rendered great service to the slave-holders, but they had no intention of rewarding him for what he had done.

Abraham Lincoln travelled through Illinois making speeches for the Republican Party, Douglas for the Democrats. They often spoke in the same town. Very graceful the tribute which Lincoln paid to Douglas:

"Twenty years ago Mr. Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young-he a trifle younger than I. Even then we were ambitious-I, perhaps, quite as much as he. With me the race has been a failure-a flat failure. With him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation, and is not unknown in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. So reached that the oppressed of my species might have shared with me the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow."

Little does he know, as he utters the words, of the elevation towards which divine Providence is leading him. He has been thinking of the millions of his fellow-men in slavery. He never has forgotten the scene in the slave-market in New Orleans. He believes that somehow Providence is to bring about the extinction of slavery. He said to a friend, "Sometimes when I am speaking I feel that the time is soon coming when the sun shall shine and the rain fall on no man who shall go forth to unrequited toil.... How it will come about, when it will come, I cannot tell; but that time will surely come!" (')

Mr. Buchanan was elected. His inaugural address was carefully written, and he was ready to take his seat. We do not know who in

1857.

formed him that the Supreme Court, the highest judicial tribunal May 1, of the nation, was prepared to make a decision in a case affecting the rights of slave-holders under the Constitution; but Mr. Buchanan thought it best to insert another sentence in his address. It was the expression of a hope that the decision would forever settle a very vexatious question. Two days passed, and Roger B. Taney, of Maryland, Chief-justice, startled the people by what he had to say concerning two slaves. Dred Scott and his wife Harriet were owned by Dr. Emerson, of St. Louis. He was a surgeon in the army. He took them to Rock Island, in Iowa, Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and then to St. Louis. Having been taken voluntarily by him into a Free Territory, the slaves claimed they were entitled to their liberty under the common law of the country. Of the nine judges composing the court, five were from the Slave States. Seven of the judges agreed that the Constitution recognized slaves as property and nothing more. They were not and

could not be citizens. Not being citizens, they could not bring a suit in any court of the United States. The claim of Dred and Harriet Scott must be settled by the court of Missouri. The Constitution recognized slaves as property, and that property must be protected. It was decided that the Compromise of 1820 and that of 1850 were unconstitutional.

By this decision a slave had no civil rights. He was a thing onlyno more than a horse, cow, or pig. The logic of the decision carried slavery not only into the Territories, but into the Free States. It upset

Mr. Douglas's theory that the people of a Territory alone had the right to say whether they would or would not have slavery.

Only two of the judges-Mr. McLean, of Ohio, and Mr. Curtis, of Massachusetts-dissented from this opinion, which made slavery instead of freedom the basis upon which the nation had been established. If President Buchanan thought this decision would settle a vexatious question, he little comprehended the spirit of the people. Nothing can be made permanent that is not established in righteousness. No people with the spirit of freedom in their blood will ever see their great charter of liberty utterly subverted. The Supreme Court, instead of being regarded with reverence, became an object of contempt. The commonsense of the people led them to say the judges had made an unwarranted decision in the interests of slavery.

The struggle for the possession of Kansas was going on. The Free State candidate for Congress had a majority of more than 4000 votes. The coveted prize was slipping away from the slave-holders, who determined to reverse the majority by stuffing the ballot-boxes with fraudulent votes. They selected 600 names from an old Directory of the City of Cincinnati, and registered them as the names of settlers in one

of the counties.

The Free State settlers elected a legislature, which met at Topeka and framed a constitution. The slave-holders met at Lecompton and adopted a constitution recognizing slavery. Both of these documents were forwarded to Washington.

We have seen Abraham Lincoln in 1832 splitting rails on the bank of the Sangamon when informed that John Calhoun had appointed him surveyor of land. A quarter of a century had gone by, and John Calhoun was surveyor of public lands in Kansas. He was president of the Lecompton convention, and was wielding his influence to make Kansas a Slave State by changing the election returns. He had a list of 379 names in a precinct where only forty-three votes were cast. To keep them out of the hands of a committee of Congress he secreted them in a candle-box under a wood-pile. For that act he was called "Candle-box Calhoun."

In Washington the slave-holders were persuading President Buchanan to recommend the admission of Kansas as a State with a constitution recognizing slavery.

Stephen A. Douglas called upon the President. He was angry, for his theory of the rights of the people in a Territory to say whether they will or will not have slavery had been overturned by the decision of the Supreme Court.