History of the United States, v.2, by James Ford Rhodes, 1910 [c1892].

Chapter 7, Part 1: Shall a New Party Be Formed? through The Thirty-Fourth Congress

CHAPTER VII

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, it would seem as if the course of the opposition were plain. In the newspapers and political literature of the time, suggestions are frequent of an obvious and reasonable course to be pursued. The senators and representatives at Washington proposed no plan. They did, indeed, issue an address which was well characterized by a powerful advocate of anti-slavery at Washington. "It is unexceptionable," he wrote, "but hath not the trumpet tone." 1 That the different elements of opposition should be fused into one complete whole seemed political wisdom. That course involved the formation of a new party and was urged warmly and persistently by many newspapers, but by none with such telling influence as by the New York Tribune. It had likewise the countenance of Chase, Sumner, and Wade. There were three elements that must be united—the Whigs, the Free-soilers, who were of both Democratic and Whig antecedents, and the anti-Nebraska Democrats. The Whigs were the most numerous body and as those at the North, to a man, had opposed the
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1 G. Bailey, editor of the National Era, to J. S. Pike, June 6th, 1854. Pike's First Blows of the Civil War, p. 247. The address is published in the New York Times of June 22d. Wilson speaks of a meeting of thirty members of the House directly after the passage of the bill, which was distinct from the meeting which adopted the address. It does not appear that any particular action was taken, but it was generally conceded that a new party organization was necessary, and that an appropriate name for it would be Republican. Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 411.

repeal of the Missouri Compromise, they thought, with some quality of reason, that the fight might well be made under their banner and with their name. For the organization of a party was not the work of a day; the machinery was complex and costly, and a new national party could not be started without pains and sacrifice.1 Why then, it was asked, go to all this trouble, when a complete organization is at hand ready for use? This view of the situation was ably argued by the New York Times and was supported by Senator Seward. As the New York senator had a position of influence superior to any one who had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, strenuous efforts were made to get his adhesion to a new party movement, but they were without avail. "Seward hangs fire," wrote Dr. Bailey. He agrees with Thurlow Weed; but " God help us if, as a preliminary to a union of the North, we have all to admit that the Whig party is the party of freedom!" 2 "We are not yet ready for a great national convention at Buffalo or elsewhere," wrote Seward to Theodore Parker; "it would bring together only the old veterans. The States are the places for activity, just now." 3 Undoubtedly Seward, Weed, and Raymond 4 sincerely believed that the end desired could be better accomplished if the Whig organization were kept intact. In any event their position and influence were sure. But the lesser lights of the party were of the opinion that to get and hold the national, State, and municipal offices was a function as important for a party as to spread abroad a principle; and if the Whig name and organization were maintained, length of service under the banner would have to be regarded in awarding the spoils.
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1 The difficulty in the way of forming a new party in the United States is well understood and explained by Prof. Bryce, American Commonwealth, vol. ii. p. 19.
2 Bailey to J. S. Pike, May 30th. First Blows of the Civil War, p. 237. 3 Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 232.
4 Raymond was editor of the New York Times.

Yet many Whigs who were not devoted to machine politics, and were therefore able to lay aside all personal and extraneous considerations, saw clearly that a new party must be formed under a new name, and that all the men who thus joined together must stand at the start on the same footing. They differed, however, in regard to the statement of their bond of union. Some wished to go to the country with simply Repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska act inscribed on their banner. As a new House of Representatives was to be elected in the fall, the aim should be to retire those members who had voted for the bill and to return those who had opposed it. Others wished to go further in the declaration of principles, and plant themselves squarely on the platform of congressional prohibition of slavery in all of the territories. Still others preferred the resolve that not another slave State should be admitted into the Union. Many suggestions, too, were made that broadened the issue. Yet, after all, the differences were only of detail, and the time seemed ripe for the formation of a political party whose cardinal principle might be summed up as opposition to the extension of slavery. The liberal Whigs felt that they could not ask the Free-soilers of Democratic antecedents and the anti-Nebraska Democrats to become Whigs. To the older partisans the name was identified with the United States bank. By all Democrats, Whig principles were understood to comprise a protective tariff and large internal improvements; to enroll themselves under that banner was to endorse principles against which they had always contended.

The first and most effective action to form a new party was taken in the West, where the political machines had not been so highly developed as in the older section of country, and where consequently a people's movement could proceed with greater spontaneity. While the Kansas-Nebraska bill was pending, a meeting of citizens of all parties was held at Ripon, Wisconsin. This differed from other meetings held throughout the North, in that the organization of a new party on the slavery issue was recommended, and the name suggested for it was "Republican."' Five weeks after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had been enacted, authoritative action was taken by a body representing a wider constituency. In response to a call, signed by several thousand leading citizens of Michigan, for a State mass-meeting of all opposed to slavery extension, a large body of earnest, intelligent, and moral men came together at Jackson, Mich., on the 6th day of July. The largest hall was not sufficient to accommodate the people, and, the day being bright, the convention was held in a stately oak grove in the outskirts of the village. Enthusiasm was unbounded. The reason for a new departure was clearly shown by able men in vigorous speeches. But, in truth, the voters of Michigan fully comprehended the situation. Intelligence of a high order characterized the population of this State. Already had the educational system been established which has grown into one surpassed by none in the world, and which has become a fruitful model. 2 No people better adapted to set a-going a political movement ever gathered together than those assembled this day " under the oaks" at Jackson. The declaration of principles adopted was long, but all the resolutions, except two which referred to State affairs, were devoted to the slavery question.

It was stated that the freemen of Michigan had met in convention, " to consider upon the measures which duty demands of us, as citizens of a free State, to take in reference to the late acts of Congress on the subject of slavery, and its anticipated further extension." Slavery was declared "a great moral, social, and political evil;" the repeal of the Kansas Nebraska act and the Fugitive Slave law was demanded; and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia was asked for. It was also "Resolved, that, postponing and suspending all differences with regard to political economy or administrative policy .. . we will act cordially and
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1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Henry Wilson, vol. ii. p. 410.
2 Cooley's Michigan, p. 338.

faithfully in unison " to oppose the extension of slavery, and" we will co-operate and be known as 'Republicans' until the contest be terminated." It was further recommended that a general convention should be called of the free States, and of such slave-holding States as wished to be represented, "with a view to the adoption of other more extended and effectual measures in resistance to the encroachments of slavery."1 Before the convention adjourned a full State ticket was nominated. Three of the candidates were Free-soilers, five were Whigs, and two anti-Nebraska Democrats who had voted for Pierce in 1852. The number of voters in the State opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska act was supposed to be forty thousand, of whom it was roughly estimated twenty-five thousand were Whigs, ten thousand Free-soilers, and five thousand anti-Nebraska Democrats.2 On the 13th of July anti-Nebraska State conventions were held in Wisconsin, Vermont, Ohio, and Indiana. The day was chosen because it was the anniversary of the enactment of the ordinance of 1787. Resolutions similar in tenor to those of Michigan were adopted, and in Wisconsin and Vermont the name "Republican" was assumed.3

In 1854, the moral feeling of the community was stirred to its very depths. While the excitement produced by the Kansas-Nebraska legislation had let loose and intensified the agitation of the public mind, yet its whole force was by no means directed to the slavery question. The temperance question began to be a weighty influence in politics. Indeed, from the passage, three years earlier, of the Maine
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1 The resolutions may be found in full in Life of Z. Chandler, published by the Detroit Post and Tribune, p. 108. This book is my authority for the description of the convention; see also Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 412.
2 New York Tribune, June 21st. In November the Republican candidate for governor polled 43,652 votes.
3 See Life of Chandler, p. 113; Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 412; Life of Chase, Schuckers, p. 165; Political Recollections, Julian, p. 144; Cleveland Herald.

liquor law in the State which gave legislation of this kind its name, it had been generally discussed in New England. Prohibitory laws had been enacted in Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and also in Michigan. But now the question began to exercise a powerful sway throughout the North. It was necessarily made an issue in New York, for Governor Seymour had vetoed a prohibitory law;1 and as a governor and legislature were to be elected in the fall, the temperance men were alive and busy, determined that their doctrine should enter prominently into the canvass. All the influential advocates of a Maine law were anti-slavery men, and it is not apparent that the cause of freedom lost by union with the cause of prohibition. The pleaders for the moral law showed discretion as well as zeal. The journal which, more than all others, spoke for the religious community maintained emphatically that slavery was the first and greatest question at issue in the election.2

A far more important element politically was the Know
nothing movement. The Know-nothings made their power felt at the municipal elections in the spring and early summer. Their most notable success was achieved in Philadelphia, when the candidate they supported for mayor was elected by a large majority. These results opened the eyes of the politicians and of the outside public to the fact that a new force must be taken into account.

The distrust of Roman Catholicism is a string that can be artfully played upon in an Anglo-Saxon community. This feeling had been recently increased by the public mission of a papal nuncio, who came to this country to adjust a difficulty in regard to church property in the city of Buffalo. There had arisen a controversy on the matter between the bishop and a congregation, and the congregation was backed by a law of New York State. The nuncio had been received with kindness by the President, but his visit had
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1 March 31st.
2 New York Independent, November 2d.

excited tumults in Cincinnati, Baltimore, and New York.1 Moreover, the efforts of Bishop Hughes and the Catholic clergy to exclude the Bible from the public schools struck a chord which had not ceased to vibrate.2 The ignorant foreign vote had begun to have an important influence on elections, and the result in large cities was anything but pleasing to the lovers of honest and efficient government. It was averred that drunken aliens frequently had charge of the polls; that the intrigue and rowdyism which characterized recent campaigns were the work of foreigners; that the network of Jesuitism had been cunningly spread; that such was the deep corruption among politicians that availability in a presidential candidate had come to mean the man who could secure the foreign vote. Votes were openly bought and sold, and "suckers" and "strikers" controlled the primary elections of both parties. These were the abuses. For their remedy it was argued that a new party must be formed. There were enough of good and pure men among the Democrats and Whigs to make up an organization which should be patriotic and Christian in character.3 Then war must be made against French infidelity, German scepticism and socialism, and the papacy. Of the three evils the papacy was considered the most dangerous.4

The principles of this new party were naturally evolved out of the ills which were deplored. An order which Washington was supposed to have given was taken as the keynote. "Put none but Americans on guard to-night," he had said when dangers and difficulties thickened around him; and the shade of the Father of his country seemed to say across the ages, "Americans should rule America." This was the fundamental doctrine of the Know-nothing party. The immediate and practical aim in view was that foreigners
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1 Von Hoist, vol. v. p. 99; Sons of the Sires, p. 93.
2 Sons of the Sires, p. 26; Sam, or the History of a Mystery, p. 534
3 Sons of the Sires, pp. 16,17, 46, and 87.
4 Ibid., pp. 50 and 52.

and Catholics should be excluded from all national, State, county, and municipal offices; that strenuous efforts should be made to change the naturalization laws, so that the immigrant could not become a citizen until after a residence of twenty-one years in this country.1

No one can deny that ignorant foreign suffrage had grown to be an evil of immense proportions. Had the remedies sought by the Know-nothings been just and practicable and their methods above suspicion, the movement, though ill-timed, might be justified at the bar of history. But when the historian writes that a part of their indictment was true, and that the organization attracted hosts of intelligent and good men, he has said everything creditable that can be said of the Know-nothing party. The crusade against the Catholic Church was contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, and was as unnecessary as it was unwise. The statistics showed plainly that the Catholics were not sufficiently numerous to justify alarm.' He who studied the spirit of the times could see this as clearly as he who compared the figures. The Catholic hierarchy can only be dangerous when human reason is repressed, and no one has ever asserted that the last half of the nineteenth century is
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1 All Know-nothings were agreed that the time of residence should be extended. The twenty-one years was a favorite period, as the American born could not vote until they were twenty-one. Some, however, would be satisfied with a fifteen-year limit. Sons of the Sires, p. 71.
2 See the figures as given in a History of the Political Campaign of 1855 by James P. Hambleton, p. 9, where Henry A. Wise states that—

The Baptists provide accommodations for 3,247,029
" Methodists " " " 4,343,579
" Presbyterians " " " 2,079,690
" Congregationalists " " " 801,835
Aggregate of four Protestant sects 10,472,133
The Catholics provide accommodations for 667,823
Majority of only four Protestant sects 9,804,310
Add the Episcopalians for 643,598
Majority of only five Protestant sects 10,447,908

an age of faith. The purposed exclusion of foreigners from office was illogical and unjust. The proposal to change essentially or repeal the naturalization laws was impracticable. Better means than these could be devised to correct the abuses of naturalization and fraudulent voting.1

The methods of the Know-nothings were more objectionable than their aims. The party was a vast secret society with ramifications in every State. Secret lodges were instituted everywhere, with passwords and degrees, grips and signs. The initiation was solemn. The candidate who presented himself for admission to the first degree must, with his right hand upon the Holy Bible and the cross, take a solemn oath of secrecy. Then, if he were twenty-one, if he believed in God, if he had been born in the United States, if neither he himself, nor his parents, nor his wife were Roman Catholics, and he had been reared under Protestant influence, he was considered a proper applicant. He was conducted from the ante-room to an inner chamber, where, in his official chair on the raised platform, the worthy president sate. There, with the right hand upon the Holy Bible and cross, and the left hand raised towards heaven, the candidate again took the solemn oath of secrecy, and further swore not to vote for any man unless he were a Protestant, an American-born citizen, and in favor of Americans ruling America. Then the term and degree passwords were given to the newly admitted member. The travelling password and explanation were communicated, and the sign of recognition and grip were explained. When he challenged a brother, he must ask, " What time?" The response would be, "Time for work." Then he should say, "Are you?" The answer would come, "We are." Then the two were in a position to engage in conversation in the interests of the order. The new member was further told that notice of mass-
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1 See a very able argument, undoubtedly by Greeley, in the New York Tribune, August 16th.

meetings was given by means of a triangular piece of white paper. If he should wish to know the object of the gathering, he must ask an undoubted brother, "Have you seen Sam to-day ?" and the information would be imparted. But if the notice were on red paper, danger was indicated, and the member must come prepared to meet it.

