the bludgeon, the bowie-knife, or the pistol. They feared God, and reverenced justice. They sent out their notes of alarm, and the people were startled. Could it be possible that slavery entertained the thought of moving northward? There was the line, the great compromise line, that could not be taken up nor passed over. The South had pleaded compromises from the days of the Constitutional Convention, and they surely would respect the Missouri Compromise. No: they would not. It was against the right to take slavery wherever the masters emigrated, and it must come up.

The outcry from Northern freemen was a little stronger and more threatening than usual. Something must be conceded; and, for the sake of getting rid of the line, the territory of the proposed State should be cut in two, and one of the new States might be free if the people insisted. It was done, and the line was destroyed. Henceforth it was an open question. The people were sovereign, and they could decide for themselves whether their new States should be free or slave. This was plausible. The South had no doubt but this doctrine of popular sovereignty could be managed so that Kansas would be certainly a slave State, and Nebraska probably.

In the North, and especially in New England, a new idea seemed to come up, move about, and gather power: "If it is to be a question of enterprise and majorities, we will try it. Let the compromise line go." For once," the wise" had been "taken in their own craftiness." The race was a hard one; but the free spirit was roused, and it triumphed. If the doctrine of the people's sovereignty was fairly adhered to, Kansas would be a free State. But no thanks to political parties. This was the people. Parties truckled and bargained as aforetime; but they were gradually losing their hold of the popular will. The freemen of the North began to feel that their liberties were endangered, and to show strong symptoms of a purpose to take the direction of affairs into their

own hands. They could not control the nominations; but they could emigrate and vote. They did; and this was the movement from which the slave-power in America received its first significant check.

THE STRAIN AND THE RECOIL.

To the Southern mind, this rapid increase of Northern freemen, and hence the use that could be made of “popular sovereignty," was a revelation. It showed clearly that the control of the government by the ballot was no longer secure. As the people began to organize, the dominant majority drew closer to the slave-power; and the administration showed a strong purpose to add patronage to party tactics against the people, now evidently determined to commence a new struggle for liberty. The representatives of free principles won a decided majority in Kansas. Slavery, following its instincts, tried first brute force; but John Brown, and other brave spirits on the border, showed this to be dangerous, and, in that form, certainly hopeless. The people, in what they deemed a legitimate way, organized a provisional State government, and, without slavery, applied for admission into the Union. The advocates of slavery organized, adopted a proslavery constitution, and appealed to Congress. The fearful crisis thus brought on is, for the present, sufficiently known. Slavery, with all the power of government patronage, undertook the desperate task of forcing a slave constitution and government on to the people of a free, inchoate State, against the expressed will of a majority of its people. This was an open repudiation of the doctrine of popular sovereignty it was more, it was, by fair construction, treason against the fundamental principles of the Republic. The issue was joined between the parties of freedom and slavery; and the distinguished Mr. Douglas of Illinois ultimately refused to go with his party against his own doctrine of "popular sov

ereignty." But he joined issue with Abraham Lincoln, who said, "I believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall: but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." Mr. Seward made his famous announcement concerning this contest in these words: "It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces; and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a freelabor nation."

Henceforth, therefore, there would be no attempt to conceal the aggressions of the slave-power; and the advocates of freedom must gather to the battle, and conquer, or be utterly overthrown.

Contrary to the indignant rhetoric of Mr. Webster, in which he asserted the impossibility of such an event, slavery was formally legalized in the vast Territory of New Mexico, and, beyond a doubt, as the result of dictation from Washington.

Under the leadership of Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, the Senate of the United States was to be tested, and the advanced doctrines of the slave-power were formally indorsed. A series of resolutions, all for this one purpose, included the following: "Resolved, That negro slavery, as it exists in fif teen States of this Union, composes an important portion of their domestic institutions, inherited from their ancestors, and existing at the adoption of the Constitution, by which it is recognized as an important element in the apportionment of powers among the States; and that no change of opinion or feeling on the part of the non-slaveholding States

of the Union, in relation to this institution, can justify them or their citizens in open or covert attacks thereon, with a view to its overthrow; and that all such attacks are in manifest violation of the mutual and solemn pledge to protect and defend each other given by the States respectively on entering into the compact which formed the Union; and are a manifest breach of faith, and a violation of the most solemn obligations."

Mr. Harlan of Iowa moved to amend this defiant resolution by the following: "But the free discussion of the morality and expediency of slavery should never be interfered with by the laws of any State or of the United States; and the freedom of speech and of the press on this and every other subject of domestic and national policy should be maintained inviolate in all the States." This amendment was promptly voted down, and the original resolution was adopted. The vote stood twenty-five yeas, and thirty-six nays. Another of these famous resolutions read, "Resolved, That neither Congress nor a territorial legislature, whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave-property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial condition remains." This was adopted by thirty-five yeas to twenty-one nays. Thus did the Southern oligarchy set up the claim, that slavery was the normal state of all our vast Territories; and that, if they became free, it must be by the success of the free voters in a struggle against an institution already established, and fortified by custom and law. If this were true, then, in reality, the United States had ceased to be a government and nation of freedom, and existed simply for the purposes and in the spirit of oppression.

Another resolution declared, that "all acts of individuals or of State legislatures to defeat the purposes or nullify the

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requirements of the fugitive-slave law, and the laws made in pursuance of it, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect." Thus the free citizens of the free States were to be firmly held to the obligation to arrest, and forcibly return to bondage, all struggling, panting slaves who had reached their territory. One other step in advance was to be demanded; but that was deferred for consideration in the Democratic National Convention, which met in Charleston, S.C., on the 23d of April, 1860.* This was a most important meeting. It was to be settled whether Northern men would endure a further strain for the sake of the oligarchy. The resolutions proposed re-affirmed the right of slaveholders to take their slave - property into the Territories, and there hold it; but, in addition, they asserted the duty of the government to protect them in this right. This was the last step in advance now proposed by the slave-power; but it was one step too far. Many distinguished men felt that they had long enough submitted to the domination of a power that they really abhorred. They were now asked to commit the whole United-States Government to stand up with any number, however small, and, by force, enable them to establish slavery in any Territory against the will of a majority of the people; and this demand was argued in a way to extend the duty of protection into the free States and to the slave-trade. To this they could not, would not, consent. The Southern delegates, declining all attempts at compromise, withdrew, organized apart, and adjourned. The majority also adjourned without making a nomination. The rest is known. Our readers now understand what we mean by the strain and the recoil. The free spirit of the North had been so long crushed by the bony hand of this inexorable tyranny, that, in very agony, it writhed out of its grasp.

*The American Conflict, by Horace Greeley, p. 309, et seq.