunes he had previously been devoted. In view of the retirement of Mr. Webster from the State Department in 1843, President Tyler nominated Mr. Cushing for Secretary of the Treasury, but the Whig senators, appreciating his power and influence in that important position, procured his rejection. Some Democratic votes from the South were secured against him because of his course in the House of Representatives. The President then nominated him as Commissioner to China, and he was promptly confirmed. Oriental diplomatists never encountered a minister better fitted to meet them with their own weapons.

Upon his return home, Mr. Cushing found that Mr. Webster had resumed his place as the leader of the Northern Whigs. Mr. Clay had meanwhile been defeated for the Presidency, his followers were discouraged, the administration of Mr. Polk was in power. Mr. Cushing at once joined the Democracy, and was made a Brigadier- General in the army raised for the war with Mexico. From that time onward he became a partisan of the extreme State-rights school of the Southern Democracy, and was appropriately selected for Attorney- General by President Pierce in 1853. In conjunction with Jefferson Davis, he was considered to be the guiding and controlling force in the administration. His thorough education, his remarkable attainments, his eminence in the law, his ability as an advocate, rendered his active co-operation of great value to the pro-slavery Democrats of the South. He was naturally selected for the important and difficult duty of presiding over the convention whose deliberations were to affect the interests of the Government, and possibly the fate of the Union.

It was soon evident that the South would have every advantage in the convention which an intelligent and skillful administration of parliamentary law could afford. Without showing unfairness, the presiding officer, especially in a large and boisterous assembly, can impart confidence and strength to the side with which he may sympathize. But, apart from any power to be derived from having the chairman of the convention, the South had a more palpable advantage from the mode in which the standing committees must, according to precedent, be constituted. As one member must be taken from each State, the Southern men obtained the control of all the committees, from the fact that the delegates from California and Oregon steadily voted with them. There were thirty-three States in the Union in 1860,—eighteen free and fifteen slave-holding. California and Oregon, uniting with the South, gave to that section seventeen, and left to the North but sixteen on all the committees. The Democratic delegates from the Pacific States assumed a weighty responsibility in thus giving to the Disunionists of the South preliminary control of the convention, by permitting them to shape authoritatively all the business to be submitted. It left the real majority of the convention in the attitude of a protesting minority. The Southern majority of one on the committees was fatal to Democratic success. In a still more important aspect its influence was in the highest degree prejudicial to the Union of the States.

Constituted in the manner just indicated, the Committee on Resolutions promptly and unanimously agreed on every article of the Democratic creed, except that relating to slavery. Here they divided, stubbornly and irreconcilably. The fifteen slave States, re-enforced by California and Oregon, gave to the Southern interest a majority of one vote on the committee. The other free States, sixteen in all, were hostile to the extreme Southern demands, and reported a resolution, which they were willing to accept. The South required an explicit assertion of the right of citizens to settle in the Territories with their slaves,—a right not "to be destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation." They required the further declaration that it is the duty of the Federal Government, when necessary, to protect slavery "in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends." This was in substance, and almost identically in language, the extreme creed put forth by the Southern Democratic senators in the winter of 1858-59, after the "popular sovereignty" campaign of Douglas against Lincoln. It was the most advanced ground ever taken by the statesmen of the South, and its authorship was generally ascribed to Judah F. Benjamin, senator from Louisiana. Its introduction in the Charleston platform was intended apparently as an insult to Douglas. The evident purpose was to lay down doctrines and prescribe tests which Douglas could not accept, and thus to exclude him, not only from candidacy, but from further participation in the councils of the party.

QUARREL OF DEMOCRATIC FACTIONS.