The president then addressed the men who had just joined the lodge, dilating upon the perils which threatened the country from the foreign-born and the Romanists. "A sense of danger has struck the great heart of the nation," he said. "In every city, town, and hamlet, the danger has been seen and the alarm sounded. And hence true men have devised this order as a means ... of advancing America and the American interest on the one side, and on the other of checking the stride of the foreigner or alien, of thwarting the machinations and subverting the deadly plans of the Jesuit and the Papist."

After a sufficient probation the member might be admitted to the second degree, where more oaths were taken and another password and countersign were given. But the great mystery was the name of the organization, which the president alone was entitled to communicate. At the proper time he solemnly declared: "Brothers,—You are members in full fellowship of The Supreme Order of the Star-spangled Banner." 1

For a time the secrets were well kept, but with a membership so large, matters connected with the organization were sure to leak out, and as the theme was susceptible of humorous treatment, people made merry over the supposed revelations. A Philadelphia journal thus exposed the manner of entrance to the local lodge: You must rap at the outer door several times in quick succession, and when the sentinel peeps through the wicket, inquire, "What meets here to-night?" He will answer, "I don't know." You
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1 My authority for this description is A History of the Political Campaign in Virginia in 1855, J. P. Hambleton, p. 46.

must then reply, "I am one," and he will open the door. At the second door four raps and the password, "Thirteen,"1 will obtain admission. When out in the world, when a brother gives you the grip, you must ask, "Where did you get that?" He will answer," I don't know." You must reply, " I don't know either," and you may then enter into full fellowship with a member of the mysterious order.2

When the curious inquired of the members of this party what were their principles and what their object, the answer invariably was," I know nothing;" and thus the popular name was given in derision. Yet this was not resented. The appellation expressed mystery, and mystery was aimed at. The real political and official name, however, was The American Party. A prevalent notion was that the Know-nothings always met at midnight, that they carried dark lanterns, that they pledged themselves in the dark by the most terrible oaths,3 and that their proceedings were inscrutable.

The number who joined these secret lodges was very large. They were made up of men who were incensed and alarmed at the power of foreign-born citizens in the elections; of those "whose daily horror and nightly spectre was the pope;"4 and of others for whom the secret ceremonies and mysterious methods were an attraction.6 But the most pregnant reason for the transient success of the order arose from the fact that, although the old parties at the North were rent into fragments, there was no readymade organization to take their place. Men were disgusted and dissatisfied with their political affiliations, and yearned to enlist under a banner that should display positive and sincere aims. If the anti-Nebraska members of Congress
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1 Referring to the thirteen original States.
2 Philadelphia Register, cited in New York Tribune, April 5th.
3 See speech of Douglas in the Senate, February 23d, 1855.
4 New York Tribune, November 28th. 4 Life of Bowles, p. 128.

had comprehended the situation, as did the freemen of Michigan, a national Republican party would at once have been formed and the Know-nothings would have lost a large element of strength. The position of the American party on slavery was not clear. Julian, of Indiana, charged that the organization was the result of a deeply laid scheme of the slavery propaganda, whose purpose was to precipitate a new issue upon the North and distract the public mind from the question of pith and moment.1 Douglas declared that it was simply abolitionism under a new guise.2 Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, emphatically maintained that the object of the Know-nothing order was the destruction of slavery.3 In general, it may be said that although at the North many anti-slavery men were in the organization, those who had the control wished to put forward their distinctive principles and keep the slavery question in abeyance. It seemed, therefore, to the Republicans that the Know-nothings, not being for them, were against them. At the South the Americans were chiefly represented by those opposed to the formation of a party on the one idea of slavery extension. Thus they incurred the displeasure of the Southerners who had made up their minds that the great issue must be settled before another could be discussed.

The Know-nothing movement, born of political unrest, augmented the ferment in the country. This was a year of excitement and lawlessness. Riots were frequent. Occasionally a band of women would make a raid on a bar-room, break the glasses, stave the whiskey casks, and pour the liquor into the streets.4 Garrison, infatuated by his own
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1 Political Recollections, Julian, p. 141.
2 Speech at Philadelphia, July 4th, 1854, Life of Douglas, Sheahan, p. 265.
3 Speech at Alexandria, Va., February 3d, 1855, History of the Political Campaign in Virginia in 1855, Hambleton, p. 93.
4 United States Review, August, 1854, p. 103. The article entitled "Abolition and Sectarian Mobs" is a faithful exposition of the way in which the ferment of the community was regarded by old-line Democrats and rigid Conservatives.

methods and blind to the trend of events, burned the Constitution of the United States at an open-air celebration of the abolitionists in Framingham, Mass. This action drew forth a few hisses and wrathful exclamations, but these were overborne by "a tremendous shout of ' Amen.'"1 Most of the disturbances, however, grew out of the Know-nothing crusade. A mob forced their way into the shed near the Washington monument, and broke to pieces a beautiful block of marble which came from the Temple of Concord at Rome, and had been sent by the pope as his tribute to the memory of Washington.2 A street preacher, who styled himself the "Angel Gabriel," excited a crowd at Chelsea, Mass., to deeds of violence. They smashed the windows of the Catholic church, tore the cross from the gable, and shivered it to atoms.3 The firemen and military were called out to aid the police in preserving order.

On one Sunday, in the City Hall Park of New York, a fight occurred between the advocates of a street preacher and those who were determined he should not speak. The latter got the worse of it, and the self-styled "missionary of the everlasting gospel," protected by a band of Know-nothings, was able to deliver his sermon.4 On the following Sunday the street preacher held forth in Brooklyn. When his discourse was finished, he was escorted to the ferry by about five thousand Know-nothings, who, on the way, were set upon by an equally large number of Irish Catholics. An angry fight ensued, in which volleys of stones were thrown from one side and bullets fired from the other. The police were unable to suppress the riot, and the mayor sent a regiment of military to their aid.5 During the week the excitement was intense, and on the next Sunday everything seemed ready for a violent explosion in Brooklyn.
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1 Life of Garrison, vol. iii. p. 412.
2 American Almanac, 1855, p. 47.
3 Boston Journal, cited by the New York Tribune, May 9th.
4 New York Times; New York Tribune, May 29th.
5 New York Times, June 5th.

But the authorities were prepared. The whole of the regular police force was on duty, assisted by a large number of special police and deputy sheriffs. Three regiments of military guarded the streets. The "Angel Gabriel" delivered a fierce invective against the "infernal Jesuit system" and "accursed popery." The precautions taken by the mayor to preserve the peace were so effective that only a slight outbreak took place. A detachment of the Know-nothing procession was attacked by a gang of Irishmen; but the police fired at the mob, and they quickly dispersed.1 Similar riots occurred in other cities of the country. The public mind was so engrossed with political and moral questions that, although cholera was epidemic at the North this summer, it awakened little anxiety and caused no panic.2

It is now time to consider the verdict of the Northern people on the Kansas-Nebraska act as evidenced in the elections. The first election after its enactment was in Iowa.3 Iowa had been a steadfast Democratic State. It had voted for two presidential candidates, Cass and Pierce. In the present Congress it had two Democratic senators, one Democratic and one Whig representative. Both of the senators and the Democratic representative voted for the Kansas-Nebraska bill; the Whig representative did not vote.

A governor was to be elected this year, and the Whigs
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1 New York Times, June 12th.
2 Except perhaps in Columbia, Pa., a village of 4340 inhabitants, where the death-rate was very large. New York Tribune, September 11th to 15th. The American Almanac gives the deaths from cholera from June 1st to November 5th (although practically all of them were in June, July, and August) as follows: New York,2435; Philadelphia,575; Boston,255; Pittsburgh, 600. There were deaths from cholera in nearly every Northern city I The yellow fever prevailed in Savannah and New Orleans, but with nothing like the virulence of the preceding year.
3 It will be remembered that the elections in New Hampshire and Connecticut, whose tendency was plainly anti-Nebraska, took place while the bill was pending; see vol. i. pp. 482,494.

had nominated James W. Grimes; a Free-soil convention had endorsed the nomination. Grimes issued a spirited manifesto, in which he declared that the extension of slavery was now the most important public question, and that Iowa, the only free child of the Missouri Compromise, should pronounce against its repeal. He made a thorough and vigorous canvass of the State, denouncing everywhere the "Nebraska infamy." The temperance issue entered slightly into the discussion, and the voters favorable to prohibition supported Grimes. The Know-nothing wave had not reached Iowa. Grimes was elected by two thousand four hundred and eighty-six majority. It was the first time the Democrats had ever been defeated in a State election, and they did not carry Iowa again for thirty-five years. Another result was the choice of a legislature which sent Harlan, an avowed Republican, to the United States Senate.1 No doubt could exist that the meaning of this election was the condemnation of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. "You have the credit," wrote Senator Chase to Grimes, "of fighting the best battle for freedom yet fought;"2 and two years later, when the Republican party had become a strong organization, Chase wrote the Iowa governor: "Your election was the morning star. The sun has risen now."3

In September, elections were held in Maine and Vermont. In Maine there were four State tickets, the Republican, the Whig, the Democratic, and that popularly termed the rum ticket. The Republican candidate for governor had a handsome plurality. Although there was no choice by the people, the Republicans had the legislature, which insured them the governor. In Vermont the canvass of the anti-Nebraska men was carried on under the name of Fusion; the result was a large majority in their favor. Vermont sent an unbroken anti-Nebraska delegation to the House of
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1 Life of James W. Grimes, Salter, pp. 39, 52,63.
2 Ibid., p. 54, October 31st, 1854.
3 Ibid., p. 53, August 23d, 1856; see New York Tribune, August 17th, 1854.

Representatives, and Maine, which had hitherto been a reliable Democratic State, only elected one Democratic congressman. The verdict of both of these States was unmistakably adverse to the Nebraska legislation. In neither of them did the temperance question have an important influence, for it had been settled. In Maine the voters of the rum ticket were a corporal's guard. Nor were the Know-nothings an appreciable element in the result. 1

In October elections took place in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. In Pennsylvania, the Whigs retained their organization, and the Free-soil Democrats ratified that ticket. They made opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska act the main question and elected their governor, but this was due to the assistance of the Know-nothings. The Know-nothings elected enough members to the legislature to hold the balance of power between the two parties; and the temperance question entered into the canvass, as a popular vote was taken on a prohibitory law. Yet the best test of sentiment in regard to the Missouri Compromise legislation was shown in the congressional elections. The present delegation consisted of sixteen Democrats and nine Whigs; that chosen this fall was made up of four Nebraska and five anti-Nebraska Democrats, fifteen anti-Nebraska Whigs, and one American.2

The anti-Nebraska People's party carried Ohio by seventy-five thousand majority and elected every representative to Congress. The anti-Nebraska party were successful in Indiana by thirteen thousand majority, and chose all the congressmen but two. In both of these States the Know-nothings co-operated with the anti-Nebraska organization. The temperance question entered into the discussion, and inured to the advantage of the successful party.3 Yet both
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1 See Fessenden's remarks in the Senate, February 23d, 1855.
2 New York Tribune, October 21st; New York Herald, October 13th. See also New York Times and Tribune Almanac.
3 New York Tribune; New York Times; Life of Chase, Schuckers, p. 165; Political Recollections, Julian, p. 144.

the temperance and Know-nothing ideas were overbalanced by the anti-slavery feeling. The verdict on that was unmistakable.1 Lincoln, disputing with Douglas at Peoria, commended to him as a refutation of his specious reasoning "the seventy thousand answers just in from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana."2

The contest in Illinois, Douglas's own State, possesses an added interest. Douglas arrived at Chicago, his home, the latter part of August, and gave notice that he would address his constituents on the evening of the 1st of September. Rarely has it been the lot of a senator to speak to a more discontented crowd than he confronted that night. The anti-slavery people were embittered at his course in regard to the Missouri Compromise; the Know-nothings were incensed at his vigorous denunciation of their order in a speech made at Philadelphia, July 4th; and the commercial interest of the city was indignant because he had opposed the River and Harbor bill. During the afternoon the flags of all the shipping in the harbor were hung at half mast; at dusk the bells of the churches were tolled as if for a funeral, and above the din might be heard the mournful sound of the big city bell. A doleful air pervaded the city. A host of men assembled to hear the justification of the senator, but among them he had hardly a friend. The first few sentences of the speech were heard in silence, but when he made what was considered an offensive remark, a terrible groan rolled up from the whole assemblage, followed by the unearthly Know-nothing yell. When silence was restored, Douglas continued, but every pro-slavery sentiment was met with long-continued groans. Several statements which the audience doubted were received with derisive laughter. After an hour of interruptions, Douglas lost his temper and abused the crowd, taunting them for being afraid to give him a hearing. This was received with overpowering
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1 New York Herald, October 13th; New York Tribune, October 19th. 2 Speech of October 16th, Life of Lincoln, Howells, p. 304.

groans and hisses; and at last Douglas, convinced that further attempt would be useless, yielded to the solicitations of his friends and withdrew from the platform.1

In the central part of the State, however, the people heard Douglas gladly. At Springfield, the doughty champion of popular sovereignty met Lincoln in friendly discussion, but, in spite of the prestige his successful career of politician had given him, he was discomfited by the plain Illinois lawyer, the depths of whose nature had been stirred by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The fallacy of justifying this action by the plea that it simply instituted the great principle of self-government in the territories was shown by Lincoln in a few words that went to the hearts of the audience. "My distinguished friend," he remarked, "says it is an insult to the emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska to suppose they are not able to govern themselves. We must not slur over an argument of this kind because it happens to tickle the ear. It must be met and answered. I admit that the emigrant to Kansas and Nebraska is competent to govern himself, but I deny his right to govern any other person without that person's consent." 2

In spite of the vigorous efforts of Douglas, Illinois did not sustain him. It is true that, owing to the popularity of their candidate for State treasurer, the Democrats carried the State ticket, and Douglas made the most of it;3 but the anti-Nebraska people elected five out of nine congressmen, and their majority in the State on the congressional vote was more than seventeen thousand. They also controlled the legislature, and sent Lyman Trumbull, an anti-Nebraska
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1 Reports of Chicago Tribune and Chicago Times, cited in New York Times, September 6th; letter from Veritas in New York Tribune, September 7th; the Liberator, September 8th; Life of Douglas, Sheahan, p. 271; Constitutional and Party Questions, Cutts, p. 98. The population of Chicago in 1854 was about sixty-five thousand.
2 Life of Lincoln, Holland, p. 138.
3 See debate in the Senate, February 23d, 1855.

Democrat, to the Senate. The power of the Know-nothings was exercised in opposition to the Douglas party. The course which the canvass took, and the result of the election in New York, exhibit a phase of the political situation different from any that prevailed in the West. An anti-Nebraska convention held in August adopted resolutions, reported by Horace Greeley, which grasped the situation fully and dealt only with the slavery question. In them every one was invited to unite "in the sacred cause of freedom, of free labor and free soil." It was a foregone conclusion that the Whigs would not give up their organization, to the maintenance of which the influence of Seward and Thurlow Weed had been directed. The Whigs, however, in their convention took pronounced ground in opposition to the extension of slavery. They nominated Clark for governor and Henry J. Raymond for lieutenant-governor. Both of these men were anti-slavery Whigs, in full sympathy with Seward. This ticket was adopted by the adjourned anti-Nebraska convention and by the Temperance party. If the fusionists had encountered no opposition save from the Democrats, the result would never have been in doubt. Both factions of this party made nominations. The Hards endorsed the Kansas Nebraska bill; the Softs approved the policy of Pierce's administration, and nominated Horatio Seymour for governor, thus making a direct issue of prohibition.

But the Know-nothings were an unknown quantity. They had all along been feared by the Whigs, and when the grand council met at New York City in October, the anxiety knew no bounds. It was a curious political contention. Publicity is desired for ordinary gatherings of the kind; newspaper reporters are welcomed, for it is thought that a detailed account of the proceedings may awaken interest and arouse enthusiasm. But such views did not obtain in the grand council. About eight hundred delegates met at the grand-lodge room of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. A long file of sentinels guarded the portals; newspaper reporters and outsiders were strictly excluded.

The credentials of each delegate were subjected to a rigid scrutiny before he was admitted to the hall. While no authoritative account of the transactions could be given, and profound secrecy was desired by the Know-nothings in regard to every circumstance, it leaked out that a State ticket had been nominated. Ullman, a conservative Whig, was the candidate for governor.1 No declaration of principles was published; no public meetings were held to advocate their platform and candidates; they had not the powerful aid of a devoted press; everything was done in the dark. But every Know-nothing was bound by oath to support any candidate for political office who should be nominated by the order to which he belonged.2

When the November election day came the work of this mysterious organization was made manifest. The Know-nothings, said an apologist, do everything systematically and noiselessly; their votes "fall as the quietly descending dew." 3 Unseen and unknown, wrote an exponent who was elected to Congress, the order "wielded an overwhelming influence wherever it developed its power. ... In many a district where its existence was unsuspected, it has, in an hour, like the unseen wind, swept the corruptionist from his power and placed in office the unsoliciting but honest and capable citizen." 4

When the votes were counted, every one but the Know-nothings themselves was astounded. A current estimate of their strength as sixty thousand had seemed extravagant, but they polled more than double that number. Ullman had 122,282; Clark had 156,804; Seymour had 156,495; and Bronson, the " Hard" candidate, had 33,850. Clark's plurality was 309.
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1 New York Times; New York Tribune.
2 Speech of Smith, House of Representatives, February 6th, 1855; History of Political Campaign in Virginia, 1855, Hambleton, p. 51.
3 Sons of the Sires, p. 157.
4 A Defence of the American Policy, Whitney, p. 288.

The anti-slavery and temperance sentiment was overshadowed by the American feeling. It was conceded that the Know-nothings had drawn more from the Whigs than from the Democrats. Yet in the congressional elections the opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had full play. Twenty-seven out of a total of thirty-three representatives were chosen as anti-Nebraska men.

The election in Massachusetts took place a few days later than in New York. Here the political situation was different from that in any other State. An attempt was made to form a Republican party, and a convention was held under that name. Sumner made a powerful speech, and his influence was dominant. Henry Wilson was nominated for governor. The Whigs would not give up their organization, and the Republicans were therefore nothing but the old Free-soil party under another name.1 The Whigs adopted strong anti-slavery resolutions, and nominated Emory Washburn for governor. The Know-nothings, by their secret methods, put Gardner in the field. Gardner had been a conservative Whig, but was now understood to be an antislavery man, and the bulk of his supporters were certainly opposed to slavery extension. In truth, the people of Massachusetts were all, with the exception of a few Democrats, so strongly opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise that the question could not be made a political issue.2 The contest was virtually between the Whigs and Know-nothings, and the Whig discomfiture was complete. Gardner had more than fifty thousand majority over Washburn. The Whigs had been fairly confident of success, and their amazement was unbounded. But the Know-nothings knew absolutely what they might reckon upon. Congdon relates that Brewer and he, who were the editors of the Boston Atlas, met Gardner in the street shortly before the election.
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1 See Boston Courier, Traveller, and Journal; Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 414.
2 See remarks of Wilson, United States Senate, February 23d, 1855.

Know-nothing candidate said to Brewer: "You had better not abuse me as you are abusing me in the Atlas. I shall be elected by a very large majority."1 To Congdon, the movement seemed like "a huge joke;" and it is undeniable that the humorous side of the organization had attractions for many voters who anticipated amusement from the unlooked-for and startling effects.2 The Congressmen elected were all Know-nothings, but all were anti-slavery. The legislature, almost wholly made up of members of the American party, sent Henry Wilson to the Senate.

Wilson's hatred of slavery was greater than his distrust of Irishmen or Catholics. Undoubtedly he would have preferred Republican to Know-nothing success; but he was ambitious for place, and he saw in the craze of the moment a convenient stepping-stone to political position. Although refused admission to one Know-nothing lodge, he persisted in his purpose, and succeeded afterwards in getting regularly initiated in another. 3

The Republicans of Michigan and Wisconsin were eminently successful at their elections, and the results justified the steps which they had taken towards the formation of a new party.

This account of the fall elections may be tedious in its details, but it seems necessary to enter into the matter minutely in order to show whether there were important limitations to the statement that the North in the fall elections emphatically condemned the Kansas-Nebraska legislation. Douglas, with characteristic effrontery, maintained that there had been no anti-Nebraska triumph. The Democrats, he said, had been obliged to contend against a fusion which had been organized by Know-nothing councils, and their
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1 Reminiscences of a Journalist, Congdon, p. 145.
2 See also Life of Bowles, vol. i. p. 124.
3 Congdon, p. 146, see also pp. 87,132; also Life of Bowles, p. 124; Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, chap, xxxii.; Julian's comments on the same, Political Recollections, p. 143.

mysterious way of working had taken men by surprise, and was therefore the great reason of success; but it was a Know-nothing and not an anti-Nebraska victory.1 The groundlessness and the specious character of this explanation are shown by the detailed recital. And if we view the political revolution with regard to the fortunes of the Democratic party, the results will seem more striking than I have stated them. The Democrats had in the present House of Representatives a majority of eighty-four. In the House which was elected after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, they would be in a minority of seventy-five, and on slavery questions would be obliged to form an alliance with thirty-seven Whigs and Know-nothings of pro-slavery principles.2 Of forty-two Northern Democrats who had voted for the Kansas-Nebraska bill, only seven were re-elected.3 The National Intelligencer made a comparison of the elections of 1852 and 1854, showing that without taking into account Massachusetts, the Democratic loss in the Northern States had been 347,742. 4 The most weighty reason for this revulsion of feeling was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.5

Yet, considering the popular sentiment at the time of the enactment of the Nebraska bill, the declaration was not as positive and clear as might have been expected. Public indignation at the breach of plighted faith, dissatisfaction with the old parties, and the resulting political and moral agitation needed a national leader to give them proper direction. Had there been a leader, much of that magnificent moral energy which vented its force against Irishmen and Catholics
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1 Remarks in the Senate, February 23d, 1855.
2 I have followed the classification of the Tribune Almanac for the new Congress; for the Thirty-third Congress I followed that in the Congressional Globe. The members of the Thirty-fourth Congress were not all chosen by November, 1854, but nearly all from the Northern States had been elected.
3 New York Tribune, January 11th, 1855.
4 November 16th.
5 See Charleston Mercury, October 25th; New York Herald, October 13th, November 10th.

might have been turned into anti-slavery channels. Two men came out of the congressional contest over the Nebraska bill with apparently sufficient prestige to build up a new party. Chase, indeed, did not object to a new organization, and would have been willing to head such a movement ;1 but the chief element of the new party must come from the Northern Whigs. Chase, having entered public life under Democratic auspices, was obnoxious to the Ohio Whigs, and it would have been impossible even for a man of more tact than he to overcome the personal and political objections to his leadership.2

But Seward had the position, the ability, and the character necessary for the leadership of a new party. He was the idol of the anti-slavery Whigs. He was admired and trusted by most of the Free-soilers and anti-Nebraska Democrats. "The repeal of the Missouri Compromise," said the New York Times, "has developed a popular sentiment in the North which will probably elect Governor Seward to the Presidency in 1856 by the largest vote from the free States ever cast for any candidate."3 "Seward is in the ascendency in this State and the North generally," said the Democratic New York Post4 "The man who should have impelled and guided the general uprising of the free States is W. H. Seward," asserted Greeley.5

It was the tide in Seward's affairs, but he did not take it at the flood. "Shall we have a new party ?" asked the New York Independent. "The leaders for such a party do not appear. Seward adheres to the Whig party." 6

Perhaps the sympathies of Seward were heartily enlisted in the movement for a new party and he was held back by Thurlow Weed. Perhaps he would have felt less trammeled had not his senatorship been at stake in the fall election. The fact is, however, that the Republican movement in the West and New England received no word of encouragement
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1 Life of Chase, Schuckers, p. 157.
2 Ibid., p. 94.
3 June 1st.
4 May 23d.
5 New York Tribune, November 9th.
6 July 27th.

from him. He did not make a speech, even in the State of New York, during the campaign. His care and attention were engrossed in seeing that members of the legislature were elected who would vote for him for senator. The Know-nothings were bitterly opposed to him, and he had no sympathy with the organization. Yet it was currently believed that his candidate for governor had endeavored to become a member of a Know-nothing lodge;1 it was also charged that emissaries instructed by the followers of Seward had secured admission to the order.2

