Jackson was not a man to be content of rebellion; they have been stamped in with words. A Proclamation with him characters of fire upon the country; thouwas always the prelude to vigorous action. sands of desolated abodes are monuments It was backed in this case by a force of his judgment; a myriad of graves requite adequate to collect the revenue cord his sagacity. "To begin with Nullifiand maintain the laws. The conse- cation," said he, "with the avowed intent, quence of this decision was, that the reve- nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, que was still collected and South Carolina dismemberment and general revolution, postponed her desperate remedy. Cal- is as if we were to take the plunge of houn came on to Washington to take his Niagara, and cry out that he would stop seat in the Senate. The President was half way down. In the one case as in disposed to arrest him for treason, and it the other, the rash adventurer must go is said, afterward regretted that he had to the bottom of the dark abyss below, not done so. The Force Bill to make were it not that that abyss has no disprovision for the collection of the reve- covered bottom." His conclusion, ennue was introduced. Mr. Calhoun then forcing the necessity of preserving the made his stand, submitting a series of Constitution and Union at every cost, resolutions announcing his favorite doc- was equally prophetic. He, indeed, was trine of the separate sovereignty of the spared the practical application of his States, the constitutional compact which own doctrine. The energy of Jackson united them as States, and the right of and the moderation of Clay for a time each to determine for itself when its arrested the dark fate which the rebelprivileges were violated, and to choose lious State courted for herself. In our its own measures of redress. He main- time she has claimed and secured the tained these resolutions in an elaborate awful Nemesis. When men pondered for speech, marked by the speaker's charac- a moment, awe-struck and inert, the teristic clearness and subtilty, which was words of Webster, though dead, yet replied to with at least equal ability by speaking, came to their ears. "If the Webster, in an oration refuting the Constitution cannot be maintained withcompact" theory of State sovereign-out meeting these scenes of commotion ties, and establishing the authority of the and contest, however unwelcome, they Constitution as a government proper, must come. We cannot, we must not, founded on the adoption of the people, we dare not, omit to do that which, in and creating direct relations between it- our judgment, the safety of the Union self and individuals; that, as a necessary requires." consequence, no State authority could dissolve these relations, that nothing could dissolve them but revolution, and that there could of course be no such thing as secession without revolution.

In 1860, in the concluding acts of the thirty-sixth Congress, when the seceding Southern members were aiming their Parthian arrows at the gentle mother which had given them protection and a Subsequent events have proved the force name, a noble-hearted defender of his of the orator's argument. His theories country, destined shortly to seal his deand warnings have unhappily been writ-votion on the battle-field with his life, ten in letters of living light in the actions stood up in his place to parry the deadly

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION.

19

enjoyment of her slave property, in a stringent Fugitive Slave Act drawn up by Senator Mason. The series of measures, taken together, were considered as a compromise on the vexed question of slavery, and as such were advocated by their author, Henry Clay, and secured

others. In the North they were generally accepted; in the South they were received with distrust, which might have led through disaffection to open revolt, had the extreme councils of some of the leaders, like Quitman, been adopted by the people.

South Carolina and Missis

and motives of the ordinance governing the Northwestern Territory of the original States, to exclude slavery from this additional western region. The battle was long and fiercely fought, calling forth many of those arguments and appeals on both sides which have of late become so familiar to the country. The moral the support of Benton, Webster, and evil of slavery, and the duties to restrict it, were pressed with great earnestness by one party, while the other maintained it was beyond the province of Congressional legislation. After long agitation, the subject was settled by a compromise. Missouri was admitted as a slave State, while, with the exception of her domain, sippi were, indeed, fast ripening for reall the territory north of the line of 36 bellion, but the hour had not yet come to degrees, 30 minutes, being the northern strike. Mr. Clay's was not a good name line of Arkansas, was to be free. It fol- to conjure evil spirits. They would not lowed by natural inference, that the oc- come at that call. The conspirators cupants of all territory south of the line, waited another word of incantation. The might exercise their discretion on the love of the Union in the hearts of the subject; and, at a proper time, be admit-people was not yet lightly to be disted into the Union as States, with or without the adoption of slavery in their several Constitutions, as they preferred. Such was the opinion and practice of the nation, till the year 1845 introduced a new element into the question. Texas was then annexed, an event which was immediately followed by the war with Mexico. The termination of that conflict brought a vast additional area to the country, lying between the northern boundaries of California and the far southern limits of New Mexico, drawn from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. New legislation was required. By the Congressional legislation of 1850, California was admitted as a free State, the Territories of New Mexico and Utah were organized, the slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, and the South received new guarantees for the

lodged.

With the passage of Mr. Clay's resolutions, it was hoped the much-agitated subject would be laid at rest, and the country enjoy the longed for repose; and this, perhaps, might have been the case, had the wise councils of the disinterested advocates of the Compromise continued to govern their successors. Four years after, when Clay had closed his mortal career, his last memorable public service being the advocacy of the measures just alluded to; and Webster, with an interval of a few months only, had followed him to the grave, the mouldering fires were stirred again in their ashes, and the flames burst forth with renewed vigor. The organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, brought the old discussion once more to the legislative halls at Washington. The adjustment

and embarrassments, confounding the councils of the President, Congress, hosts of Committeemen, troops of Governors and army officials. Out of the sickening contest came, in the end, the free State of Kansas; but its birth heralded a wide spread civil war, which had taken its first lessons of crime and desolation on that blood-stained soil.

of that matter, in the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska Act, in 1854, by which, the duty of Congress in the protection of the Territories during their pupilage being suspended, the whole question was left to be decided by chance or conflict as it might happen,-the provision of the admission of these States, with or without slavery, as the terms of their Constitution at the time of their apThe annexation of Texas and the war plication should dictate this abandon- with Mexico, were thus indirectly the ment of the principles of the Missouri source of the political agitations which Compromise, re-opened once more the placed Mr. Lincoln in the Presidency in whole fatal strife. The debate was trans- 1860. A war undertaken for the extenferred from the Senate Chamber to the sion of slavery, ended in its limitation. battle-field; emigrants from the free and The territory was gained, and its first from the slave States met on the soil of production was the Democratic Free-soil Kansas, in rival attempts to occupy the party of 1848. Texas, the Mexican war, ground in favor of their different modes the Wilmot proviso, the Clay comproof society. Through wrangling, per-mises, Douglas' Kansas and Nebraska plexity, fraud, and bloodshed the work Act, the rehearsal of strife and battle of colonization was carried on. The boasted Squatter Sovereignty, as the bastard system of Senator Douglas was ingloriously and not inappropriately called, proved not the so-much desired solution of a difficult question in peace and harmony, or the expected cessation of political antagonism; but on the contrary, the introduction of the wildest confusion

in the infant Territory, the rise and rapid development of the Republican party, the canvass of Fremont, the election of Lincoln, are so many events in direct sequence marking the progress of that great rivalry of ideas and institutions which, existing from the beginning, often laid to rest and never extinguished, culminated in the Great Rebellion of 1861.

CHAPTER II.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF SECESSION.

THE introduction to this opening drama | the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. was the election for the Presidency. Of these, Mr. John C. Breckenridge, of The canvass of 1860 brought four candi- Kentucky, was the candidate of a minordates into the field, representing different shades of political opinion, turning more or less directly on the free-soil agitation which had vexed the country since

ity of the Democratic party, the ultra pro-slavery party of the South; and stood pledged by the resolutions of his supporters in the conventions, at Char

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.