The courage of the Northern Democrats was more conspicuously shown in their resistance to these demands than in the declarations which they desired to substitute. They quietly abandoned all their assertions in regard to popular sovereignty, refrained from any protest against the doctrine that the Constitution carried slavery as far as its jurisdiction extended, and contented themselves with a resolution that "inasmuch as differences of opinion exist in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress under the Constitution of the United States over the institution of slavery within the Territories, the Democratic party will abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States upon questions of Constitutional law." This was perhaps the best device practicable at the time; and had it been adopted with Douglas as the candidate, and a united Democracy supporting him, it is not improbable that a successful campaign might have been made. But it was a makeshift, uncandid, unfair, cunningly contrived to evade the full responsibility of the situation. It was a temporizing expedient, and did not frankly meet the question which was engaging the thoughts of the people. Had it succeeded, nothing would have been settled. Every thing would have been postponed, and the crisis would have inevitably recurred. So far as the Supreme Court could determine the questions at issue, it had already been done in the Dred Scott decision; and that decision, so far from being final, was a part of the current controversy. There was, therefore, neither logic nor principle in the proposition of the Douglas minority. The Southern delegates keenly realized this fact, and refused to accept the compromise. They could not endure the thought of being placed in a position which was not only evasive, but might be deemed cowardly. They were brave men, and wished to meet the question bravely. They knew that the Republicans in their forthcoming convention would explicitly demand the prohibition of slavery in the Territories. To hesitate or falter in making an equally explicit assertion of their own faith would subject them to fatal assault from their slave-holding constituencies.

The Douglas men would not yield. They were enraged by the domineering course of the Southern Democrats. They could not comprehend why they should higgle about the language of the platform when they could carry the slave States on the one form of expression as well as the other. In the North it was impossible for the Democrats to succeed with the Southern platform, but in the South it was, in their judgment, entirely easy to carry the Douglas platform. From the committee the contest was transferred to the convention, and there the Douglas men were in a majority. They did not hesitate to use their strength, and by a vote of 165 to 138 they substituted the minority platform for that of the majority. It was skillfully accomplished under the lead of Henry B. Payne of Ohio and Benjamin Samuels of Iowa. The total vote of the convention was 303,—the number of Presidential electors; and every vote had been cast on the test question. The South voted solidly in the negative, and was aided by the vote of California and Oregon, and a few scattering delegates from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The other fourteen States of the North voted unanimously on the side of Douglas, and gave him a majority of twenty-seven.

The Northern victory brought with it a defeat. A large number of the Southern delegates, though fairly and honorably outvoted, refused to abide by the decision. Seven States—Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas—withdrew from the convention, and organized a separate assemblage, presided over by Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware. By this defection the Douglas men were left in absolute control of the convention. But the friends of Douglas fatally obstructed his program by consenting to the two-thirds rule, so worded as to required that proportion of a full convention to secure a nomination. The first vote disclosed the full strength of Douglas to be 152. He required 202 to be declared the nominee. After an indefinite number of ballots, it was found impossible to make a nomination; and on the 3d of May the convention adjourned to meet in Baltimore on the 18th of June. In the intervening weeks it was hoped that a more harmonious spirit would return to the party. But the expectation was vain. The differences were more pronounced than ever when the convention re-assembled, and, all efforts to find a common basis of action having failed, the convention divided. The Southern delegates with California and Oregon, and with some scattering members from other States, among whom were Caleb Cushing and Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President, and Joseph Lane of Oregon for Vice-President. The Northern convention, with a few scattering votes from the South, nominated Stephen A. Douglas for President, and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice-President. Of the seventeen States that made up the Breckinridge convention, it was deemed probable that he could carry all. Of the sixteen that voted for Douglas, it was difficult to name one in which with a divided party he could be sure of victory. United in support of either candidate, the party could have made a formidable contest, stronger in the North with Douglas, stronger in the South with Breckinridge. Had the Democracy presented Douglas and Breckinridge as their National nominees, they would have combined all the elements of strength in their party. But passion and prejudice prevented. The South was implacable toward Douglas, and deliberately resolved to accept defeat rather than secure a victory under his lead.

DISRUPTION OF THE DEMOCRACY.

The disruption of the Democracy was undoubtedly hastened by the political events which had occurred since the adjournment at Charleston. An organization, styling itself the Constitutional- Union Party, representing the successors of the Old Whigs and Americans, had met in Baltimore, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President. The strength of the party was in the South. In the slave States it formed the only opposition to the Democratic party, and was as firm in defense of the rights of the slave-holder as its rival. Its members had not been so ready to repeal the Missouri Compromise as the Democrats, and they were unrelenting in their hostility to Douglas, and severe in their exposure of his dogma of popular sovereignty. They had effectively aided in bringing both the doctrine and its author into disrepute in the South, and, if the Democrats had ventured to nominate Douglas, they had their weapons ready for vigorous warfare against him.