Had Seward sunk the politician in the statesman; had he made a few speeches, such as he well knew how to make, in New York, New England, and the West; had he emphatically denounced Know-Nothingism as Douglas did at Philadelphia, or as he did after he had been chosen senator for another term;3 had he vigorously asserted that every cause must be subordinate to union under the banner of opposition to the extension of slavery,—the close of the year 1854 would have seen a triumphant Republican party in every Northern State but California, and Seward its acknowledged leader. Had Douglas been in Seward's place, how quickly would he have grasped the situation, and how skilfully would he have guided public opinion! There was a greater politician and statesman in Illinois than Douglas, who was admirably fitted to head a popular movement; but beyond his own State, Lincoln was unknown: he had not a position from which he could speak with authority and which would obtain him a hearing from the whole people. No man, however, understood the situation better; and of all utterances against the Nebraska legislation, none equalled Lincoln's in making
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1 New York Tribune, November 9th.
2 Defence of American Policy, Whitney, p. 289.
3 Douglas's speech was made July 4th, 1854. See Sheahan, p. 267; Cutts, p. 122. Seward did not criticise the principles and methods of the order until February 23d, 1855, in the Senate. Even then his remarks were characterized by a certain levity which weakened their force. See Congressional Globe, vol. xxxi. p. 241.

plain to the people the gravity of the step which had been taken and the necessity of united action to undo the wrong. The speech which he made at Peoria in answer to Douglas tore up the sophistry, political and historical, of the Illinois senator. In it he demonstrated that the ordinance of 1787 had given freedom to their State; he told the history of the Missouri Compromise, and explained the compromise of 1850 in words which were alike clear and profound. This speech, marking justly an important epoch in the life of Lincoln, has yet little to do with the history of the country; for it was published in but one Illinois newspaper, and was not known outside of his own State.1 It made him, indeed, the leader of his party in Illinois, and was therefore an earnest of further advancement.2 But it is safe to say that had Lincoln been known at the North as were Seward and Chase, and had this speech been delivered in the principal States, it would have acted powerfully to fuse the jarring elements into the union which the logic of the times demanded. Douglas appreciated the force of Lincoln's arguments with the people, and admitted that they were giving him more trouble than all the speeches in the United States Senate. He begged that Lincoln would speak no more during this campaign, he himself agreeing also to desist.3

The history of the political campaign of this year would
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1 Life of Lincoln, Arnold, p. 121.
2 See History of Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, Century Magazine, vol. xxxiii. p. 863. Their remark refers to the Springfield speech. Lincoln spoke at Springfield, October 4th, and at Peoria, October 16th, both times in answer to Douglas. No report was made of the Springfield speech, but Lincoln wrote out the Peoria speech after its delivery, and had it published in seven consecutive issues of the Daily IllinoisJournal. Lamon, p. 359. The two speeches were substantially the same. The Peoria speech may be found in the Campaign Life of Lincoln, by Howells. The only notice I found in Eastern newspapers of Lincoln's efforts was in a letter from Springfield to the New York Times of October 13th, where the mention was briefly: "Lincoln made a most unanswerable speech against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise."
3 Life of Lincoln, Herndon, p. 373; Lamon, p. 358.

not be complete without notice of the work done by the press in pushing into prominence the slavery question. The advocacy of a course of action whose ultimate end should be to give freedom to more than three million oppressed beings seemed to have an elevating influence on journalists,1 and the anti-slavery newspapers of this year are full of the outpourings of sincere men who devoted their ability with enthusiasm to what they deemed a sacred cause. Nor will it be invidious to mention the editor who had the foremost influence in educating public sentiment.2 Horace Greeley is the journalist most thoroughly identified with the formation of the Republican party on the platform of opposition to slavery extension. He was a man both speculative and practical,3 and at no time did the union of these opposite qualities appear to better advantage than in the conduct of his journal during this year. He was emphatically antislavery, but only sought the attainable. He was strongly in favor of prohibitory legislation, and just as strongly opposed to Know-nothingism.

The 112,000 copies of the New York Weekly Tribune were not the measure of its peculiar influence,4 for it was pre-eminently the journal of the rural districts, and one copy did service for many readers. To the people living in the Adirondack wilderness it was a political bible, and the well-known scarcity of Democrats there was attributed to it. Yet it was as freely read by the intelligent people living on the Western Reserve of Ohio.5 The power which
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1 See Reminiscences of a Journalist, Congdon, p. 254.
2 As an illustration, see the Kansas Crusade, Thayer, p. 40.
3 See Congdon, p. 218.
4 The circulation in November, 1854, was, daily, 27,360; semi-weekly, 12,120; weekly, 112,800; total, 152,280. The circulation of the weekly had nearly doubled in a year. On February 10th, 1855, when the total circulation was 172,000, the Tribune estimated its readers at half a million.
5 See In the Wilderness, Chas. Dudley Warner, p. 95. In the Adirondacks, if the Weekly Tribune "was not a Providence, it was a Bible."
Under the humor of the remarks about the Western Reserve is veiled a correct appreciation of the influence of this journal, see p. 96.
"Why do you look so gloomy ?" said a traveller riding along the highway in the Western Reserve, in the old anti-slavery days, to a farmer who was sitting moodily on a fence. "Because," said the farmer," my Democratic friend next door got the best of me in an argument last night. But when I get my semi-weekly Tribune tomorrow, I'll knock the foundations all out from under him."—Chauncey M. Depew, at the Tribune celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, April 10th, 1891.

this journal exerted is best appreciated in these two sections of country. Its influence in northern New York and northern Ohio is a type of what it wielded in all the agricultural districts of the North where New England and New York people predominated.'

It is one of the curiosities of human nature that Greeley, who exceeded in influence many of our Presidents, should have hankered so constantly for office. It is strange enough that the man who wrote as a dictator of public opinion in the Tribune of the 9th of November could write two days later the letter to Seward, dissolving the political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley. In that letter, the petulance of the office-seeker is shown, and the grievous disappointment that he did not get the nomination for lieutenant-governor, which went instead to Raymond,' stands out plainly.
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1 The Weekly Tribune, in addition to being an outspoken opponent of slavery, also contained a fund of all kinds of information. Among the recollections of my school-days is that of a teacher who, amazed at the encyclopedic knowledge of passing events and current topics which one of the schoolboys displayed, went to his father to learn how he kept so thoroughly informed on politics, literature, and science, and was told: "He reads the New York Weekly Tribune."
2 This letter may be found in Recollections oi a Busy Life, Greeley, p. 315. It was not published until 1860; see also Memoir of Thurlow Weed.
Seward wrote Weed, November 12th: "To-day I have a long letter from him [Greeley], full of sharp, pricking thorns. I judge, as we might indeed well know, from his, at the bottom, nobleness of disposition, that he has no idea of saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it is sad to see him so unhappy. Will there be a vacancy in the Board of Regents this winter? Could one be made at the close of the session? Could he have it? Raymond's nomination and election is hard for him to bear." —Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 239.

The New York Independent, a weekly religious journal, had great influence in causing its readers to espouse the antislavery cause with devotion. From the time of the subsidence of the excitement which followed the passage of the Fugitive Slave law to the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, this newspaper had scarcely a word for politics. One would hardly have known from its columns in 1852 that a President was to be elected that year, nor did public affairs attract its attention in 1853. But with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the moral question entered again into politics. The Independent teemed with articles on the subject. Henry Ward Beecher wielded his vigorous pen in the service, and inculcated without ceasing the Christian's duty to liberty.1 Moreover, Beecher and the Independent combated the principles and methods of Know-nothingism.2

Some of the legislatures which came into power, as a consequence of the anti-Nebraska wave, did not delay to formulate the feeling of their constituents regarding the Fugitive Slave act into laws. Personal Liberty laws, similar to the act of Vermont of 1850, were now passed by Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Michigan. Their proposed object was to prevent free colored citizens from being carried into slavery on a claim that they were fugitive slaves. In general, they provided that certain legal officers of the State should act as counsel for any one arrested as a fugitive; that negroes who were so claimed should be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus and of trial by jury; they prohibited the use of the jails of the State for detaining fugitives; and they made the seizure of a free person with intent to reduce him to slavery a crime, the penalty for which was a heavy fine and imprisonment.3 The practical effect of these laws

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1 See biography of Henry Ward Beecher, p. 272.
2 The extreme abolitionists represented by the Liberator also opposed Know-nothingism. See the Liberator, November 10th and 17th.
3 A succinct history and a systematic analysis of the Personal Liberty laws may be found in the Fay House Monograph, Fugitive Slaves, Marion G. McDougall, p. 66; see also article of Alex. Johnston, Personal Liberty laws, Lalor's Cyclopaedia. The Vermont "Act relating to the writ of habeas corpus to persons claimed as fugitive slaves and the right of trial by jury" was approved November 13th, 1850. And the Vermont "Act for the defence of liberty and for the punishment of kidnapping " was approved November 14th, 1854.

was to surround with difficulties the apprehension of fugitive slaves, while the result hoped for was that the pursuit of them would be abandoned. These acts crystallized the public sentiment of those communities into a statute. They were dangerously near the nullification of a United States law, and, had not the provocation seemed great, would not have been adopted by people who had drunk in with approval Webster's idea of nationality. It must be noted that not until after the Fugitive Slave act had been on the statute book more than four years were the Personal Liberty laws, except that of Vermont, enacted, and it was not the unfairness of the act which caused them to be passed. While they were undeniably conceived in a spirit of bad faith towards the South, they were a retaliation for the grossly bad faith involved in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Nullification cannot be defended; but in a balancing of the wrongs of the South and the North, it must be averred that in this case the provocation was vastly greater than the retaliation.

Another manifestation of public sentiment may be seen in the manner that the Underground Railroad was regarded. Its aim had come to be sympathized with, and its methods were no longer unqualifiedly condemned. It was a system born of sympathy with fugitive slaves fleeing from what they considered the worst of ills. It was composed of a chain of friends and houses of refuge for the fleeing negro from Maryland through Pennsylvania and New York or New England to Canada, and from Kentucky and Virginia through Ohio to Lake Erie or the Detroit River. The arrangements were well understood by the negroes on the border, and Olmsted found that the Under-
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ground Railroad was even known in southwestern Louisiana.1 The houses were called stations, and the sympathizing white men station-keepers or conductors.' If the fugitive successfully eluded pursuit until he reached the first station, he was reasonably sure of reaching his goal. He was given a pass to the next station, and energetic friends had means to help him along until he arrived under the protection of the British flag. William Still, a negro who styles himself chairman of the acting vigilant committee of the Philadelphia branch of the Underground Railroad, has compiled a huge volume, which is a narration of the " hardships, hair-breadth escapes, and death-struggles of the slaves in their efforts for freedom," and he also gives "sketches of some of the largest stockholders and most liberal aiders and advisers of the road."' Men of reputation were engaged in this work. Samuel J. May glories in the fact that he was one of the conductors of the Underground Railroad.4 Theodore Parker was one of its managers.5 Thurlow Weed would sometimes turn away from his political manoeuvres to give aid and comfort to a runaway slave.6 There was a strong undercurrent of sympathy with the fugitive, which, when it did not go to the length of breaking the law, winked at its infraction. A United States marshal at Boston, under a Democratic administration, said to James Freeman Clarke: "When I was a marshal and they tried to make me find their slaves, I would say, 'I do not know where your niggers are, but I will see if I can find out.' So I always went to Garrison's office and said,' I want you to find such and such a negro; tell me where he is.' The next thing I knew, the fellow would be in Canada."7 The
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1 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 37.
2 Recollections of the Anti-slavery Conflict, S. J. May, p. 297.
3 The Underground Railroad, William Still, Philadelphia, 1871.
4 Recollections of the Anti-slavery Conflict, p. 297.
5 Weiss, vol. ii. p. 93.
6 Life of Thurlow Weed, vol. ii. p. 297. 7 Anti-slavery Days, Clarke, p. 87.

wife of George S. Hillard used to secrete fugitives in an upper chamber of their house in Boston; and although Hillard was a United States commissioner especially charged with the execution of the Fugitive Slave law, he affected not to know what was going on under his own roof.1 Greeley knew politicians who would openly proclaim the duty of law-abiding citizens to assist in the recovery of fugitive slaves, yet who would secretly contribute money to be used in furthering their escape to Canada.2 This inconsistency has been finely worked up in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," where a senator, who has been busy in his legislature, helping to make a law against giving aid and comfort to fugitive slaves who should cross the Ohio River into his own State of Ohio, is prevailed upon himself to leave a warm fireside at midnight and drive over roads deep with mud a runaway bondwoman and her child, and set them down at a station of the Underground Railroad.

