ern heart" that the people could be easily persuaded to consent to a severance of the bond of Union between the free and the slave-labor states. They resolved to try the perilous experiment. To effect their vicious purpose most certainly, they resolved to so divide and distract the Democratic party as to ensure the election of the Republican candidate, whoever he might be. This was accordingly done at the Democratic National nominating convention, held at Charleston, S. C., in the spring of 1860, when about six hundred representatives of that party, from all the states of the Union, assembled in the hall of the South Carolina institute on the twentythird of April, and chose Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, chairman. In his inaugural speech Mr. Cushing declared it to be "the high and noble part of the Democratic party of the Union to withstand, to strike down and conquer the banded enemies of the Constitution," as he styled the anti-slavery Republican party. Those in the convention most clamorous for obedience to the Constitution were most intent upon striking down their own great party by dividing it.

It was evident from the first hour of the session that the embodied spirit of the slave-system was present, and as full of mischief as Ariel in the creation of elementary strife. Violently discordant forces were in close contact, and every man felt that a tempest was impending. A greater part of the delegates from the slave-labor states came instructed and were resolved to demand from the Conservatives a candidate and a platform which should promise a guarantee for the speedy practical recognitions by the general government and the people of the system of slavery as a National institution.

Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was the most prominent candidate of the Democratic party for the nomination. It was well known that he was committed to a policy that would not allow him or his friends to agree to such a platform of principles. His rejection by the representatives of the slaveholders would surely split the Democratic party asunder. This would be the first great and desirable act in the drama of the rebellion soon to be inaugurated, and the conspirators had adroitly prepared to employ that wedge.

It

Since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which was effected by the votes of the slaveholders and their friends, the Democratic party generally accepted as the true solution of the slave problem the doctrine of popular sovereignty, of which Douglas was the sponsor and chief exponent. was a conspicuous plank in the platform adopted by the convention at Cincinnati in 1856, which nominated Mr. Buchanan for the Presidency; but now it was rejected by the slaveholders as too dangerous to their interests. Their experience in Kansas taught them that positive law and not public opinion must be relied on thereafter for the support of slavery. So when the convention, by a decisive majority, re-affirmed the Cincinnati

platform of principles, adopted the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, preconcerted rebellion lifted its head defiantly. L. P. Walker of Alabama, the Confederate secretary of war less than a year later, declared that he and his colleagues from Alabama were instructed not to acquiesce in or submit to any such platform, and, in the event of its being adopted, to withdraw from the convention. That contingency had now arrived, and they withdrew. They were followed by delegates from the slave-labor The traitorous intentions of the seceders were revealed by Mr. Glenn of Mississippi, who said, before leaving the convention : "I tell southern men here, and for them I tell the north, that in less than sixty days you will find a united south standing side by side with us." vehemently cheered, especially by South Carolinians present, and Charleston was a scene of demonstrative delight that night because of the auspicious beginning of rebellion, a legitimate child of nullification, which was conceived, born and fostered in South Carolina thirty years before.

states.

The disruption of the Democratic party in the convention was sudden and complete. The seceders, with James A. Bayard of Delaware at their head, withdrew to St. Andrew's hall, organized another body of delegates, which they denominated a "Constitutional convention," and contemptuously called the body they had just left a "rump convention." They adjourned to meet at Richmond, