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high-handed outrage. He said that the 'Nationals' wanted to slip poison into the Free-soilers' cup, while the Atchisonites were for blowing out their brains openly, and that was all the difference between them on the slavery question. He then offered a substitute proposing to submit the whole Constitution to all the legal voters, with a proviso requiring every voter to swear to support this Constitution if it should be ratified, the Nebraska Bill, and the Fugitive Slave Law. His substitute was tabled by a large majority.

"Colonel Jenkins, fugleman of the ultraists, next spoke. He took the broad Southern Democratic ground, and claimed that the Convention held the sovereignty, and should decide not to submit the Constitution, or any part of it, to the people. He said the public good and the proper equilibrium between the Free and Slave States required that Kansas should come into the Union as a slave state. He knew it would be received if a slave Constitution was sent up to Washington. He said that he had read a letter from President Buchanan to a prominent member of the Proslavery party in Kansas, to the effect that the 'Constitution would be received in the form as sent up by this Convention.

"Mr. Wells, of Douglas County, was opposed to both reports. He denounced in bitter terms those who were designated as Abolitionists in the Convention. They were all National Democrats; there was not a Black Republican among them. Although he considered Republicans as enemies to the Constitution and country, yet they were citizens, and entitled to a voice in the institutions under which they must live. We can not get over this, and we should not, said he, make a Constitution in which the people were prevented from expressing themselves on the institutions under which they wish to live. This Convention represents

only two thousand voters, and there are twenty thousand in Kansas. It was repugnant to all his ideas of right for two thousand men to attempt to dictate to ten times their number, and force upon them institutions which they hated and abhorred. He did not believe that Congress would accept a Constitution so framed; he thought the Northern Democrats would not dare to vote for admitting a state under such circumstances; and, if they did, the Black Republicans would destroy the party in every free state. The destruction of the Democratic party in the North would be a calamity which the admission of a dozen slave states would not counterbalance.

"General Calhoun, of Springfield, Illinois, made a long speech in favor of the majority report, and of only submitting the slavery clause to the people. He was opposed to giving the 'Topekaites' a chance to vote down our Democratic Constitution.' The majority report would compel the Abolitionists to vote for the Constitution while they were voting down the slave clause, no matter how repugnant it might be to them. In this way we have got them tight,' said he,' and they can't help themselves.' There are several provisions in the body of the instrument which sufficiently protect slave property, which, with the Dred Scott decision, is all that Southern gentlemen should ask. By this means Kansas will come into the Union as a Democratic state like Illinois.

"A dozen other speeches were made, which we have not room to sketch.

"As the matter stood at adjournment, the Fire-eaters had achieved a signal triumph. A clause had been adopted in the Constitution making Kansas forever a slave state; and this Constitution was ordered to be sent to Congress without submission to the people in any shape, not even in the

swindling form proposed by the Douglasites. The people of Kansas are in a ferment. An explosion may take place at any moment. An extra session of the Legislature is talked of, and also a general convention of the Free-state party, to decide upon the best policy to pursue in reference to the spurious pro-slavery Constitution. The affairs of Kansas are yet far from settled. The Nebraska Bill is working most beautifully!"

The pro-slavery report was adopted by a vote of twentysix to twenty-three.

This was the measure that, in a copy of the Richmond Whig now before me, is declared to be the "test-question between the North and the South," by which the orthodoxy and fidelity of every man was to be tried; and because, with a knowledge of the facts here recited, I could not lend my support to this shameless fraud and disgraceful piece of trickery and despotism, I was not only proscribed by my enemies, but looked upon with distrust by a large number of my own party. Could any thing better serve to show the state of ignorance or utter depravity in which parties in the South had been kept by their excitement or reduced by the iron heel of Democracy?

THE JOHN BROWN RAID.

Then, too, was rebellion again threatened if they elected Banks Speaker of the House; but he was elected, and, so far from rebelling, many of the rebels united at the close of the session in a vote of thanks for the ability and impartiality he had displayed. The same scenes were re-enacted at the time that Sherman was a candidate; and then at last, as if the devil himself had engaged in their service, came the John Brown raid, which many of the leaders in Richmond declared to be a "godsend" for the party; and then, again,

the Helper book, brought to light by the New York Herald to help them along with their most unrighteous work of manufacturing excitement which now amounted to frenzy.

The wild freak of this crazy fanatic, John Brown, aided and helped on by the scarcely less crazy fanatic who then exercised the functions of chief magistrate of this state, af forded a convenient opportunity for the blood-and-thunder scenes that are usually gotten up behind the curtains, but on this occasion were not only performed in the midst of the audience, but they, the audience, were, as if by a magic wand, converted into managers and actors of the play. The city of Richmond was thrown into a ferment that has rarely had its parallel even in Paris, which soon extended to and was spread all over the state. When we look back, at this distance of time, calmly and dispassionately at the scenes of that day, it would be amusing, except that they were too ridiculous, and yet too serious to excite a laugh over the follies that ruled the hour. I have seen nothing like it since the war commenced, unless it might have been on that memorable Sunday when the city was startled with the appalling cry that the Pawnee was coming up James River, when every pocket-pistol for miles around was brought into requisition for her total annihilation. But the John Brown affair answered the purposes of the party; it not only excited the universal apprehension for the safety of the slave property of the South, but it furnished an occasion for the display of military ardor rarely witnessed by any people, the cost of which to the state bordered on half a million of dollars. The eighteen or nineteen followers of old Brown, free negroes and whites, were nearly all caught and executed; bushels of letters that have never seen the light were said to have been received by "his excellency," implicating a large number of the most prominent men of the Republican

party; and when the Republican members of the Investigating Committee of the Senate demanded that the governor should be summoned to testify and exhibit the letters in his possession, Mr. Mason, the chairman of the committee, backed by the members of his own party, peremptorily declined to furnish the proof of what they had charged, although that proof was claimed to be in the possession of the governor. But even this did not block the game that was being played. The Legislature demanded, and ultimately dragooned the unsuspecting or timid Whigs, if there were any then that could be so called, to grant without serious opposition large appropriations of money for arming the citizen soldiers, erecting armories, manufacturing and purchasing arms, etc.-all preparatory to this very war, which they knew was at hand, and which I was most bitterly denounced for exposing at the time in my letter addressed to certain members of the Legislature, in which I set forth the folly of what they were contributing to bring about. I think there has scarcely been any period of time during this war when the public mind was more excited than it was from the time of the discovery of John Brown's entrance into Virginia up to his execution (some thirty days), all of which was manufactured for a purpose by "his excellency, the governor," who was always ready "to fight in the Union," but has done. precious little fighting since he left it, although he contrib uted largely toward taking himself and the state out together, as far as the state could be carried out.

THE NOMINATIONS FOR PRESIDENT IN 1860.

But at length the time arrived for the nomination of candidates for the Presidency in 1860 by the three parties then existing to wit, the Democratic party, the "Opposition" party, and the Republican. The Opposition party nomin