The operations of this system of helping fugitives are occasionally referred to in the newspapers. One journal gleefully reports that it learns from one of the conductors that travel over his line is rapidly increasing.3

It must be borne in mind that the Personal Liberty laws and the Underground Railroad derive their chief historical importance not from the positive work which they accomplished, but from the circumstance that they were manifestations of popular sentiment. The number of fugitives who escaped into the free States annually did not exceed one thousand.4 The number of arrests of fugitives, of which an account was had, from the passage of the 1850 law to the middle of 1856 was only two hundred.5 But the
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1 Anti-slavery Days, Clarke, p. 83.
2 The American Conflict, Greeley, vol. i. p. 221.
3 Detroit Tribune, cited by New York Tribune, May 17th, 1854; see also New York Tribune, December 18th, 1854.
4 United States Census, 1850 and 1860.
5 Life of Parker, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 93. William Jay wrote in June, 1853, that the law had been on the statute-book two years and nine months, and not fifty slaves had been recovered under it. Autographs for Freedom, p. 39.


rendition of Burns drew the attention of every Northern man to three million negroes in slavery, and every fugitive who was helped on by the Underground Railroad had a number of sympathizers, and the tale of his sufferings awakened sympathy for his brothers in bondage. Some men were profoundly affected by the injustice done an inferior race; others were indignant at the growth of the political influence of the South; but, little by little, men were beginning to think that, come what may, they would no longer submit to the encroachments of slavery.

The only time that the question of slavery came up in the Senate of the second session of the Thirty-third Congress was in the debate on a bill of Toucey, of Connecticut, whose object, although disguised in generalities, was to secure the stringent execution of the Fugitive Slave act. It was called forth by the Personal Liberty laws already passed and others which were threatened, and the design was to render them nugatory. Toucey's bill went through the Senate, but was not brought up in the House. Sumner again introduced as an amendment a provision for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law. While two and one-half years previously only three senators voted with him, he had now a following of eight; and Seward, who before had dodged the question, now not only voted with Sumner, Chase, and Wade, but delivered an invective against the whole system of fugitive slave legislation. This question was one that would not down. During the year, Maine and Massachusetts passed Personal Liberty laws. Governor Gardner vetoed the bill of the Massachusetts legislature. He was fortified by an opinion of the attorney-general of the State that the bill was "clearly repugnant to the provisions of the Constitution of the United States," and its inevitable tendency and effect would be "to bring the courts of the United States and their officers into an irreconcilable conflict with those of the Commonwealth." The legislature, however, promptly passed the bill over the governor's veto.1

The Kansas question began to attract attention this year. The people in western Missouri were strongly pro-slavery, and they honestly supposed that the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act implied that Kansas was given over to slavery. As soon as the act was signed they commenced to make settlements in the new territory, and staked out much of the best land.2 Simultaneously, actuated by the pioneer spirit, there was a large emigration to Kansas from the Western States, especially from Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana.3 In July, 1854, the Emigrant-Aid Company sent out its first party from New England. Eli Thayer was the soul of this enterprise. The avowed object of the company was to make Kansas a free State; and the emigrants who were at different times assisted by it went out with that end in view, as well as with the usual desire of bettering their fortunes.4 Thayer had been successful in interesting Greeley in the movement, and had his support and the influence of the Weekly Tribune. Other journals kept their public informed, and appealed for encouragement of the company.5 Nevertheless, the general opinion at this time in the North was that the plans of the western Missourians were so well laid that Kansas would
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1 See acts and resolves passed by the General Court of Massachusetts, in the year 1855, chap. 489, pp. 924-929. The veto message of the governor and the opinion of the attorney-general are printed in the Liberator of May 25th.
2 Spring's Kansas, p. 26.
3 See speech of Douglas, Senate, April 4th, 1856; Kanzas and Nebraska, Hale, p. 233. "At this early day [July, 1854] emigrants from every Western State were pouring in. We had not yet heard of the New England Emigrant-Aid Society."—Address of Samuel N. Wood, Quarter Centennial celebration, Publications of the Kansas Historical Society, vol. i. p. 236. Also, Kansas, by Sara T. L. Robinson, p. 27.
4 In 1854, Thayer's company sent out five hundred emigrants; during the whole period of emigration it sent out three thousand. The Kansas Crusade, pp. 54 and 57.
5 The Kansas Crusade, Eli Thayer, pp. 36, 69, 171.

be colonized by slave-holders and slaves.1 But Thayer did not think so. He was as ardent a believer in popular sovereignty as Douglas himself, and in a strife between free State and slave-State emigration he felt sure that the cause of freedom would win.2 Yet his aims and those of his followers were peaceful. New England emigrants and Sharpe's rifles are closely associated in Kansas history; but during the summer and fall of 1854, the Emigrant-Aid Company did not furnish its patrons any implements of war.3 The scheme was to gain Kansas for freedom by permanently settling there more voters than the other side could send. This was in accordance with the principle of the sovereignty of the people which Douglas had invoked.

The operations of the Emigrant-Aid Company and its branches being freely reported, caused great excitement in Western Missouri. The methods of these societies were misrepresented, but their aim, openly avowed, of making Kansas a free State was in itself enough to arouse indignation, and means were devised to check this movement of New England.4 In October, 1854, Blue Lodges were formed in Missouri. These were secret societies, with the methods and paraphernalia of an organization, whose members are bound together by secret oaths. Their purpose was to extend slavery into Kansas. Popular sovereignty meant to them the right of Missourians to vote at the territorial elections in furtherance of the design which had given rise to the Blue Lodges.5
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1 See Seward's speech in the Senate, May 25th, 1854; also, conversation of Greeley and Thayer, The Kansas Crusade, chap. iii.; the Liberator of July 13th, 1855, cited in Spring's Kansas. The evidence of the statement in the text can be multiplied almost without end.
2 The Kansas Crusade, pp. 22, 74, 254.
3 Spring's Kansas, p. 40; Eli Thayer's testimony, Howard Report, p. 884.
4 See Douglas's Report on Kansas, March, 1856; speech in the Senate, March 20th, 1856.
5 Report of Howard and Sherman, generally known as the Howard Report to the House of Representatives, p. 3.

Meanwhile Andrew Reeder of Pennsylvania, the governor of the territory, arrived. President Pierce appreciated that the position was an important one, and had made the selection with care. Reeder was an able lawyer and a man of energy and integrity. He had accumulated some property, had not solicited the appointment, but had been urged for the place by men of position and character.1 He sympathized fully with Douglas in the Kansas-Nebraska legislation, was a devoted friend of the South, and, after receiving the appointment, had said in conversation that he would have no more scruples in buying a slave than a horse.2 Reeder had watched the operations of the emigrant-aid societies, and before he set out for Kansas had expressed the opinion that if he had any trouble in the administration of his territory, it would come from the New England colonists.3

Governor Reeder appointed November 29th, 1854, for the election of a territorial delegate, and on that day seventeen hundred and twenty-nine Missourians came over into Kansas and swelled the pro-slavery vote.4 Whitfield, their candidate, would have been elected without the aid of this organized invasion, for the free-State settlers took little interest in this election, as they did not consider that the question of free institutions was in any way involved in it.5 Not the slightest objection was made in the House of Representatives at Washington to Whitfield's taking his seat.

The affairs in Kansas had no influence whatever on the elections of 1854. The interest they excited was slight, and they were hardly mentioned in the canvass. Lincoln, indeed, told Douglas that his popular-sovereignty doctrine
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1 By Judge Parker and J. W. Forney.
2 Washington Union, cited by Nicolay and Hay, Century Mag. vol. xxxiii. p. 870, and by Greeley, American Conflict, vol. i. p. 237.
3 Publications of the Kansas State Historical Society, vol. i. p. 5 et seq.; Anecdotes of Public Men, Forney, vol. i. p. 193.
4 Howard Report, p. 8.
5 Ibid., p. 8.

was almost certain to bring the Yankees and Missourians into collision over the question of slavery in Kansas, and that it was probable that the contest would come to blows and bloodshed. With prophetic soul, he asked, "Will not the first drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the Union?"1

The general opinion at Washington in the winter of 1855 was that Kansas would be made slave territory. To antislavery men it seemed that the fight would come in Congress whether or not she should be admitted as a slave State. The acquiescence in the November election seemed to indicate that the work of the emigrant-aid companies had come to nothing, and that no effective opposition to the Missourians could be expected.2

There was, however, an active free-State party in the territory who were looking forward to the next election to display their strength. The governor appointed March 30th, 1855, for the election of a territorial legislature. Election day was also taken note of in Missouri; and before it came, "an unkempt, sun-dried, blatant, picturesque mob of five thousand Missourians, with guns upon their shoulders, revolvers stuffing their belts, bowie-knives protruding from their boot-tops, and generous rations of whiskey in their wagons," had marched into Kansas to assist in the election of the legislature.3 Atchison was at the head of one company, and was prominent in the direction of the movement. The invaders were distributed with military precision, and were sent into every district but one. Where the election judges were not pro-slavery men, the mob awed them into submission or drove them away by threats. Six thousand three hundred and seven votes were counted, of which more than three-quarters were cast by the Missourians.4 Doctor
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1 Speech at Peoria, October 16th, 1854, Life of Lincoln, Howells, p. 288.
2 See J. S. Pike's Washington letters to the New York Tribune, February 5th, 6th, 10th, 1855, Pike's First Blows of the Civil War, p. 269 et seq.
3 Spring's Kansas, p. 44; see, also, Kansas, Sara Robinson, p. 27.
4 Howard Report, p. 30.

Robinson, who had been sent out by the Emigrant-Aid Company, and whose courage, tact, and earnestness had made him leader of the free-State party, wrote to A. A. Lawrence, of Boston :1 " The election is awful, and will no doubt be set aside. So says the governor, although his life is threatened if he does not comply with the Missourians' demands. I, with others, shall act as his body-guard." 2 The body-guard was needed. The time for making protests was but four days, and courage was required to object to this manifestation of popular sovereignty. The Missourians threatened to kill any one who endeavored to get signers to a protest. As it was rumored that the governor was indignant at the method used to carry the election and might order a new one, they openly said that he could have fifteen minutes to decide whether he would give certificates to those who had the most votes, or be shot.3 The scene in the executive chamber when the governor canvassed the returns was an apt illustration of the result of the Douglas doctrine, when put in force by rude people in a new country, and when a question had to be decided over which the passions of men were excited to an intense degree. The thirty-nine members who, on the face of the returns, were elected were seated on one side of the room, the governor and fourteen friends on the other. All were armed to the teeth. Reeder's pistols, cocked, lay on the table by the side of the papers relating to the elections. Protests of fraud were received from only seven districts. Although the governor did not assume to throw out members on account of force and fraud, he did set aside, on technicalities, the elections in those districts and ordered new elections. To the others he
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1 Amos A. Lawrence was a gentleman of wealth and social position in Boston; was treasurer of the Emigrant-Aid Company, and was personally a large contributor to it.
2 Letter of April 4th, cited in Spring's Kansas, p. 49.
3 Kansas, Sara Robinson, p. 29; Reeder's testimony, Howard Report, p. 936.

issued certificates, so that the pro-slavery party was largely in the ascendency in the legislature.1

The indignation in the free States at this perversion of popular government was unbounded.2 The fraud was well understood. The anti-slavery newspapers had circumstantial and truthful accounts from correspondents who were on the ground. The New England emigrants were people who could wield a facile pen. They wrote home to relations and friends letters which were read by every one in the town, and were afterwards given to the county paper for publication.3 Evidence like this from well-known people was sufficient in itself to mould the sentiment of all rural New England. There could be no dispute about the facts. Reeder came East in April, and told the story to his friends and neighbors at Easton, his Pennsylvania home. His speech through the medium of the press appealed to the whole North. He declared that the territory of Kansas in her late election was invaded by a regular organized army, armed to the teeth, who took possession of the ballot boxes and made a legislature to suit the purpose of the proslavery party; and he assured his hearers that the accounts of fierce outrages and wild violences perpetrated at the election published in the Northern papers were in no wise exaggerated.4 Reeder's seven months' contact with aggressive advocates of slavery had revolutionized the opinions of a lifetime. This the Northern people knew, and they implicitly believed his story. The cautious, truthful, and impartial orator Edward Everett, in his Fourth-of-July oration, whose subject," Dorchester in 1630,1776, and 1855," seemed
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1 Howard Report, pp. 35 and 936; Sara Robinson's Kansas.
2 See New York Tribune, Times, and the Independent for April and May.
3 See an interesting instance related by Thayer, The Kansas Crusade, p. 169.
4 New York Times, May 1st. The speech was made at Easton, Pa., April 30th.

widely remote from Kansas troubles, felt impelled to say: "It has lately been maintained, by the sharp logic of the revolver and the bowie-knife, that the people of Missouri are the people of Kansas!"1

At the South, popular sentiment fully justified the action of the Missourians. If the notion occurred that perhaps they had no right to vote in Kansas, their action was deemed praiseworthy as countervailing the purpose of the emigrant aid societies. Massachusetts, which took the lead in that movement, was especially abhorred in the South. It was the hot-bed of abolitionism, and the Southern people regarded the assisted emigration as the work of the abolitionists. In this they were wrong. The Garrison abolitionists had no part whatever in the emigrant-aid companies, but discouraged their efforts in the Liberator, and also by speech and resolution.2

