his men, from any connection with the invasion. The following is an extract from the majority report, signed by Messrs. Mason, Fitch and Davis:

On the whole testimony, there can be no doubt that Brown's plan was to commence a servile war on the borders of Virginia, which he expected to extend, and which he believed his means and resources were sufficient to extend through that state and the entire south. It does not seem that he entrusted even his intimate friends with his plans fully, even after they were out for execution."

The elections in all the free states, except California, in the autumn of 1859, resulted favorably to the republicans, notwithstanding the efforts of their opponents to excite odium and prejudice against the party by alleging its complicity with the raid of John Brown. In New York, the republicans succeeded in electing a legislature nearly three to one in their favor, and most of their state ticket by flattering majorities. Pennsylvania also chose an opposition legislature and opposition state officers. Minnesota, for the first time, was republican, securing an additional republican senator in the United States senate. Ohio also reversed the majority in her legislature, which chose Salmon P. Chase, senator, at its ensuing session. In Kansas the people, having rejected the Lecompton constitution, decided by a large majority to call a convention to frame a new state constitution. This convention met at Wyandotte, in July, and adoptéd a constitution which was submitted to and approved by the people of Kansas in October following. At the state election held under this constitution, in December, Charles Robinson, the republican candidate, was elected governor, with a representative to congress and other officers of the same politics.

The territorial legislature having previously repealed the spurious and offensive laws of the territory, passed an amnesty act for political offenses, and a bill abolishing slavery in Kansas. The last named act was defeated by the failure of Governor Medary to sign it.' On the night of the adjournment a bonfire was made of all the odious laws repealed during the session.

In the territory of Nebraska, the republicans elected their candidate for delegate to congress by a majority of the legal votes. The territorial legislature passed an act, in the words of the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery in the territory, forever. This act was

1At the next session, in January, 1860, a similar act was passed over the governor's veto.

vetoed by the federal governor. In Oregon the result was so close that the majority was claimed by both parties.

In California, only, were the friends of the administration successful. In that state, the election was contested with unusual bitterness. Senator Broderick addressed the people at various times during the canvass, severely denouncing the policy and conduct of the president and his supporters. Among the latter was Judge Terry, who, on the close of the election, challenged Senator Broderick to fight a duel. A hostile meeting took place on the 13th of September, and on the first fire Mr. Broderick was fatally wounded. His untimely death produced a very deep and wide-spread feeling of sorrow and regret. A large portion of the people believed his dying declaration :

"They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt administration."

No notice of his death was taken in either house of congress until after Mr. Seward had returned from Europe and resumed his seat in the senate. His brief eulogium on Senator Broderick, pronounced in the senate on the 13th of February, 1860, adds another to his several eloquent memorials of deceased associates in the senate of the United States, that have been previously commented on in these volumes.

The thirty-sixth congress assembled on its usual day in December, 1859. But an organization was not completed until the first week in February, 1860.

On the first ballot for speaker, it was apparent that neither party had then a clear majority of the members. The relative strength, as exhibited on several occasions, was nearly as follows: republicans, one hundred and twelve; democrats, ninety-one; all others, thirty.' Soon after the first ballot, Mr. Clark, of Missouri, offered a resolution declaring, as unfit to be speaker of the house, any member who had signed a recommendation of a pamphlet known as "Helper's Compendium of the Impending Crisis." On this a long and excited debate ensued, continuing until the election of a speaker, but without coming to a vote upon the resolution. On the 1st day of Feb

1 On the first ballot, Sherman received sixty-six votes, Grow forty-three, Bocock eighty-six and scattering thirty-five. The republicans then united on Mr. Sherman, giving him one hundred and twelve votes. The democrats changed their candidate several times, varying in the number of votes they cast from eighty-six to ninety-one. They repeatedly united with the Americans, carrying their combined vote on the thirty-ninth ballot up to one hundred and twelve.

ruary, and on the forty-fourth ballot, ex-governor William Pennington, of New Jersey, the republican candidate, was chosen speaker, receiving one hundred and seventeen votes to one hundred and sixteen for all others. The republican candidates for clerk, printer, and the minor officers were subsequently elected by small majorities. The committees also, appointed by the speaker, were republican, or opposed to the policy of the administration.

In the senate, no delay occurred. Immediately after its organization, Mr. Mason, as already stated, moved the appointment of a committee to inquire into the facts connected with the late seizure of the United States armory at Harper's Ferry, by John Brown and his confederates. Mr. Trumbull moved to include in the investigation the seizure of the arsenal at Franklin, Missouri, by the invaders of Kansas, in 1855. Mr. Mason's resolution was unanimously adopted, after the rejection of Mr. Trumbull's amendment.

Subsequently, Mr. Douglas, who had been detained from the senate by illness for several weeks, offered a resolution in favor of a law to protect the slave states against invasions and conspiracies. The measure proposed was denounced as a "sedition act," aiming at the liberty of the press and at free speech. It gave rise to a heated discussion, involving the question of slavery in its various relations to the government. The president transmitted his message to the senate on the 27th of December, before the house had organized. He discussed at length the Harper's Ferry affair, the slave trade, the acquisition of Cuba, and recommended an appropriation to pay for the Amistad negroes.

Mr.

Mr. Seward took his seat in the senate on the 9th of January, 1860. On the 14th of February, the president of the senate presented the constitution of Kansas, framed at Wyandotte. Seward moved its reference to the committee on territories, and that it be printed. On the 29th, he delivered his great speech in favor of the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union, and on "the state of the country."

