CHAPTER XIII. THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. N the political field the struggle between slavery and tion and skirmishing until the year 1854. Up to that time, the two great parties treated it as a side issue. Then, when the truce made by the compromise of 1850 was broken by the repeal of the Missouri compromise, the contest suddenly expanded until the whole country became its theater. When, in 1820, the state of Missouri was organized out of a part of the immense north-western territory acquired from France years before by the Louisiana purchase, there was a struggle in Congress as to whether slavery, which had a foothold in the new state, should be excluded therefrom as a condition of its admission. The question was settled by allowing Missouri to retain slavery, but upon condition that it should be forever prohibited in all the rest of the Louisiana purchase lying north of the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude,-the line which marks the southern boundary of Missouri. The debates of 1850 had no reference to this region, but concerned that other vast country which had just been conquered from Mexico. Now, in the winter of 1853-4, a proposal was made to organize, under territorial government,-first as one territory of Nebraska, but soon, as the two territories of Nebraska and Kansas,-an immense district lying west of Missouri and wholly north of the "thirty-six thirty" line, a part of that very domain which it had been decreed in 1820 should be forever free. The bill originated in the Senate, and it was a Northern man, Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois,- for many years a senator, and a politician eagerly ambitious for the Presidency, to which the road seemed to lie through Southern favor,-who, as chairman of the committee on territories, incorporated in the bill of organization a clause declaring that the prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30, by the act of 1820, had been "superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850," and was "inoperative and void." This proposal-instantly and eagerly seized by the South-stirred the North with a thrill of resentment and resistance. From this time began a wholly new epoch in the political action of the Northern people. Unnoted by the politicians and the worldly-wise, the antipathy to slavery had steadily widened and deepened among the common people. The more it was thought of, the more odious it became to them. The occasional return of fugitives thrust the horrors of the system upon their notice. The men and women of keen moral instincts who had long recognized it as the great national sin, served each as the center of widening circles of conviction. Millions who had been unmoved by the denunciations of Garrison and Phillips, had been conquered by the pathetic story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." But for all this rapidly growing volume of opinion and feeling, there had lacked a political outlet. Love of the Union, love of peace, regard for the established social order, had united with commercial interest and personal ambitions to hold the North in acquiescence. Now, the South and its allies struck a sudden blow at peace, at ancient compact, and at liberty. Slavery grasped openly at universal extension and supremacy in the nation. The assault set free all that hostility to human bondage which the North had been almost dumbly harboring, swept into its tide a multitude who before had been indifferent, "And all the long-pent stream of life The aggression roused an opposition on other than moral grounds. Northern politicians who cared nothing about slavery were alarmed at the prospect of a preponderance in Congress and the electoral college to be gained for the South by the creation of new slave states. The men of the Clay and Webster school, who had been anxious to keep the peace by keeping an even balance of power between the two sections, saw the scales rudely jostled. Clay and Webster and Calhoun were dead. Calhoun's spirit had mastered the South, and made aggressiveness its key-note. The work of the great compromises was undone; and two opposite civilizations, two opposite moralities, were to wrestle for the supremacy. The Republican's tone at this time, in contrast with its course in 1850, is a good illustration of the changed temper of the nation. From the first introduction of Mr. Douglas's bill, it made frequent and sharp comment upon its unprincipled and mischievous character. When the measure had reached full development, and its adoption by Pierce's administration foreshadowed its success in a strongly Democratic Congress, the Republican (February 8) treated the subject in a masterly article of two columns and a half. It clearly and soberly rehearsed the whole history of the Missouri compromise; and said of the proposed repeal: "It is a monstrous proposition. It is a huge stride backwards. It proposes to undo the work of freedom performed by our fathers. It makes the government of the great Republic of the world an engine for the strengthening and advancement of the worst sort of human slavery. It is legislation against the spirit of the age, against the spirit of republicanism, against the decent opinions of the decent part of the world. "Besides, it is a re-opening of the slavery agitation, quieted for a long series of years, as all supposed, by the compromises of 1850. The North had acquiesced in these compromises; it sustained them and abided by them. But the South and its Northern political allies have broken the peace of the country. They make fresh and monstrous demands. These demands will arouse the whole nation; they will widen and deepen the anti-slavery feeling of the country as no other conceivable proposition could. The signs are unmistakable. No mere party or faction will array itself against this Nebraska scheme. The whole people are against it. The moral force of the North-the influence, the learning, the wealth, and the votes of the North—are against it, and will make themselves effectively heard, ere the agitation, now re-opened by the insanity of the slave-holding interest, and in behalf of the schemes of ambitious partisans, shall have ceased. The South and its allies have sown the wind,— will they not reap the whirlwind ? "The measure will have a potent influence upon the politics of the country. Out of it now promise to grow new and important arrangements of parties, and new and important results in our country's history. We await their issue calmly, hopefully, trustingly. But we shall not, because we cannot, be passive spectators of the strife. Our sympathies, our convictions, are all with freedom and liberty, and against slavery and oppression. And wherever it leads us, we shall battle for the right against the wrong, for freedom against slavery, for progress against retrogradation, not with blind fanaticism, but we trust with an enlightened liberality that will give us the company of the wise and good, of the earnest and the thoughtful, of all who place country above party, throughout the free states." VOL. I.-8 In these declarations, the Republican entered upon a moral leadership, such as it had never before exercised. Its chief editor's greatness lay largely in his capacity for growth, his susceptibility to enlarging and ennobling influences. The new impulse which swept through the nation found him open to its full influence. He saw with clearness and spoke with force what right-minded men were beginning to see and speak everywhere. The paper noted, February 16, that all the Whig and Independent papers of the North, with very many of the Democratic, are opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska bill. It gave for several weeks a daily column of "Public Opinion," containing the declarations of papers and men on the great question. It was largely by thus giving the news, of opinion and fact, that the Republican maintained its cause. Its own argument and appeal had their place; but the story of what men were saying and doing was the strongest weapon. Thus, there occurs from this time a frequent column of news items about slavery, under such headings as "The Patriarchal Institution," relating incidents characteristic of the system and its abuses. Among these frequently appear sympathetic notices of escapes, attempted or successful,-the "constitutional duty" to return fugitives having fallen, alas! quite out of sight. Thus we read, April 28: "The underground railroad"- the system of secret assistance to slaves escaping to Canada -"was never doing a larger business, we apprehend, than at present. We find no quotations of the stock, but it must certainly be above par. The travel is large, and there are few or no accidents. The signal success of its operations speaks well for the ability and discretion of its management." The struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska bill continued till the end of May. In the policy which Mr. Douglas advocated, there lurked a fraudulent element. His pro |