"We trust," said a Mobile journal," that the Missourians will continue the good fight they have begun, and, if need be, call on their brethren in the South for help to put down by force of arms the infernal schemes hatched in Northern hot-beds of abolition for their injury.3 "Hireling emigrants are poured in to extinguish this new hope of the South," said the Charleston Mercury.4 The Democratic State convention of Georgia expressed their "sympathy with the friends of slavery in Kansas in their manly efforts to maintain the rights and interests of the Southern people over the paid adventurers and Jesuitical hordes of Northern abolitionism."5 The South was chary of holding public meetings except during a political canvass, but the interest
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1 Everett's Orations and Speeches, vol. iii. p. 347.
2 See Kansas Crusade, chap. vii.; Life of Garrison, vol. iii. p. 436 et seq.; Review of Kansas Crusade in The Nation, November 7th, 1889. 3 Mobile Register, cited by the New York Tribune, May 17th.
4 See New York Tribune, June 13th.
5 This convention was held at Milledgeville, June 6th; see New York Tribune, June 20th.

in Kansas prompted a departure from the usual custom, and gatherings were not infrequent to consider the demand which duty made on the supporters of slavery. Charleston, which had regarded the Kansas-Nebraska legislation with unconcern, now girded itself for the contest. At a very large and respectable meeting of its citizens it was resolved that it was their right and duty to extend to their Southern brethren in Kansas every legitimate and honorable sympathy and support.1

The President was sorely distressed at the turn affairs had taken in Kansas. He told Reeder that this matter " had given him more harassing anxiety than anything that had happened since the loss of his son; that it haunted him day and night, and was the great overshadowing trouble of his administration." He divulged the pressure on him for the governor's removal, and told of the bitter complaints which were made of the executive conduct of affairs in Kansas. General Atchison, he said, pressed Reeder's removal in the most excited manner, and would listen to no reasoning at all.2 The President might have added that the persuasion he found most difficult to resist was that of Jefferson Davis, whose soul was bound up in the cause of the Missourians. Reeder saw the President almost every day for more than two weeks,2 and made a candid exposition of the policy that ought to be pursued. "The President in our interviews," testified Reeder, "expressed himself highly pleased and satisfied with my course, and in the most unequivocal language approved and endorsed all that I had done. He expressed some regret, however, that my speech in Easton had omitted all allusion to the illegalities of the Emigrant Aid Society, and thought it was perhaps unnecessarily strong in its denunciation of the Missouri invasion. I told him I had no knowledge of the operations of the Emigrant-Aid
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1 National Intelligencer, August 23d.
2 Reeder's testimony, Howard Report, p. 938. 2 In May.

Company, except what was before the whole public; and that so long as they had not sent out men merely to vote and not to settle, I could not consistently denounce their course as illegal."1

It was plainly apparent that the President wished Reeder to resign; and at one time he offered the mission to China as an inducement, but it did not become vacant as expected. Nevertheless, he urged the matter so pertinaciously that Reeder promised to resign provided they could agree on the terms of the correspondence, and provided his successor would be sure to resist the aggressive invasions from Missouri. Draft after draft of the letter of resignation was made, and interlineations and corrections were suggested, sometimes by one, sometimes by the other, but no agreement could be reached. The President seemed to incline more and more to the Southern view. At last Reeder declared that as they could reach no agreement, he would not resign. The President replied :" Well, I shall not remove you on account of your official action; if I remove you at all, it will be on account of your speculation in lands of the territory."2 Reeder, like every one else who went to the new territories with money, had bought lands for a rise, and it had been asserted that, considering his official position, his purchase of certain Indian lands was improper.3 This was the last interview. Reeder soon after returned to Kansas. His removal was soon decided upon. Early in June, Jefferson Davis, in a speech at the Democratic convention of Mississippi, admitted that the choice of Reeder was a mistake, but clearly intimated that it would be speedily corrected by the appointment of his successor.4
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1 Reeder's testimony, Howard Report, p. 937.
2 Ibid.
3 In his testimony before the congressional committee, Reeder discusses this question fully. It does not appear that he attempted to cover up anything, but, on the contrary, he courted the fullest investigation.
4 Letter of A. G. Brown of June 13th to the Jackson, Miss., Mercury, cited by the New York Tribune.

Thus, the Kansas question became one of great political moment. The South was practically unanimous in holding that Kansas ought to be a slave State; the predominant opinion at the North was equally decided that it should be free. This concrete shape that the issue on slavery took exerted a weighty influence in consolidating the Republican party. A practicable and attainable object was now before the people. There was also a signal illustration whither the pro-slavery policy led. It could be maintained that here was the paramount question, and the appeal could be made to those who had been affected by the Know-nothing crusade, that in this direction there were opportunity and reward for political zeal.

The Know-nothings had been highly elated at their strength, as shown in the elections of 1854; and shortly after the results were known, their National Council assembled in Cincinnati. This meeting is noteworthy from having authorized the third, or Union, degree. An imposing and impressive ceremonial was prescribed. After the candidate should take an oath, as strong as words could make it, that he would faithfully defend the Union of the States against assaults from every quarter, he would be admitted to the brotherhood of the Order of the American Union.1 This new degree was adopted largely through the influence of Raynor, of North Carolina, an ancient Whig, from motives that did him honor. Comprehending the aim of the extreme pro-slavery party, and knowing that the secession faction was powerful enough to shape its policy, he wished to make the Know-nothing organization a sterling Union party, building it upon the ruins of the shattered Whig party of the South; and he believed that it would also draw Democrats who had supported the compromise of 1850. But the Union degree was construed to mean that the
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1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 422. For the oath, see New York Tribune, June 7th, 1855.

North should keep quiet on the subject of slavery. The Know-nothings did not see what other men saw—that the time had now come when the political being of the North depended on unceasing agitation.

In six months from the time that the Union degree was instituted, it was estimated that one million and a half of men had taken the degree; and apologists of the order did not hesitate to assert that it controlled that number of legal voters.1 If their reckonings were correct, the boast that they would elect the next President did not seem vain.

The Southern Know-nothings received a severe blow in the Virginia election of May. There were but two tickets in the field, the Democratic and the Know-nothing, and it was the first important contest in the South where the opposition had enrolled itself under the Know-nothing banner. Henry A. Wise, the Democratic candidate for governor, made a vigorous canvass of the State; he began on the 1st of January, and spoke regularly from the stump until obliged from physical exhaustion to give up speaking. Wise was an orator not unlike John Randolph. He denounced the illiberal spirit of Know-nothingism in a cogent and effective manner, but he was less candid in maintaining that it was merely a new invention of the abolitionists. All the able Democratic speakers of the State were enlisted in the canvass, and Douglas himself was pressed into the service. Never had political excitement run so high in the Old Dominion; never had there been such a bitter contest. Wise was elected by more than ten thousand majority, and the result was everywhere interpreted to mean that the Know-nothings could not make a successful inroad on a Demo
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1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 422; A Defence of the American Policy, Whitney, p. 285. At the time of the Philadelphia National Council, in June, 1855, the New York Herald estimated the Know-nothing votes at 1,375,000; and Wilson, himself a Know-nothing, had no doubt 1,250,000 voters were enrolled in its councils. Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 423.

Democratic State in the South.1 Their strength could be rated at the numerical force of the Whig party. They were practically its successor, and might carry the old Whig districts and States, but beyond that it did not seem probable they would go. We hear no longer of the Whig party in the South. Most of the prominent Whigs became Know-nothings; a few joined the Democrats. Many of the Southern States had held no elections in 1854. This year they had to choose their governors and congressmen, and the contest everywhere was between the Democrats and Know-nothings.

The Know-nothings did not make material gains over the Whig vote of the preceding elections. The Know-nothings had hardly recovered from the blow of the Virginia election when their National Council met at Philadelphia.2 Nearly every State sent delegates. They had come together to adopt a declaration of principles after the manner of political conventions. What they should say about slavery provoked in full meeting a hot controversy which was continued for three days in the committee on resolutions. A majority report was at last agreed to. It was the expression of the fourteen members of the committee from the Southern States, joined by those representing New York, the District of Columbia, and the territory of Minnesota. The report declared that Congress ought not to prohibit slavery in any territory or in the District of Columbia, and that it had no power to exclude any State from admission to the Union because its Constitution recognized slavery. Thirteen members of the committee from the free States and the representative of Delaware made a minority report, in which they demanded the restoration of the
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1 See the Political Campaign in Virginia in 1855, J. P. Hambleton. "The Virginia election has knocked the bottom out of Know-nothingism in the South," New York Tribune, May 29th. See also Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 422; Forney's Anecdotes of Public Men, vol. i. p. 135.
2 June 5th was the day the council began.

Missouri Compromise; but if efforts to that end failed, Congress should refuse to admit any State formed out of the Kansas or Nebraska territories which tolerated slavery. The contest of the committee was transferred to the whole council, where an earnest, excited, and bitter debate of three days followed. Henry Wilson led the Northern forces with address, and his speeches were so positive and to the point that he won golden opinions from those who, the year previous, had looked upon him merely as a time-server in politics. At midnight on the eighth day of the council, the Southern platform was adopted by a vote of 80 to 59. The long series of resolutions, in addition to the declaration on slavery, may be summed up as meaning "resistance to the aggressive policy and corrupting tendencies of the Roman Catholic Church," and " Americans only shall govern America." 1 The Northern delegates were in full sympathy with the platform, except the article on slavery; but their opposition to this was so unyielding that they protested against the action of the council, and issued an appeal to the people in which they stated in plain words their position.2

The rending in twain of the Know-nothings on the vital and obtruding question of the time was a result of great
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1 The platform was published in the New York Tribune of June 20th. From day to day there appeared in this journal a full report of the proceedings, which was sent to it by Samuel Bowles, who also reported for the Springfield Republican and the Boston Atlas. The New York Times had also a detailed account of the proceedings. See Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 423 et seq.; Life of Samuel Bowles, vol. i. p. 137. The platform is printed in A Defence of the American Policy, Whitney, p. 294. One article of the platform deserves quotation: "A radical revision and modification of the laws regulating immigration and the settlement of immigrants. Offering to the honest immigration who, from love of liberty or hatred to oppression, seek an asylum in the United States a friendly reception and protection. But unqualifiedly condemning the transmission to our shores of felons and paupers."
2 New York Tribune, June 20th; Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 431; Life of Samuel Bowles, vol. i. p. 138.

political importance. The Southern Know-nothings made their election contests on the national platform; the Northern Know-nothings, including even those of New York, repudiated the slavery plank when they asked for the votes of the people.1

Another important result of the National Council was the discovery of the fact that the Know-nothings had exhausted all the virtue of their secret machinery. The secrets had been exposed; there was no longer any mystery; the dark ways had ceased to excite terror. The Know-nothings were now holding political conventions and adopting platforms like any other political party. They appealed to the people for support, because they had certain defined principles which they wished to put into force in legislation or administration. They could no longer demand votes simply because voters had taken solemn oaths; they must justify the existence of their party by discussion and by satisfying reasons. Those who vainly supposed that the secret work of the lodges which had played such a part the preceding year could still be continued, must have been undeceived when they saw every proceeding of their National Council laid bare to the public. The wild excitement one night of the convention, when it was for a moment supposed that the correct and faithful correspondent of the New York Tribune had been discovered, brought to light the suspicion that a Massachusetts man was reporting for an anti-slavery journal, and the fact that a Virginia delegate was sending news to the New York Herald 2. The neglect to investigate the one case or to censure the other was a tacit admission that the farce of mystery had been played for what it was worth, and that the time had come for men of sense and honor to advocate their political principles openly. From this time forward the order is better known as the American party, and it is entitled to great respect for
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1 See a careful editorial in the New York Tribune of Not. 22d
2 See New York Tribune, June 20th.

endeavor to work out reforms which it believed were needed. Yet the historian must aver that the Americans were not abreast of the needs of their time, for they sacrificed the greater principle to the lesser one.

Meanwhile, under the influences which had prevailed the preceding year and the stimulus of Kansas, the Republican movement was gaining strength. Chase, who expected the people's nomination for governor of Ohio,1 had written a public letter in which he said there must be "agreement and harmony on the common platform of no slavery outside of slave States." 2 Greeley wrote home from Europe that Chase would be beaten if nominated. No better instance than this can be adduced of how ancient party prejudices still survived. Greeley, though earnestly in favor of the new movement, could not let himself forget that Chase had entered public life through an exasperating defeat of the Whigs.3 The anti-Nebraska convention was held in Ohio, July 13th, the anniversary of the adoption of the ordinance of 1787. A majority of the delegates were Americans; and although Chase had never been a member either of the Know-nothing order or of the American organization, he was nominated for governor by a vote of nearly two to one. It seems that the anti-slavery zeal of the Ohio Americans
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1 See his letter to J. S. Pike, June 20th, First Blows of the Civil War, p. 295.
2 Letter to the Republican County Committee of Portage County, June 15th, New York Tribune, June 28th.
3 C. A. Dana to Pike, July 14th, Pike, p. 297. Chase wrote Pike after the election: "You will have noticed that some of our papers were not well pleased with the apparent concession of the Tribune that I might be defeated; or with the article since the election saying that, had another man been nominated, the result would have been a more decided anti-Nebraska victory. ... I presume Mr. Greeley wrote the articles I refer to, and I doubt not they were written with the best intentions. But I may be allowed to doubt the policy of printing them. We want now cordial union among all the friends of the party of freedom. Nothing less will insure a victory in 1856."—Letter of October 18th, Pike, p. 299.

was greater than their opposition to foreigners and Catholics.1 The convention resolved, "That we will resist the spread of slavery, under whatever shape or color it may be attempted," and took for their party the name Republican.2 In accepting the nomination Chase said: "Slavery in the territories must be prohibited by law. . . . Kansas must be saved from slavery by the voters of the free States."

