What is known as the Kansas Controversy was a marked era in the political history of the Union. It illustrated most powerfully the fact that the slavery question really involved but little of moral sentiment, and indicated a contest for political power between two rival sections.

When Mr. Buchanan came into the Presidential office, in 1857, he at once perceived that the great point of his administration would be to effect the admission of Kansas into the Union, and thus terminate a dispute which was agitating and distracting the country. In September, 1857, the people of the Territory had called a Convention at Lecompton to form a Constitution. The entire Constitution was not submitted to the popular vote; but the Convention took care to submit to the vote of the people, for ratification or rejection, the clause respecting slavery. The official vote resulted: For the Constitution, with slavery, 6,226; for the Constitution, without slavery, 509. Under this Constitution, Mr. Buchanan recommended the admission of Kansas into the Union; and indeed he had reason to hope for it in view of the principles which had governed in his election.

The argument on the other side was that the entire Constitution had not been submitted to the people, and that the principle of "popular sovereignty" had been invaded by the Convention, in not representing all the voters of the Territory, and in not submitting the entire result of their labours to a vote of the people. The Anti-Slavery or Free State party had also their Constitution to advocate, an instrument framed in 1855, at Topeka, which had been submitted to the people, and ratified by a large majority of those who voted. But the facts were that scarcely any but Abolitionists went to the polls; and it was notorious that the Topeka Constitution was the fruit of a bastard population that had been thrown into the Territory by the "Emigrant Aid Societies" of New England.

In his first message to Congress, Mr. Buchanan surveyed the whole ground of the controversy. He explained that when he instructed Gov. Walker of Kansas, in general terms, in favour of submitting the Constitution to the people, he had no other object in view beyond the all-absorbing topic of slavery; he considered that under the organic act -known as the Kansas-Nebraska bill-the Convention was bound to submit the all-important question of slavery to the people; he added, that it was never his opinion, however, that, independently of this act, the Convention would be bound to submit any portion of the Constitution to a popular vote, in order to give it validity; and he argued the fallacy and

unreasonableness of such an opinion, by insisting that it was in opposition to the principle which pervaded our institutions, and which was every day carried into practice, to the effect that the people had the right to delegate to representatives, chosen by themselves, sovereign power to frame Constitutions, enact laws, and perform many other iniportant acts, without the necessity of testing the validity of their work by popular approbation.

These views appeared reasonable enough. But Mr. Buchanan found that they were opposed by many members of Congress who had actively supported him in his canvass, and chief and leader among them the distinguished author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, Mr. Douglas. This man had assembled an opposition under the captivating term of "popular sovereignty;" but these words had a certain narrow and technical party meaning, and covered a remarkable and ingenious design upon the power and interests of the South.

It had long been evident to intelligent observers that the Northern Democratic party, of which Mr. Douglas some time ago had been the acknowledged leader, was becoming demoralized on the slavery question. This party had formerly acted with the South for political power. In the depression of that power and the rapid growth of the anti-slavery party in the North, it had no hesitation in courting and conciliating the ruling element. This disposition was accommodated by the controversy which had taken place between Mr. Douglas and the administration of Mr. Buchanan. The anti-slavery sentiment in the North was conciliated by the partisans of the former in adopting a new principle for the government of the Territories, which was to allow the people to determine the question of slavery in their Territorial capacity, without awaiting their organization as a State, and thus to risk the decision of the rights of the South on the verdict of a few settlers on the public domain. This doctrine was violently entitled by Mr. Douglas "popular sovereignty;" but it was more justly described by Gov. Wise of Virginia, as "a short cut to all the ends of Black Republicanism."

It is thus seen that Mr. Douglas had tortured the language of the Kansas-Nebraska bill into the sense that the unorganized population of a Territory might decide the question of slavery as against the State interests of the South; thus indicating to the North that this measure might quite as easily and readily exclude slavery as the intervention of Congress, the right of which the Black Republican party claimed.

Mr. Douglas was an able and eloquent demagogue. He imposed his doctrine upon the minds of not a few of the Southern people by the artfulness of its appeals to the name of a principle, which had none of the substance of justice or equality. He raised in Congress what was called the Anti-Lecompton party, pledged to the exclusion of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, and insisting on the right of Territorial legisla

SETTLEMENT OF THE KANSAS QUESTION.

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tion on the subject of slavery. For six months the Kansas question occupied Congress, and held the country in anxiety and suspense. It was a contest for political power between North and South. The mere industrial interests or morals of slavery had nothing to do with it.

The sum of the controversy was that the South struggled for the principle of equality in the Territories, without reference to the selfish interests of slavery, and even with the admission of the hopelessness of those interests in Kansas; while the North contended for the narrow selfish, practical consequence of making Kansas a part of her Free-soil possessions. This was evident in the debates in Congress. At one stage of the discussion, Mr. English, of Indiana, asked the question: "Is there a Southern man here who will vote against the admission of Kansas as a Free State, if it be the undoubted will of the people of that Territory that it shall be a Free State-if she brings here a Constitution to that effect?"—and there was a general response "Not one" from the Southern side of the House. At another period of the debate, Mr. Barksdale of Mississippi put the question to Black Republican members whether they would vote for the admission of Kansas into the Union with a Constitution tolerating slavery "if a hundred thousand people there wished it.” Mr. Giddings of Ohio replied that he "would never vote to compel his State to associate with another Slave State." Mr. Stanton, his colleague, added: "I will say that the Republican members of this House, so far a I know, will never vote for the admission of any Slave State north of 36° 30'."

