decide whether or not to go into an election of President.

...

There was still another point on which the difference of opinion was very decided. The president of the Senate stoutly affirmed that he had neither counted nor rejected the votes, although he had said: "The state of the votes as delivered by the tellers is . . . for John C. Fremont of California, 114 votes." Many senators sustained the assertion of Mr. Mason that he had not counted the votes, while others declared that he had counted them. Numerous resolutions were offered in each branch, but the debate produced nothing more than a resolution of formal notification to Messrs. Buchanan and Breckinridge that they had been elected. The opinion that the whole subject ought to be taken up and considered, and the doubtful points determined by law, was very generally expressed; but, as soon as the matter in hand was disposed of, the subject was dropped. The Congress was then in the last month of its term, and it was too busy to take further notice of a danger past which might never return. So the disputed point was left for a Republican Congress to decide, according to the political exigency of the hour, in the midst of a civil war.

XX.

THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR SLAVERY.

DURING the whole of Mr. Buchanan's administration the country was on the verge of civil war. It was, considering the excited state of the public mind, an evidence of rare popular self-restraint that war did not break out. Parties were at last divided on the one great issue of slavery; but, while the line between the Republicans and the Democrats was a broad one, there was a great variety of opinion within the ranks of each party. The most conservative Republican, however, was firm and decided in the conviction that slavery could not exist in any Territory in opposition either to the will of Congress or to that of the people of the Territory. The Democratic party comprised two distinct wings. The radical wing held that all citizens of the United States had the right, without question, to carry any species of property, including slaves, into the Territories; that neither Congress nor the Territorial legislature had a right to forbid the introduction of slaves; and that only when the Territory was ready to apply for admission as a State did the right accrue to decide whether slavery should be allowed or prohibited. The other wing of the party, led by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, maintained the doctrine of popular, or "squatter," sovereignty. They held that the people of a Territory might decide, through their legislature, whether or not slavery should be permitted.

The struggle which had begun in the first year of Pierce's administration, over Kansas, was continued under his successor until early in 1861, after secession had begun,

when the State was admitted without slavery. The story of that contest forms one of the darkest pages of American political history. It is a record of perfidy and violence. The attempt to force the Lecompton Constitution upon the people, under the patronage of the executive department of the government, was matched by the baseness of the offer by Congress of a bribe to the people if they would accept it. The South, struggling as it was to maintain the political power of the section and of its social system, could not have claimed less than it did claim, and it had the support of the Supreme Court in its assertion of the national character of the slavery system. But, on the other hand, the moral sense of the Northern people was outraged by the effort to force slavery upon an unwilling people, and by the repeated violations of good faith which were resorted to in order to make the attempt successful. Kansas had seven governors in five years, one of whom was removed because he would not be the tool of the pro-slavery party, and another, a Mississippian, an ex-Senator, and Secretary of the Treasury during the whole of Polk's administration, resigned because the President would not keep the pledge, officially, which he had verbally made to the Governor, that the people of Kansas should be allowed to vote on the whole Lecompton Constitution.

The minor issues developed during this administration, in the contests over the homestead and pre-emption laws, in the revelations made by the Covode investigating committee, and by the state of the national finances, would have been enough to cause an exciting election in 1860, even if the Kansas struggle, the Dred Scott decision, and the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry, had not kept the public attention unchangeably fixed on the question of slavery.

The state of parties at the beginning of 1860 has been indicated already, but it may be well to make the statement a little more precise. The Democratic party was in two factions, the first of which was led by the administration, and was supported by the Southern senators and members of the House of Representatives in almost unbroken phalanx. Its adherents filled the national offices, both North and South, and it had numerous representatives among the politicians of the North, some of whom were no doubt intellectually convinced that the constitutional position assumed in defence of slavery extension was correct; while others were with the administration because it was the administration, and favored the Southern view because the ascendancy of slavery, as a a political power, if secured by their assistance, would give them office and standing in the party.

On the other side was the faction whose shibboleth was "Popular Sovereignty," led by Senator Douglas, who was designated by the voice of this wing as the candidate for the presidency, long before he fell under the disapproval of the administration and of the Southern senators. This wing of the party was very powerful at the North. It constituted almost the whole of the Democratic party in New England and in the greater part of the West, more than half of the party in New York, and a strong minority of it in Pennsylvania.

The Republicans were of all shades of anti-slavery opinion, and while they were absolutely united in resisting the administration of Mr. Buchanan, it was by no means certain that the party could concentrate its force upon any one candidate. There was danger that the conservatives would be alienated if the person selected should be a man of too radical opinions; while, on the other hand, the Abolitionists had too often followed their prin

ciples, though it kept them in a petty minority, to be drawn into the support of a candidate of doubtful quality.

Besides these two parties, and their factions, there was a large surplus remnant. There were the old Whigs, whom time, in its rapid flight, had left behind the age; there were the Native Americans, who, in the South, hated the Democrats, and yet could not join with their great opponents the Republicans; and there were a great many well-meaning men, all over the country, who deprecated the prevailing strife, who really did not think the slavery question worth so much discussion, and who feared that unless something were done to calm down the angry disputants there would be war. These several elements became temporarily united in the Constitutional Union. party, as patriotic a party as was ever organized, but one which could not succeed in its mission because the time had come when the self-preservation of the South, as a political power, and the moral sense of the North, demanded that the pending question be settled finally and forever.

The Democratic convention was the first to be held. It met at Charleston, S. C., on the 23d of April, 1860. There were full delegations from every State in the Union, and contesting delegations from New York and Illinois. In the former State the "hards," led by Fernando Wood, had been elected by districts, while the "softs," who were favorable to Senator Douglas, were chosen by a State convention, which met at Syracuse the autumn previous. The two Illinois delegations were respectively for and against Mr. Douglas. As soon as Mr. Francis B. Flournoy of Arkansas had taken the chair as temporary presiding officer of the convention, an angry debate began upon these contested seats, for the national committee had given tickets of admission, in each case, to the Douglas delegates, and had shut out their opponents.

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