It was one of the hard-fought political battles for which Ohio is famous. Chase entered the contest with spirit; he spoke in fifty-seven different places, in forty-nine counties,3 appealing to his old Democratic friends to go with him in opposing slavery extension, and arguing with the Whigs that all old differences should be sunk until the cause of freedom had prevailed. Strong efforts were made to defeat him. The pro-slavery wing of the Americans and some Conservative Whigs put up a candidate in the hope of drawing away from him enough votes to let in the Democratic nominee. But Chase was successful, his plurality reaching nearly sixteen thousand.

The Republicans carried Vermont, but were unsuccessful in Maine. The Democrats regained Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In New York a fusion of the anti-slavery elements was made under the name Republican. The platform of the State convention, reported by Horace Greeley, called for an express prohibition by Congress of slavery in all territory of the Union, and emphatically condemned the doctrines and methods of the Know-nothings.4 The most important event of the New York canvass was that Seward put himself squarely at the head of the new organization. He made two speeches which indeed ought to have been made one year earlier, but they unite in so marked degree the broad views of the statesman with the practical art of the politician that they must be reckoned as one of the
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1 See letter of Chase, Warden, p. 346.
2 Cleveland Herald, July 14th.
3 Chase to Pike, Pike, p. 299.
4 See New York Tribune. The convention met September 27th.

great influences of this year towards cementing divisions into one organized whole. The Albany speech was printed in the New York WeeklyTribune, and was undoubtedly read by more than half a million men. It described the situation in clear and homely words, and was a veritable storehouse of arguments. We may be sure that the copy of the Tribune which contained this speech was carefully laid away in many a country and village household; and as the discussions of the winter went on, Seward's words were referred to, quoted, and pondered. They were seed sown in fruitful ground, for every man at the North now discussed politics on all occasions. A carefully prepared speech from a man in high political position, delivered from the stump, is a more potent appeal to public opinion than a speech in Congress. The senator in the Senate may speak at the people, but he is to some extent confined by the limitations of the place. Ordinarily, he discusses some scheme of legislation in reply to an opponent, and when he enters into a mass of detail he loses the interest of many voters. On the other hand, the sole object of the stump speaker is to convince the people. The direct argument is enforced; the subsidiary explanation, the detailed examination, is left out, as hampering the flow of reasoning.

At Albany, Seward put forth the question to be resolved: Shall we form a new party? He explained how the slaveholders were a " privileged class," and how much national legislation there had been in their interest which affected the right and comfort of the Northern citizen; how the South got the better of the North in the appropriations, and how the slave-holder was taken care of by the tariff. "Protection is denied to your wool," he said," while it is freely given to the slave-holder's sugar." "Slavery is not, and never can be, perpetual," he continued: "it will be overthrown either peacefully or lawfully under this Constitution, or it will work the subversion of the Constitution together with its own overthrow. Then the slave-holders will perish in the struggle. The change can now be made without violence, and by the agency of the ballot-box. The temper of the nation is just, liberal, forbearing. It will contribute any money and endure any sacrifice to effect this great and important change. . . . What, then, is wanted? Organization! Organization! Nothing but organization. . . . We have power to avert the extension of slavery in the territories of the Union, and that is enough. . . . We want a bold, outspoken, free-spoken organization—one that openly proclaims its principles, its purposes, and its objects."

He showed how the American party failed to meet the situation. Fewer words were needed to make clear how both of the Democratic factions were found wanting. He then asked: "Shall we report ourselves to the Whig party? Where is it? Gentle Shepherd, tell me where! Four years ago it was a strong, vigorous party, honorable for energy, noble achievements, and still more for noble enterprises. . . . Now there is neither Whig party nor Whig south of the Potomac. . . . The Republican organization has . . . laid a new, sound, and liberal platform broad enough" for true Democrats and true Whigs to stand upon. "Its principles are equal and exact justice; its speech open, decided, and frank. Its banner is untorn in former battles, and unsullied by past errors. That is the party for us."1

The Americans elected their State ticket in New York, and were also successful in Massachusetts. The result in Massachusetts, however, could not be looked upon as a reaction; for the Americans in that State were almost as strongly anti-slavery as the Republicans. It is undeniable that at the close of this year a superficial examination led many to believe that the prospect of a united anti-slavery party was not as favorable as it had been a year previous.2
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1 Seward's Works, vol. iv. p. 225. "Seward's speech at Albany on the 'privileged classes,' the oligarchy of slavery, has been the key-note of the new party."—Diary of R. H. Dana. Life by C. P. Adams, vol. i. p. 848.
2 See New York Tribune, November 8th; Political Recollections, Julian, p. 145; Life of Bowles, vol. i. p. 144.

But after-events have shown that the optimists were nearer right.1 There were this year no congressmen to elect, and in but few States were governors chosen. The interest in the elections was not great. The indignation aroused by the Missouri invasion into Kansas in the spring had in part subsided, and the aim and prospects of the free-State party were not so well understood as afterwards, when the subject was ventilated in Congress. The vote was small. When all allowances are made, when the undercurrents are observed, the conclusion is irresistible that the Republican movement had made progress. Two leaders had come to the front—one a former Democrat, the other a Whig. Chase had the backing of Ohio, and few could doubt that Seward's party would in the coming year carry New York. The Republicans of Massachusetts furnished two leaders, Sumner and Wilson. Sumner's manly independence of thought prevented him from being a politician; but what in him was lacking was supplied by Wilson, who had the virtues and faults of a self-made man. He was a man of parts. "The Natick cobbler" had risen to be United States senator from the educated commonwealth of Massachusetts. Until this year his reputation had been that of a manoeuvring politician and clever wire-puller, who was adroit at bargains, and whose remarkable tact had been employed in self-advancement; but the cause of anti-slavery ennobled him. It is probable that had he not become a leader of a party based on a moral idea, he would not have gone in public estimation beyond that of an intriguing politician.2
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1 "The events of the election show that the 'Silver Grays' have been successful in a new and attractive form, so as to divert a majority of the people in the cities and towns from the great question of the day, that is all. The country, I mean the rural districts, still remain substantially sound. A year is necessary to let the cheat wear off."—Seward to his wife, November 13th, 1855, Life, vol. ii. p. 258.
2 See Life of Bowles, Merriam; Reminiscences of a Journalist, Congdon; Letter of Theodore Parker to Wilson, Life of Parker, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 207; Life of R. H. Dana, C. F. Adams, vol. i. p. 247: and other

The confidence which Wilson had in the ultimate and complete triumph of the Republican party is remarkable. The cause of right, he believed, would in the end prove the cause of profit. He had now cut loose from the Know-nothings. In spite of the success of the American party in New York and Massachusetts, it had passed the zenith of its power.

The Whig party in New England died hard. It had this year a ticket in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Winthrop and Choate held aloof from the Republican party. Earnest efforts had been made to get Winthrop to take an important part in the new movement, but without success.1 In a letter to the Whigs of his State assembled in convention, Choate denied that their party was dead. He defined their position in a felicitous phrase which at once became famous. He wrote: "We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union."2

Two discernible lines of opinion actuated men to join together in the Republican party. The one was devotion to the cause of the slave, induced by sympathy for his wrongs. It was the expression of the humanitarian spirit; it was a practical corollary drawn from the teachings of Christ. This feeling had its noblest embodiment in Sumner. To him and to those he influenced, the Fugitive Slave law seemed the grossest outrage inflicted by the South upon the North.3

The other line of opinion was best represented by Seward, and was a protest against the increasing and encroaching
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authorities which I cannot now name, have helped me to this estimate of Wilson.

1 See Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 433; Reminiscences of a Journalist, Congdon, p. 88.
2 Letter of October 1st, Life of Choate, Brown, p. 303.
3 The address of Sumner in New York in May, published in the Weekly Tribune of May 19th, is an illustration of this point of view.

political power of the slave oligarchy.1 The men in whom this feeling was dominant chafed at the unequal representation in Congress of the South under the Constitution. The certainty that every new slave State meant two senators devoted to slavery, and representation in the House based on three-fifths of the slaves, was their most powerful reason for the opposition to the extension of slavery. The Sumner and Seward sentiments did indeed run into each other. The influence that made men Republicans was often a mixture of the two, and perhaps no exact line of demarcation can be drawn, for the belief that slavery was an evil was at the bottom of both. Yet a careful study of the political literature of the time brings clearly to light that although with some the moral sentiment was dominant, with a much greater number the political sentiment weighed down the balance. In the main, it may be said that the former Whigs thought with Seward; that the former Free-soilers and Democrats thought with Sumner. The Garrison abolitionists held entirely aloof from the Republican movement, but there was cordial sympathy between them and Sumner. The disciples of Seward, on the other hand, had no love for the abolitionists and their methods. It was sometimes maintained that they were a drawback to the anti-slavery cause, and it was a matter of gratulation that they did not become Republicans, as they would have been a burden to carry.

Meanwhile the free-State settlers in Kansas, while working for their personal weal and what they conceived to be the best interests of the territory, were making an issue which was destined to distract Congress and excite the
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1 "I leave the rights and interests of the slaves in the States to their own care and that of their advocates; I simply ask whether the safety and the interests of twenty-five millions of free, non-slaveholding white men ought to be sacrificed or put in jeopardy for the convenience or safety of three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders ?"—Seward at Buffalo, October 19th, 1855, Works, vol. iv. p. 249.

country. The territorial legislature assembled in July. Free-State members had been elected at the supplementary elections ordered by the governor. These were summarily unseated, and the solitary Free-Soiler who was left did not long delay to retire from the body. Governor Reeder and the legislature soon quarrelled. The legislators got up a petition to the President for his removal, but the messenger who was despatched to Washington with it was met on the way with the intelligence that their object had already been accomplished.1 The code of laws which the legislature, now in perfect unison on the slavery question, adopted, was utterly out of tune with Republican government in the nineteenth century. All the provisions relating to slaves, reported the congressional committee, were of a "character intolerant and unusual even for that class of legislation."2 Any free person who by speaking, writing, or printing should advise or induce any slaves to rebel should suffer death. The enticement of a slave to leave his master was punishable with death or imprisonment at hard labor for not less than ten years. To declare orally or in writing that slavery did not legally exist in the territory was to incur the penalty of incarceration for not less than two years.3 Free-State settlers interpreted this provision to mean that it was a prison offence to have the Declaration of Independence in one's house.4 All officers of the territory, attorneys admitted to practice in the courts, and voters, if challenged, must take an oath to support the Fugitive Slave law. "In Kansas, now by usurpation a slave territory," said Senator Seward at Buffalo," the utterance of this speech, calm and candid although I mean it to be,
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1 Reeder's testimony, Howard Report, p. 945.
2 Howard Report, p. 44.
3 The whole chapter relating to slaves is printed in Kansas, Sara Robinson, p. 80; a portion of it may be found in Greeley's American Conflict, vol. i. p. 239. The code is well characterized by Von Hoist, vol. v. p. 159.
4 Kansas, Sara Robinson, p. 116.

would be treason; the reading and circulation of it in print would be punished with death."1 By virtue of those laws, said Clayton in the Senate," John C. Calhoun, were he now living in Kansas, might be sent to the penitentiary."'

Yet in truth it might be questioned whether slavery existed in fact as well as in law. The census of February had disclosed that there were but one hundred and ninety-two slaves out of a total population of eight thousand six hundred.3 Stringfellow, a leader of the Missourians, had endeavored to interest Southern congressmen in a scheme of negro colonization. "Two thousand slaves," he had argued, "actually lodged in Kansas will make a slave State out of it. Once fairly there, nobody will disturb them." 4 Stringfellow received promises, but they were not carried into effect. Southerners would send their young men, but not their slaves, to Kansas.5 The failure thus to act was not because they did not appreciate the gravity of the situation, for they were disposed to believe Atchison when he wrote, "If Kansas is abolitionized, Missouri ceases to be a slave State, New Mexico becomes a free State, California remains a free State; but if we secure Kansas as a slave State, Missouri is secure; New Mexico and Southern California, if not all of it, becomes a slave State; in a word, the prosperity or ruin of the whole South depends on the Kansas struggle."6 The Charleston Mercury undoubtedly represented
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1 October 19th, Seward's Works, vol. iv. p. 250.
2 August 27th, 1856, Congressional Globe, 2d Session 34th Congress, p. 87.
3 Howard Report, p. 44.
4 Spring's Kansas, p. 27. See also Stringfellow's letter of October 6th, 1855, to the Montgomery Advertiser, New York Tribune, December 4th.
5 "We have information from points all along the border, and we are assured that there has been no importation of slaves with the exception of a few at Shawnee Mission, while others have been sold, leaving but a very slight actual increase."—Kansas Herald of Freedom, cited by the National Intelligencer, June 14th.
6 Atchison to gentlemen in North Carolina, September 12th, 1855, cited by the New York Tribune, November 7th.

