weakened state of the party made it necessary to conserve every strategic advantage. Buchanan lived in Pennsylvania, then the pivotal state. Besides this the South, though favorable to Douglas, preferred a weaker man in the White House, a servant, not a leader. On the fifteenth ballot Buchanan was nominated over Douglas, Pierce having withdrawn. The goal of his ambition, to attain which Douglas had paid so heavy a price, receded four years further into the future.

Before the election the Administration succeeded in restoring order in Kansas. A sobering concern for the safety of the Union succeeded the indignation over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The South stood solid for Buchanan. The National Republican party, headed by Fremont, was not entirely organized from its heterogeneous elements. In the election Buchanan received 174 electoral votes, to 114 for Fremont, and 8 for Fillmore, who was the candidate of the "Know-Nothings" and the remnant of the Whigs. Buchanan won the title of President, but Douglas had dictated the platform and retained the reality of power.

The issue of statehood for Kansas remained prominent, but in 1857 it was overshadowed for a time by a decision of the United States Supreme Court, upon the power of Congress over slavery in the territories, and the status of negroes under the Constitution. In the debates upon the KansasNebraska bill, Douglas in reply to a question whether in his opinion the people of a territory

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could, under the Constitution of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, had answered: That is a question for the courts." Now the decision upon that question was forthcoming. On March 6, 1857, two days after Buchanan's inauguration, an opinion was handed down, touching the right to freedom of a negro, Dred Scott, who, while a slave, had been brought by his master into Illinois, where slavery was illegal, and then into the Louisiana territory, north of latitude 36° 30'. With two important dissenting opinions the court, with Chief Justice Taney presiding, decided the following essential points: first, that negroes were not included in the statement of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal; second, that no negro could become a citizen of the United States; third, that the right to hold slaves as property was affirmed in the Constitution; fourth, that neither Congress nor any territorial legislature could exclude slavery from any territory. The decision had been anticipated. But it was the greatest victory yet won by the South. Hereafter slavery was free to go into the national territories as it pleased. Again the North was stirred to its foundations, and a readjustment of party lines was necessary. The charge that there was a conspiracy to nationalize slavery was renewed. It was charged that Buchanan and the Supreme Court were in collusion, and with anxious hearts the opponents of slavery predicted a further decision which should open the states to slavery, and thus accomplish the

full design of the conspirators. To Douglas, however, the decision was a source of confusion. At once he declared the decision was right and must be maintained. But what of "popular sovereignty," the principle upon which he had built his statesmanship? If under the Constitution slaves were lawful property in any territory, what became of the doctrine that the people of a territory could admit slavery or not as they chose? The problem was serious. It remained to be fought out in the campaign of 1858.

The decision had also the peculiar effect of making essentially the whole platform of the new Republican party, in its opposition to the extension of slavery, unconstitutional. While the position of the party was morally right, it was difficult to defend it in argument, when every point urged involved a criticism of the highest judicial tribunal in the land.

Emboldened by continued successes the Southern leaders became more audacious and overbearing than they had ever been. The North was thoroughly awake to the desperate character of the conflict. Feeling ran so high in Congress that personal combats were daily feared. By the Dred Scott decision slavery was now legalized in Kansas. But the problem of her statehood remained open. Since 1856 three out of every four immigrants had come from the free states. At this juncture a brazen conspiracy was formed to bring Kansas into the Union under a pro-slavery constitution.

Sanctioned by the territorial legislature, a convention met near the close of 1857 at Lecompton_to frame a constitution for the new state. The freestate men, dissatisfied with the mode of its organization, refused to attend, and its pro-slavery members, after drawing up an instrument favoring slavery, fell in with the scheme, devised by a Southern junto at Washington, of submitting it to the people in such a way that they had no chance to vote against the constitution as a whole, but only "for the Constitution with slavery or "for the Constitution without slavery." And if the "Constitution without slavery were chosen, it was provided that there should be no interference with slavery wherever in the Territory it already existed. At the election on December 21, 1857, the free-state men refused to vote, and the "Constitution with slavery" was chosen by a vote of 6143 to 589. In reaction against this proceeding the free-state men called a special election on January 4, 1858, to vote simply for or against the Lecompton Constitution. But this time the pro-slavery men, deeming the matter already settled, refused to vote, and the poll showed 10,266 votes against the Constitution to 138 for it with slavery, and 24 for it without slavery.

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Now the contest was brought before Congress. With the Constitution as adopted on December 21, 1857, the Lecompton plotters formally applied for the admission of Kansas to the Union. President Buchanan, utterly subservient, gave the influence of the Administration to the iniquitous scheme.

For Douglas it was a critical moment. If as leader of his party he lent his powerful aid to the plot, it meant a total and humiliating surrender to the pro-slavery propaganda. It meant the sacrifice of the spirit, if not the letter of popular sovereignty, for the Lecompton Constitution in no sense expressed the voice of the people. It meant the loss of enough of his Northern following to imperil his re-election to the Senate in the state campaign in Illinois about to begin. On the other hand if he opposed the measure he would sacrifice the political support of the South for which he had paid so heavily. To the surprise of the country Douglas met the issue by a formal revolt from the policy of his party, and a refusal to support the Lecompton scheme. Vigorously attacking the measure, he procured its defeat in the House of Representatives. A modified form of the scheme, called the English Bill, next proposed, offered the people of Kansas a large land grant if they would accept the Lecompton Constitution with slavery, at a new election to be held in August of 1858. But if they refused thus to accept the constitution they were to be denied admission until their population reached 93,420. Douglas opposed this bill as vigorously as the other, but he was unable to defeat it. The people of Kansas, however, at the appointed election refused the bribe of land, and rejected statehood as thus offered by a vote of five to one.

Save for Douglas the original Lecompton plot would have succeeded. Among the Southern

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