included, as the electors in that State were chosen by her Legislature.

When the first wave of bitter disappointment passed away, the Republicans saw the enormous headway that had been made and they immediately began to prepare for the national contest four years hence. The Democrats had lost ten States which they carried in 1852, and their electoral vote of 254 in 1852 had shrunken to 174. The South elected Buchanan,, and he became the tool of the Slave Power, and, as subsequent events developed, it was fortunate that the Republicans were not successful in the campaign.

CHAPTER X.

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES.

"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?”

Lincoln to Douglas, Freeport Debate, August 27, 1858.

The Buchanan Administration began on March 4, 1857, and the Slave Power, through the Democratic Party, found itself in complete and absolute control of every branch of the Government, legislative, executive and judicial. Two days after the inauguration came the famous Dred Scott decision. The arguments in this case had been heard before the election, but the court adjourned until after the election. The decision, delivered by Chief Justice Taney, fixed the legal status of the negro in the United States, and declared that he could not claim any of the rights and privileges of a citizen, and "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit." Then, traveling out of the record, the Court declared that the Missouri Compromise was unauthorized by the Constitution. and was null and void, and that Congress had no right to keep slavery out of any Territory. It was apparent at once that this decision completely nullified Douglas' doctrine of

popular sovereignty, and the South lost no time in abandoning that doctrine, and declaring that she would insist as a Constitutional right that slaves taken into any Territory must be protected like any other property. The North was stunned for the moment by this sweeping decision; the South was jubilant beyond all bounds, and instantly prepared to take advantage of the new dogma to the utmost. While under this decision the Slave Power seemed all triumphant, it was, in fact, to produce its destruction, and slavery was to lose its power by the very thing which seemed to strengthen it. The Dred Scott decision was bound to produce a split in the Democratic Party and the moment that occurred the success of the Republican Party was assured. The South spread thousands of copies of the decision throughout the country, and when the North recovered from the shock and saw what a revolution the decision would cause in the Democratic Party, it joined in giving it the utmost publicity.

The attempt to force Kansas into the Union as a slave State under the infamous Lecompton Constitution now began. In that Territory the Free-State settlers had rapidly been gaining in strength, and the Slave Power, in desperate straits, resorted to trickery. Several attempts of the FreeState Legislature to meet were prevented by the Federal troops, but finally, in 1857, the Free-State men voted at the regular election and obtained control of the Territorial Legislature; but before they could act, a pro-slavery Convention, previously chosen, concluded its work at Lecompton and submitted the Lecompton Constitution to the people,