From this position the Republican never swerved, steadily opposing Know-nothingism as un-American, and hostile to the spirit of religious equality. The political strength of the party first began to appear in Massachusetts after the barren results of the Whig and Republican conventions. The party nominated for governor Henry J. Gardner, whose political record was that of a conservative Whig. The Republican said that the nomination was managed by Henry Wilson and Anson Burlingame, as part of an arrangement by which Wilson was to be sent to the Senate, and Burlingame to the House. The approach of the election found all the prophets at fault. But the result came as an amazing surprise. The Knownothings swept the state like a hurricane. Gardner received 79,000 votes; the Whig candidate, Governor Washburn, came next with 26,000; Beach, Democrat, had 14,000, and Wilson 7000. Every one of the twelve Congressmen chosen was a Know-nothing, and the state legislature was almost solidly of the same party.

The Republican treated the result with the goodnatured philosophy which it always showed under defeat; and the people generally seemed to pause from their accustomed seriousness, to indulge in a great laugh at their own escapade. The paper thus interpreted the event (November 15):

"The result of Monday's voting means that the people were out of humor with the old political organizations, and desired to extinguish them, break down the differences, unite and redivide as the new and more important practical questions of the time shall indicate to be necessary or appropriate. This was the voice of common sense and the feeling of the great mass of the people. They sought satisfaction in a fusion upon the slavery question; but the quietists and the velvet-footed philanthropists on one side, and the selfish schemes of party leaders and committee men on both, brought effort here to

nought." The people, it continued, disappointed and vexed, seized on Know-nothingism as an instrument for breaking to pieces the old parties. This involved the misfortune of displacing many good and tried public servants and putting novices in their stead. Thus in the Springfield district the Whig candidate for re-election to Congress, Edward Dickinson, whose course on the Nebraska question had been above reproach, was replaced by an untried man, Dr. C. C. Chaffee. "But the aggregate popular mind is apt to go straight to its object like an army in battle, without much regard for the incidental injustice it does, or the new dangers it creates."

But the broad result was favorable to freedom. The Massachusetts Congressmen and legislature were strongly anti-slavery. In the country at large, the anti-Nebraska movement had triumphed. Under various party names it had won a plurality of the national House. It lacked consolidation; its elements became partially separated again before their final fusion; but a great beginning had been made.

The battle being over, the Republican gave its interior history, so far as the Whigs and itself were concerned, with great frankness,― a frankness which it never after this time postponed till after election. It referred to the first outburst against the Kansas-Nebraska scheme.

"We reproached ourselves that we had stood thus gazing stupidly on the deepening shadows of that overspreading despotism. We felt that the danger was one that trifled all former knowings-and that union of all friends of freedom was the imperative necessity. The Whigs ought to have initiated a catholic union of all the opponents of slavery. But certain sagacious men had discovered a more excellent way. Under the plurality rule we might crush out all opposition. How desirable to be done! We might keep everything. The party would be saved. The offices would all be ours. And this was to be our reward, this our satisfaction, our answer when the

multitudes of the unborn shall stand up to curse us! These councils prevailed, and by them the state convention was governed. . . For ourselves, it was not possible to act with any other association. We resolved to remain where we were. Yet our moral strength was gone. There was left nothing worth contending for. Thousands of young men, ready to have thrown themselves into the Republican movement with an energy that could have defied opposition, had left us for a new connection. We felt that the ship was sinking. And yet when that odd-looking Know-nothing craft came up under a press of sail and offered us a free passage and good berths, we refused to leave. We stood at our post, and fired the signal guns over the settling wreck."

But, it concludes, the power of names is broken; there exist the material, the motives, the opportunity, for a new order of things; the Know-nothing creed is far too narrow to last long, and a better future is near.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE STRUGGLE IN KANSAS AND IN MASSACHUSETTS.

THE

HE struggle for slavery extension was begun in Congress, and gained its victory in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. This transferred the contest to the territory of Kansas, while at the same time an appeal was taken to the great tribunal of the American people. Through the succeeding years the strife lay in these three fields,-Kansas, Congress, and the popular elections.

While the Kansas-Nebraska bill was still under debate, a movement had been initiated in Massachusetts for promoting an emigration that should determine the political and social character of Kansas. Under the lead of Mr. Eli Thayer of Worcester, the New England Emigrant Aid Society was incorporated by the legislature in February, 1854; and in the following July, its first colony, of twenty-four members, founded the town of Lawrence. In two weeks came another company of seventy, whose outfit included a steam saw-mill. Similar societies were founded in other free states, and a moderate but steady stream of emigration was poured into the new territory. The South was wholly unable to compete with the North in this direction. It had no such material of hardy and enterprising yeomanry to send out as settlers. But right upon the Kansas border, and across the direct route

to the free states, lay Missouri, whose western section abounded in a lawless and ruffianly element, devoted to the slave-holding interest, and encouraged and led by men of high political standing. It was with this material that the attempt to make Kansas a slave state was urged on. The first settlers of Lawrence, while still living in tents, were visited by a band of two hundred and fifty armed Missourians, and ordered to leave the territory. They held their ground, and the invaders retired without attempting force. There followed a long series of incursions, murders, and outrages. A systematic attempt was made to usurp the government of the territory. At the first election of a delegate to Congress, in November, 1854, bands of Missourians poured over the border, distributed themselves at the voting-places, cast their votes for the pro-slavery candidate, J. W. Whitefield, and then returned to their homes. In this way three thousand votes were cast, though it was afterward proved that there were only half that number of voters resident in Kansas. Senator Atchison of Missouri, formerly presid ing officer of the United States Senate, took a leading part in these operations. In March, 1855, at the election of a territorial legislature, the invasion was repeated on a larger scale and under such systematic arrangement that every legislative district was carried, except one which lay far remote from the border. The legislature chosen by such means proceeded to enact a code of laws with the especial object of establishing slavery. Decoying slaves from their masters was made punishable by death, or hard labor for not less than ten years; the circulation of books or writings inciting slaves to revolt was punishable by death; the assertion by speech or writing that slavery was not lawful in the territory, or the introduction or circulation of any book or paper containing such denial, was made felony, and punishable by VOL. I.-9