The result of the dispute was the report of a bill for the admission of Kansas, which became a law in June, 1858, and substantially secured nearly all that the North had claimed in the matter. The people were authorized to form a new Constitution. Kansas did not come into the Union until nearly three years afterwards, just as it was going to pieces; and then it came in with an anti-slavery Constitution, and President Buchanan, consistently, signed the bill of admission.

But the trouble did not end with the solution of the Kansas difficulty. The true character of that event, and the debates which had attended it in Congress, convinced the South that it could hardly expect, under any circumstances, the addition of another Slave State to the Union. The pernicious doctrines of Mr. Douglas were used to erect a party which, while it really pandered to the anti-slavery sentiment of the North, imposed upon the South by cheap expressions of conservatism, and glozed state ments of its designs. Mr. Douglas proclaimed his views to be in favour of non-intervention by Congress on the subject of slavery; he avowed his continued and unalterable opposition to Black-Republicanism; his principles were professed to be "held subject to the decisions of the Supreme Court"-the distinction between judicial questions and political questions

being purposely clouded; and his friends, with an ingenious sophistry that had imposed upon the South for thirty years with success, insisted that the support of Stephen A. Douglas was a support of the party in the North which had stood by the South amid persecution and defamation.

But it was evident to reflecting minds that, either by the policy of the Black Republican party, or the shorter device of the Douglas Democracy for the government of the Territories, the sectional equilibrium of the Union was lost. A disposition was shown to calculate the real value of a Union which, by its mere name and the paraphrases of demagogues, had long governed the affections of the people, but in which, it was now seen, the South must constantly descend in political power; in which she paid a tribute to the North in unequal taxations and in the courses of trade, estimated by a Northern writer at two hundred millions of dollars a year; and in which she was constantly enduring insult, occupied the position of an inferiour, and was designated as the spotted and degraded part of America.

THE JOHN BROWN RAID.

Other events were to repeat and enlarge the shock given to the Union by the Kansas controversy. In October, 1859, occurred the farnous John Brown raid into Virginia, in which an old man, who had obtained in Kansas the notoriety of a horse-thief and an assassin, invaded the State of Virginia at Harper's Ferry with a band of outlaws, declared his purpose to free the slaves, and commenced with a work of blood the first acts of sectional rebellion against the authority of the United States. It seems that this man, who had the singular combination of narrow sagacity, or cunning with visionary recklessness that is often observed in fanatics, had, in 1858, summoned a convention in West Canada, in which he proposed to substitute a plan of action entitled "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances" for all other governments then in existence in the United States.

This fanatical instrument has a very curious interest from its general similitude to that "plan of action" which was afterwards adopted by the Government at Washington in its great war upon the South, and its subsequent programme of subjugation.

The main point of the preamble of John Brown's Constitution was to announce the fact that the new government especially contemplated the accession of "the proscribed, oppressed, and enslaved" people of the United States. And this, and the qualification for membership in a fol lowing article, intimated that not sex, colour, age, political or social condi tion would be at all considered against any one.

THE JOHN BROWN RAID.

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The powers of the central Congress were defined in this instrument after the strictest school of Consolidation; and the existence of the States was nowhere practically acknowledged.

In article 17 we find the following provision:

"It shall be the duty of the President and Secretary of State to find out, as soon as possible, the real friends, as well as enemies of this organization in every part of the country; to secure among them inn-keepers, private postmasters, private mail contractors, messengers and agents, through whom may be obtained correct and regular information constantly."

The remaining articles of the Constitution develop a plan to build up on the ruins of existing laws and institutions a despotism, in which the "enemies of the government" are to be deprived of their capacity to do further evil by the loss of their liberty and property, while the loyal citizens are to form a sort of aristocratic fraternity, whose patriotic duty it will be to punish disloyalty at all hours and upon all occasions "promptly and effectually," and "without the formality of a complaint." The confiscation of the property of all slaveholders and "other disloyal persons" is directed; and here, too, we find prescribed oaths of neutrality and allegiance, registering, &c.

This curious foreshadow of the policy of the North, which was to supplant the Constitution of the United States, originated in a convention of thirty-five fanatics, of whom ten where white men and the remaining twenty-five negroes of various shades of colour. John Brown, having thus prefaced his expedition into Virginia, collected a small company of insurgents, black and white, on a farm he had rented near Harper's Ferry, hoping that, as he invaded Virginia, the blacks would flock to his standard, and be armed there with the pikes and rifles he had provided for his recruits.

At half past ten o'clock, Sunday night, 17th October, 1859, the Potomac was crossed, and, proceeding with military method, the party seized first the watchman guarding the railroad bridge at Harper's Ferry, and, posting pickets at certain points, occupied the arsenal and armory building. A white confederate, named Cook, went out in command of a party for the purpose of getting black recruits from the adjoining estates of slaveholders. He arrested Col. Lewis Washington in his house, and brought in some other hostages in the persons of prominent citizens. In the meanwhile, Brown's pickets from time to time arrested and brought into his presence all who, from motives of curiosity or otherwise, had ventured within his military lines. These were retained as prisoners in one of the armory buildings. The pickets having captured one of the watchmen on the bridge, when the one who was to relieve him made his appearance, they challenged him. He, alarmed, at once retreated without obeying