Court, and, if it presents itself as a practical issue, they will vote against it." The The congressional elections of the next year showed great Republican gains. The campaign was made famous by a series of joint debates in Illinois between Douglas (the "Little Giant") and Abraham Lincoln, candidates for the Senate. Lincoln was defeated, but he attained his deliberate purpose. His acute and persistent questions forced Douglas to choose between the new doctrine of the Supreme Court -to which the South now clung vociferously and his own old doctrine of squatter sovereignty which was certainly as far as Illinois would go. If he placed himself in opposition to the Supreme Court, he would not be able to secure Southern support for the presidency at the next election, to which men's eyes were already turned. If he did not oppose the Court, he would lose the Senatorship and Northern support for the presidency. In any case, the Slavery party would be robbed of its most formidable candidate in 1860. Douglas was driven to maintain that, despite the Dred Scott decision, a Territorial legislature could keep out slavery by "unfriendly legislation.' This doctrine was at once denounced bitterly by the South. Even more significant was the moral stand taken by Lincoln. The real issue, he declared, was the right or wrong of slavery, not any constitutional theory: "It is the eternal struggle between these two principles right and wrong throughout the world. They are the two principles which have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and which will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity: the other is the divine right of kings. [Slavery] is the spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, it is the same tyrannical principle." In 1857 the free-State men won the Kansas elections so overwhelmingly that the proslavery organization could no longer expect open support from Washington. The ex GAINS FOR FREEDOM 513 supports the piring proslavery legislature, however, still provided for a proslavery convention, which met at Lecompton (November, 1857). President Buchanan had purchased The Federal for that body the privilege of meeting in peace government by promising that its work should be submitted Slave Power to popular vote. This pledge was not kept. The in Kansas convention arranged a "constitution with slavery" and a "constitution with no slavery," which last, however, left in bondage the slaves then in the Territory, and forbade the residence of free Negroes. At the promised election, the voters were permitted merely to choose between these two constitutions: they were given no opportunity to reject both. The free-State men kept away from the polls; and the "constitution with slavery" carried overwhelmingly, six thousand to less than six hundred. But the new free-State legislature provided for a new and proper expression of opinion. This time the proslavery men abstained from voting; and the two constitutions together received less than two hundred votes, to more than ten thousand against both of them. Still, the South and the Administration at Washington strove violently to secure the admission of the State with the "Lecompton constitution," claiming the first election as valid. This nefarious attempt to rob the people of their will was defeated by the warm opposition of Douglas, who remained true to his doctrine of popular sovereignty. The Slave Power succeeded, however, in getting Congress to submit the Lecompton constitution for the third time to the people of Kansas, with a bribe of public lands if they would accept it. Kansas refused the bribe, 11,000 to 2000. Even then the Democratic Senate would not admit the State with its "free" constitution, and Kansas statehood had to wait till 1861. Meantime, two other free States came in, to establish Northern supremacy in the Senate, Minnesota (1858) and Oregon (1859). In one other vital matter at this same time the Slave Power offended the moral sense and threatened the material interest Buchanan bill of "free" labor. As early as 1845, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee (page 437) introduced in Congress the first "Homestead bill" - to give every homeless citizen vetoes the a farm from the public lands. Several times Homestead such bills passed the House. But larger free immigration into the public domain would end all chance to set up slavery there; and the Slave Power, formerly favorable to a liberal land policy, now defeated all these bills in the Senate. This new attitude of the Slave Power helped to make the masses of the North see the fundamental opposition between free and slave labor. On the other hand, the antislavery parties appealed to Northern workingmen by their position on this matter. The Free Soilers declared in their platform of 1852, in full accord with the labor parties of twenty years before: "The public land of the United States belongs to the people, and should not be sold to individuals or granted to corporations, but should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people, and should be granted in limited quantities, free of cost, to landless settlers." In June of 1860 the House again passed a Homestead bill giving any head of a family a quarter section after five years' residence thereon. The Republican platform of the same year "demanded" the passing by the Senate of that "complete and satisfactory measure," protesting also "against any view of the free homestead policy which regards the settlers as paupers or suppliants for public bounty." This time the Senate did pass the bill, but Buchanan vetoed it. "The honest poor man," argued the President with gracious rhetoric, "by frugality and industry can in any part of our country acquire a competency. He desires no charity. . . . This bill will go far to demoralize the people and repress this noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved so disastrous in other countries.' When the Slave Power withdrew from Congress, a Homestead bill at last became law in May, 1862. Two other events must be noticed, before we take up the fateful election of 1860. insurrection 1. In 1859 John Brown tried to arouse a slave insurrection in Virginia. He seems hardly to have comprehended the hideous results that would have followed a suc- John cessful attempt. He planned to establish a camp Brown's in the mountains to which Negro fugitives might rally; and his little force of twenty-two men seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, to get arms for slave recruits. The neighboring slaves did not rise, as he had hoped they would, and he was captured after a gallant defense. Virginia gave him a fair trial; and he was convicted of murder and of treason against that commonwealth. His death made him more formidable to slavery than ever he had been living. The North in general condemned his action; but its condemnation was tempered by a note of sympathy and admiration ominous to Southern ears. Emerson declared that Brown's execution made "the scaffold glorious like the Cross." 2. In 1852 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had written Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the greatest moral forces ever contained between book covers. The volume un- Uncle doubtedly misrepresented slavery, as though Tom's exceptional incidents had been the rule; but it Cabin did its great work in making the people of the North realize that the slave was a fellow man for whom any slavery was hateful. The tremendous influence of the book, however, was not really felt for some years. The boys of fourteen who read it in 1852 were just ready to give their vote to Abraham Lincoln in 1860. This explains, too, in part, why the college youth who had been generally proslavery in 1850 left college halls vacant in 1861 to join the Northern armies. Rapid growth of CHAPTER XXXII ON THE EVE OF THE FINAL STRUGGLE AMERICA IN 1860 To most men of the time these years 1845–1860 had a more engrossing aspect than was afforded by the slavery struggle. The era was one of wonderful material prosperity. Wealth increased fourfold, for the wealth first time in our history faster than population. Men were absorbed in a mad race to seize the new opportunities. They had to stop, in some degree, for the slavery discussion; but the majority looked upon that as an annoying interruption to the real business of life. Railway mileage Between 1850 and 1857, railway mileage multiplied enormously; and in the North the map took on its modern gridiron look. Lines reached the Mississippi at ten points; and some projected themselves into the unsettled plains beyond. With the railway, or ahead of it, spread the telegraph. Mail routes, too, took advantage of rail transportation; and in 1850 postage was lowered from 5 cents for 300 miles to 3 cents for 3000 miles. With cheap and swift transportation and communication, the era of commercial combinations began, and great fortunes piled up beyond all previous dreams. The new money kings, railway barons, and merchant princes of the North, it was noted, joined hands with the great planters of the South in trying to stifle opposition to slavery because all such agitation "hurt business." For labor, too, the period was a golden age. Between 1840 and 1860, wages rose twenty per cent, and prices only two Labor per cent. Pauperism was unobtrusive, and, to prosperous foreign observers, amazingly rare. Inventions had multiplied comforts and luxuries. Pianos from Ger |