Southern sentiment, when it spoke of the contest as one "between fanatical hirelings and noble champions of the South." That sentiment was certainly represented when it maintained that " the cause of Kansas is the cause of the South."1

There was an inherent difficulty in the emigration of planters with their slaves to a new territory. The owners of negroes were the owners of land. The sale of a plantation was the work of time. At the North there was an energetic and intelligent floating population which could move on short notice.2 At the South, only the poor whites could quit their homes without long preparation. Emigrants from the North poured into Kansas while the small planters of the South were considering the project; and after the dispute broke out whether the soil should be free or slave, the most powerful of reasons prevented an emigration of slaveholders. Their property was of too precarious a nature to expose to the chances of such a contest. Hardly a slaveholder took with him to Kansas as many as five negroes.3 One party to this struggle, therefore, was composed of poor whites of the slave-holding States and the adventurous spirits of western Missouri, assisted, to some extent, by Southern money, and led by Atchison and Stringfellow, who were playing a political game. The other party were men from the North, actual settlers, and the same kind of people that we have seen in our own day leave their homes and emigrate to Southern California and Dakota. Those who went into Kansas from Missouri as permanent settlers, or merely to vote at the elections, were, on account of their appearance and actions, called "border ruffians."
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1 New York Tribune, November 7th.
2 The difference was well stated by Thayer in a speech in the House of Representatives in 1859. See the Kansas Crusade, p. 246.
3 Ibid. Thayer had not heard of a single slave-holder who took there as many as five negroes, but Sara Robinson speaks of Judge Elmore who had nineteen slaves, see p. 213.

They themselves finally came to glory in the opprobrious name.1

The leader of the free-State party, Robinson, had been in California during the troublous times which preceded the formation of a State government, and his experience was now of value. The plan of action resolved upon was to repudiate the territorial legislature as illegal; to organize at once a State government, and apply to Congress for admission into the Union. Robinson despatched a messenger to New England for Sharpe's rifles, which were sent to Lawrence in packages marked "books."2The free-State party went actively to work, and held several meetings to perfect their organization. On October 9th they elected delegates to a constitutional convention. Reeder had joined himself to this party, had been received with enthusiasm, and was on the same day elected delegate to Congress, receiving all the ballots cast.3 The territorial legislature had ordered an election for congressional delegate, which took place October 1st. Whitfield received 2721 votes, which were all that were cast, except 17. The pro-slavery men looked upon Reeder's election as a sham; the free-State men paid no attention to the orders of the territorial legislature. Reeder was at first in favor of having his party take part in the election of October 1st, but when he attended the free-State convention at Big Springs he "was persuaded, by an examination of the territorial election law, that our voters would be excluded, and found that there was a
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1 See letter of Atchison of September 12th, published in the New York Tribune of November 7th; also letter of same, December 15th, 1855, to the editor of the Atlanta Examiner, Tribune, January 19th, 1856.
2 Spring's Kansas, pp. 59, 60. The Emigrant-Aid Company did not send any implements of war, but members of the corporation contributed money as individuals for that purpose. Lawrence was the first settlement of the Emigrant-Aid Company and the important town of the free-State party.
3 He received 2849 votes.

general concurrence of opinion in favor of a separate election."1

The constitutional convention met, October 23d, at Topeka. Nineteen of the thirty-four members were Democrats, six were Whigs, and the remaining nine were Independents, Free-soilers, and Republicans. A majority of the members were friendly to the Kansas-Nebraska act.2 This convention formed themselves into a free and independent State, styled the State of Kansas, and framed a constitution which prohibited slavery and provided for its submission to the people.

Thus there were now two governments and two sets of people directly hostile to each other. The pro-slavery men sneered at the embryo State government, but were incensed at the action of those who had formed it. The free-State people rendered no obedience to the territorial laws, and for a while no particular effort was made to enforce them. Shannon, the new governor, sympathized with the Missourians and recognized the territorial laws as binding. A convention to organize the pro-slavery party thoroughly was held in November. Governor Shannon presided, and assured his hearers that they had the support of the President.3 They decided to take the name of " Law-and-order party."

Until now, there had been no collision between the opposing forces. Their settlements were apart. A few outrages had been committed and broils were not uncommon, but in the main the contest was one of political expedients. The organizing temper of the free-State party had irritated the other, and the pro-slavery leaders were looking for a pretext which would bring the struggle to a head by enabling them to attack Lawrence, the town of the Emigrant Aid Company. The inhabitants of Lawrence were devoted to freedom, and they had inspired the organized movement which was troubling their opponents. A pretext was soon
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1 Reeder's testimony, Howard Report, p. 946.
3 Spring's Kansas, p. 70.
2 Ibid., p. 84.

found. A pro-slavery squatter had a quarrel with Dow, a free-State man, in reference to a claim, and shot him in cold blood. The affair caused great excitement in the neighborhood. The murderer fled. The free-State men demanded justice. The cabins of the murderer and his friends were burned down at night. Old Jacob Branson, who was tenderly attached to Dow, was reported to have made sanguinary threats against an accomplice in the murder. A peace warrant for Branson's arrest was obtained and placed in the hands of Sheriff Jones, an energetic and sincere pro-slavery man. On November 26th, he with his posse broke into Branson's cabin at the dead of night, made the arrest, and started for Lecompton. The news spread quickly. A free-State party of fifteen was collected. They intercepted the sheriff; their squirrel guns and Sharpe's rifles were made ready, but Branson was surrendered without a shot. The rescuers hurried to Lawrence to counsel with Dr. Robinson. "I am afraid the affair will make mischief," Robinson said. "The other side will seize upon it as a pretext for invading the territory."1 A meeting was called to consider the rescue, and the people of Lawrence decided that they would wash their hands of the whole matter. They were apprehensive, however, that the occasion would be used to justify an attack upon them, and they appointed a committee of safety, who immediately went to work to organize the citizens into guards and put the town in a state of defence.2

Sheriff Jones was in a rage at the loss of his prisoner, but he hoped that the affair, rightly used, might redound to the advantage of his party. He was a Missourian, and it naturally occurred to him that he must have recourse to his own State for help. He forthwith sent a messenger to Missouri, asking for aid. Stating publicly what he had done, he swore with a loud oath that he would have revenge. A bystander,
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1 Spring's Kansas, p. 90.
2 Robinson's testimony, Howard Report, p. 1069.

holding the opinion that the sheriff of a Kansas county should report to his governor, asked, "Why not send to Governor Shannon ?"1 The propriety of this struck Jones, and he despatched a courier to Shannon with an exaggerated account of the affair, expressing the opinion that it would require three thousand men to vindicate insulted justice. The governor called out the Kansas militia and about fifty men responded.' The appeals of the sheriff and his friends to Missouri were more effectual. One despatch to a member of the Missouri legislature at Jefferson City read: "We want help. Communicate this to our friends." 2 The border ruffians turned out with alacrity, and in straggling companies came along towards Lawrence. By the 1st of December there were from twelve to fifteen hundred armed men encamped on the Wakarusa River in the vicinity of Lawrence. Atchison was one of their leaders. Kansas and western Missouri were all ablaze, and all eyes were fixed upon the spot where a bloody battle was expected.

Earthworks had been constructed on all sides of Lawrence, and these were defended by six hundred men, one third of whom were armed with Sharpe's rifles. A lot had been received just before the siege began. Dr. Robinson wrote A. A. Lawrence, of Boston, December 4th, that the Sharpe's rifles " will give us the victory without firing a shot."4 Robinson was right. The marvellous stories which had spread abroad about the efficiency of these breech-loading guns caused the invaders to reflect before making an attack on the town. A howitzer sent from the North had been smuggled through the invading lines. This affair, which is known in Kansas history as the Wakarusa war, did not come to actual hostilities. The invaders breathed out threats; they fired upon the Lawrence sentries nightly; and one free
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1 Testimony of L. A. Prather, Howard Report, p. 1065; see Spring's Kansas.
2 Spring's Kansas, p. 91.
3 St. Louis Intelligencer, December 1st,cited by New York Tribune; see also Kansas, Sara Robinson, p. 120.
4 Spring's Kansas, p. 93.

State man was killed under circumstances that were discreditable to his assailants.1 The Lawrence men acted strictly on the defensive. Robinson was chosen general, and his conduct of affairs was characterized by great prudence. The Lawrence committee of safety opened communications with Governor Shannon. Shannon's first idea was to demand that the free-State men should surrender their Sharpe's rifles and agree to obey the territorial law. To enforce this he asked for the assistance of the United States troops at Fort Leavenworth. The President did not give them orders to interfere, and Colonel Sumner, who was in command, would take no steps without express directions. Shannon began to have suspicions that he might have been misled by his pro-slavery advisers, and when he came to Lawrence on the 7th of December, he was certain of it. He played the part of a mediator, and was successful in negotiating a treaty of peace the effect of which was to deprive the invaders of all legal countenance and standing.2 Sheriff Jones was disgusted at the outcome, and some of the Missourians shared his indignation; but Atchison was earnest in peaceful counsels.3 He had regard for the public sentiment of the country, and insisted that the Missourians should withdraw. "If you attack Lawrence now," he said, "you attack it as a mob; and what would be the result? You would cause the election of an abolition President and the ruin of the Democratic party."4 The Missourians left the territory. The victory was for Lawrence. The North learned that there was a resolute party in Kansas determined to make a fight for a free State.
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1 Kansas, Sara Robinson, pp. 132,145.
2 See letters of Gov. Shannon to the President, November 28th and December 11th.
3 " Gen. Stringfellow once said to me that during the struggle for Kansas, whatever severity there may have been in Atchison's plans, he always relented when the time came to put them in execution."—Leverett Spring, Magazine of Western History, vol. ix. p. 80.
4 Spring's Kansas, p. 100.

The Topeka Constitution was voted upon by the free-State people on December 15th, and was ratified by 1731 affirmative to 46 negative votes. The question of the exclusion of free negroes had occasioned debate in the constitutional convention, and it had been agreed to have a separate vote of the people on this article. They decided by a majority of nearly three to one to exclude colored people from the State. On the 15th of January, 1856, there was an election for governor and legislature of the new commonwealth. Robinson was chosen governor. There was little interference with these elections by the pro-slavery men; they were looked upon by that party as silly performances. At only two places was there any trouble. At Leavenworth, in December, a mob seized the ballot-box and stopped further proceedings. At Easton, in January, there was an affray in which a pro-slavery man was killed. The next day his death was avenged by the Kickapoo Rangers, who cruelly assassinated a free-State leader.

Seven weeks after the election, the free-State legislature met at Topeka and prepared a memorial to Congress, asking that Kansas might be admitted into the Union as a State under the Topeka Constitution.

Thus stood affairs in Kansas when the Thirty-fourth Congress got fairly to work:

The House of Representatives, which had been elected on the issue raised on the Kansas-Nebraska act, assembled in Congress on the first Monday of December, 1855. It was a body hard to classify politically. There were Democrats, pro-slavery Whigs, pro-slavery Americans, anti-slavery Americans, and Republicans. The Congressional Globe, which was accustomed to indicate the partisan divisions by printing the names of the members in different type, now gave up such a classification in despair. When the next Congress met, the editor of the Globe returned to his usual practice. The perplexing divisions and cross-modifications which now existed had then settled down into three distinct and clearly marked parties.

The "Tribune Almanac" confessed the difficulty of a proper classification, but did not shirk the attempt. There were seventy-nine Democrats, friends of the administration, who were counted upon to support the Pierce-Douglas policy in regard to slavery. Twenty of these were from the North. One hundred and seventeen members had been elected as anti-Nebraska men, and, when chosen, it was expected that they would uphold the cause of freedom in the territories. Thirty-seven members were Whigs or Americans of pro-slavery tendencies, and all but three so classed were from the slave States. Again there was a cross-division of the one hundred and seventeen anti-Nebraska men, all of whom were from the North. Seventy-five of them had been elected as Know-nothings.1
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1 See speech of Smith of Tennessee, House of Representatives, April 4th, 1856; Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 420.


Source: Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States; from the compromise of 1850 to the final restoration of home rule at the south in 1877, v.2. New York: Macmillan, 1910 [c1892].