With a Southern slave-holder like Mr. Bell at the head of the ticket, and a Northern man of Mr. Everett's well-known conservatism associated with him, the Constitutional-Union Party was in a position to make a strong canvass against Douglas in the South. It was this fact which, on the re-assembling of the Democratic convention at Baltimore, had increased the hostility of the South to Douglas, and made their leaders firm in their resolution not to accept him. Had the Union party nominated a Northern man instead of Mr. Bell for President, the case might have been different for Douglas; but the Southern Democrats feared that their party would be endangered in half the slave States if they should present Douglas as a candidate against a native Southerner and slave-holder of Bell's character and standing. If they were to be beaten in the contest for the Presidency, they were determined to retain, if possible, the control of their States, and not to risk their seats in the Senate and the House in a desperate struggle for Douglas. It would be poor recompense to them to recover certain Northern States from the Republicans, if at the same time, and by co-ordinate causes, an equal number of Southern States should be carried by Bell, and the destiny of the South be committed to a conservative party, which would abandon threats and cultivate harmony. Bell's nomination had, therefore, proved the final argument against the acceptance of Douglas by the Southern Democracy.

Meanwhile, between the adjournment of the Democratic convention at Charleston, and its re-assembling at Baltimore, the Republicans had held their national convention at Chicago. It was a representative meeting of the active and able men of both the old parties in the North, who had come together on the one overshadowing issue of the hour. Differing widely on many other questions, inheriting their creeds from antagonistic organizations of the past, they thought alike on the one subject of putting a stop to the extension of slavery. Those who wished to go farther were restrained, and an absolute control of opinion and action was commanded on this one line. In the entire history of party conventions, not one can be found so characteristic, so earnest, so determined to do the wisest thing, so little governed by personal consideration, so entirely devoted to one absorbing idea. It was made up in great part of young men, though there were gray-haired veterans in sufficient number to temper action with discretion. A large proportion of the delegates were afterwards prominent in public life. At least sixty of them, till then unknown beyond their districts, were sent to Congress. Many became governors of their States, and in other ways received marks of popular favor. It was essentially a convention of the free States—undisguisedly sectional in the political nomenclature of the day. The invitation was general, but, in the larger portion of the South, no one could be found who would risk his life by attending as a delegate. Nevertheless, there were delegates present from the five slave States which bordered on the free States, besides a partial and irregular representation from Texas.

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION.

The anti-slavery character of the assemblage was typified by the selection of David Wilmot for temporary chairman, and its conservative side by the choice of an old Webster Whig, in the person of George Ashmun of Massachusetts, for permanent president. This tendency to interweave the radical and conservative elements, and, where practicable, those of Whig with those of Democratic antecedents, was seen in many delegations. John A. Andrew and George S. Boutwell came from Massachusetts, William M. Evarts and Preston King from New York, Thaddeus Stevens and Andrew H. Reeder from Pennsylvania, Thomas Corwin and Joshua R. Giddings from Ohio, David Davis and N. B. Judd from Illinois. Outside of the regular delegations, there were great crowds of earnest men in Chicago, all from the free States. The number in attendance was reckoned by tens of thousands. Considering the restricted facilities for travel at that time, the multitude was surprising and significant. The whole mass was inspired with energy, and believed, without shadow of doubt, that they had come to witness the nomination of the next President of the United States. Confidence of strength is as potential an element in a political canvass as in a military campaign, and never was a more defiant sense of power exhibited than by the Chicago convention of 1860 and by the vast throng which surrounded its meetings. Such a feeling is contagious, and it spread from that centre until it enveloped the free States.

The impression in the country, for a year preceding the convention, was that Mr. Seward would be nominated. As the time drew nigh, however, symptoms of dissent appeared in quarters where it had not been expected. New parties are proverbially free from faction and jealousy. Personal antagonisms, which come with years, had not then been developed in the Republican ranks. It was not primarily a desire to promote the cause of other candidates which led to the questioning of Mr. Seward's availability, nor was there any withholding of generous recognition and appreciation of all that he had done for Republican principles. His high character was gladly acknowledged, his eminent ability conceded, the magnitude and unselfishness of his work were everywhere praised. Without his aid, the party could not have been organized. But for his wise leadership, it would have been wrecked in the first years of its existence. He was wholly devoted to its principles. He had staked every thing upon its success.