CHAPTER X.

A GREAT AWAKENING.

Stupor Before Excitement-A Dead Sea of Politics-Repeal of the Missouri Compromise—The Migration to Kansas-Lincoln and Douglas Meet Again-A Memorable Debate-Lincoln Withdraws from the Canvass-Lyman Trumbull Elected to the Senate.

N 1850 it looked to the eyes of most men that human slavery was forever fixed in this country. Congress had passed a series of measures that were supposed to settle everything, but which satisfied neither the slave States nor the free States, although the friends of human freedom were deeply discouraged by the enactment of the so-called compromise. Mr. W. H. Herndon relates that as he and Lincoln were wayfaring together that year Lincoln gloomily said: "How hard, ah, how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived in it! The world is dead to hope, deaf to its own death struggle, made known by a universal cry. What is to be done? Is anything to be done? Who can do anything? And how is it to be done? Do you ever think of these things?"

In that year Thomas Lincoln died. Burdened with many cares, Lincoln could not go to see his father, who was reported to him as lying very low in health. To the ill-faring step-brother, John

Johnston, Lincoln wrote while his father was yet alive:

"I sincerely hope that father may yet recover his health; but, at all events, tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our good and great and merciful Father and Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads; and he will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in him. Say to him that, if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant, but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyful meeting with the loved ones gone before, and where the rest of us, through the mercy of God, hope ere long to join them."

In 1852 Lincoln accepted the place of elector on the Whig ticket in his State. As he was wont to say, he was "a standing candidate for Whig elector, but seldom elected anybody." This time, as was expected, the Whig candidate was defeated, and the Democratic nominee, Franklin Pierce, was chosen. Lincoln, although accepting with reluctance the nomination on the electoral ticket of his party, took small part in a campaign in which he could have had no heart. His party's platform had closed his mouth on the only subject on which he felt very deeply. In fact, the whole country seemed to be waiting in dumb silence as if anticipating the storm that was brewing. As Lincoln could not speak on the slavery issue, he could not readily find other topics with which the people could be stirred. During the two years next succeeding there was very little to rouse

a man of Lincoln's warm and deep emotional nature. He stuck to his calling, and diligently pursued it, practising at Springfield and before the Supreme Court of the State.

In 1854 came the great awakening. Once more the battle was to be fought between slavery and freedom. By what was called the Missouri Compromise, enacted in 1820, slavery was put forever out of the Northwestern Territory. This had already been secured by what is known as the Ordinance of 1787; but when Missouri was admitted to the family of States, in 1820, it was as a slave State. If Missouri had come in as a free State, the balance of power would have been f rever after with the free States. By the compromise under which Missouri came in, it was agreed that in all the territory north of the northern boundary of that State, slavery should be forever prohibited. In 1854 the new Territories of Kansas and Nebraska were knocking at the door for admittance. As these lay to the north of Missouri they were included in the prohibition of slavery. Stephen Arnold Douglas, Senator from Illinois, introduced in the Senate a bill organizing the two Territories, and leaving the question of slavery to be settled by the voters of the region. This was a repeal of the much-vaunted Missouri Compromise, which positively prohibited slavery in those Territories.

Words can but feebly describe the excitement that this bold and unexpected concession to the slave States created throughout the North. It had been thought that the Missouri Compromise gave slavery

an undue advantage. It gave that accursed institution one more State. To repeal it now would be to remove the barrier that pent the flood of slavery in its present limits, and throw open to it an area as great as that covered by the thirteen original States. Amidst the most intense excitement, Douglas's bill was finally passed through Congress on the 8th of May, 1854. The event was celebrated by the booming of an artillery salute fired on Capitol Hill, Washington. That boom was the death-knell of slavery in the United States.

Instantly the whole North was aflame. Douglas was everywhere denounced for having sold his birthright as a free man for a mess of pottage. It was generally believed that his course had been prompted by a desire to gain the support of the slave States in his plans to be elected President of the republic. With wonderful skill and audacity, he defended himself from the attacks that were rained down upon him. He insisted that the popular will should be sovereign, and that that will should determine whether slavery or freedom should rule in each community. The settlers in a territory were called squatters." The slavery question, under the new order of things, was to be left to them. The friends of the Douglas programme invented as a watchword the phrase "squatter sovereignty." And this, with the next best phrase, "popular sovereignty," was heard in every political discussion from one end of the country to the other.

Then began a race to take possession of the new Territory. From the Northern States went large

numbers of people bent on being early on the ground to occupy the soil for freedom; and from the slave States migrated others equally resolved to secure the young Territory for the dominion of slavery. Kansas, being readiest of access, received the full volume of the wave of immigration. The free-State men moved from the Western States nearest; northern Illinois and Iowa more especially contributing companies of actual settlers, as they called themselves, to distinguish themselves from those who were merely temporary occupants of the promised land. But even as far off as New England were formed organizations to assist those who would go to help swell the free population of Kansas. Missouri and Arkansas, however, both slave States, and both having a large uneasy, floating population, had the advantage which those conditions gave them, and their people, fired with a determination to save the Territory for slavery, swarmed over the border. These movements, which began almost as soon as the bill passed Congress, occupied the summer of that year. Before three months had passed "free-State men" and "proslavery men" had become familiar words all over the West.

Lincoln, placidly engaged in his customary vocations, but ever watchful of the progress of events, was roused to tense attentiveness. He was still a Whig in name, but the Whig party was dying. From its ruins was to spring a new and vigorous organization, to the leadership of which, in his own State, he must move.

Congress adjourned in August, and the great chiefs