"The audience assembled to hear Governor Seward's speech," says a writer who listened to it, “filled every available spot in the senate galleries, and overflowed into all the adjacent lobbies and passages, crowding them with throngs eager to follow the argument of the senator, or even to catch an occasional sentence or word; while, throughout its delivery, a constant stream of life flowed up and down the

gorgeous staircases of the chamber, vainly beating against the compact masses who had been so fortunate as to get early possession of the ground; and, thence recoiling and deflecting, the disappointed current would glide into eddies around the hall, and linger in groups beyond ear-shot of the speaker, unwilling to abandon all hope of ultimately catching a glimpse of the scene transpiring below.

"It was on the floor itself that the most interesting spectacle was presented, every senator seemed to be in his seat. Hunter, Davis, Toombs, Mason, Hammond. Slidell, Clingman, Benjamin and Brown, paid the closest attention to the speaker. Crittenden listened to every word. Douglas affected to be self-possessed; but his nervousness of mien gave token that the truths now uttered awakened unpleasant memories of the Lecompton contest, when he, Seward and Crittenden, the famous triumvirate, led the allies in their attacks upon a corrupt and despotic administration.

“The members of the house streamed over to the north wing of the capitol, almost in a body, leaving Mr. Reagan of Texas, to discourse to empty benches, while Seward held his levee in the senate.

Many prominent men, from various parts of the Union, occupied the reserved seats in and around the chamber. There was an unusally large attendance of the diplomatic corps. This was due in part, doubtless, to the reputation of the orator as a statesman and a leader of a great party soon to take the control of the Federal Government; but more, perhaps, to the fact that, during his recent foreign tour, Governor Seward was received with marked respect, and seemed sometimes to be confidently consulted by the most eminent crowned heads and the most distinguished statesmen of Europe.

"This attention was due in a large degree to the train of profound reflection, the vein of original thought, the graphic historical sketches, the tasteful rhetorical ornaments, the occasional apt quotations and allusions, in fine, to the mental magnetism which permeated his speech from the beginning to the end. But it was owing more, doubtless, to the intrinsic character of the subject and the man, than to any mere display of the arts of the logician or the rhetorician. It was upon the theme of American politics; upon the problem awaiting solution by the whole body of our people. It was the utterance of a man whose sharply-defined opinions upon that theme, pronounced twenty years ago, then found feeble echoes, but which have been reiterated until they have become the creed and rallying cry of a party on the eve of assuming the control of the National Government.

"His exposition of the relation of the constitution to slavery contained, in a few lucid sentences, all that is valuable upon that subject in Marshall, Story and Kent. The historic sketch of parties and policies, and the influence of slavery upon both, from the rise of the Missouri compromise onward to its fall, exhibited all of Hallam's fidelity to fact, lighted up with the warm coloring of Bancroft. The episodical outline of the Kansas controversy, and of the doctrinal heresy and dangerous tendency of the Dred Scott pronunciamento, have never been compressed into words so few and weighty. Nothing could be more triumphant than his vindication of the republican party from the charge of sectionalism; nothing more felicitous than his invitation to the south to come to New York and proclaim its doctrines from lake Erie to Sag Harbor, assuring its champions of safe conduct in their raid upon his constituents; while the suggestion, that if the south

would allow republicans the like access to its people, the party would soon cast as many votes below the Potomac as it now does north of that river, was one of those happy retorts, whose visible effect upon senators from the slave states must have been seen to be appreciated and enjoyed. His implied rebuke of the tirade against Helper's book, by quoting Jefferson's commendatory letter to Price, the Helper of his day, and his comparison of the attempt to implicate, by inuendoes, others than Brown and his companions, in their attack upon Harper's Ferry, with like attempts to implicate innocent persons in the Salem witchcraft, the Guy Fawkes plot, and the old colonial negro plot, produced a salutary effect upon an appreciating auditory, though uttered in the calm and measured language so characteristic of the senator. And, finally, this masterly and successful speech was closed by an elaborate and impressive exposition, alike original, sincere and hearty, of the manifold advantages of the Federal Union, the firm hold it has upon the affections of the people, the solid basis upon which its pillars rest, and the certainty that it will survive the rudest shocks of fanaticism and faction."1

The spring elections of 1860, throughout the north, were eminently favorable to the republican cause. Nearly every northern city elected republican officers. The state elections in New Hampshire and Connecticut and the city elections in Chicago (the home of Senator Douglas) and in Philadelphia were each hotly contested. The administration made every exertion that pecuniary aid and class terrorism could employ. But the friends of freedom proved true, and were everywhere successful. In Rhode Island a division among the republicans on local issues resulted in the election of the irregular republican ticket, which had been supported by the administration forces who made no peculiar nomination. In the state of New York, the counties of Cayuga and St. Lawrence, (the homes of Senators Seward and Preston King,) elected unanimous republican boards of supervisors, and there were large gains in other counties. It was estimated that prior to the occurrence of most of these elections one million copies of Mr. Seward's last speech had been printed and circulated in the various localities.

Soon after the rash raid at Harper's Ferry, some public meetings had been held in a few cities, under the name of Union meetings, composed mainly of citizens who had not as yet been received fully into either of the two parties of the country. The speeches and resolutions at these meetings denied the necessity of any agitation of the slavery question and deprecated what was called the forcing of an issue upon the people, which they did not wish to discuss.

VOL. IV.

1 Correspondence of the New York Tribune.

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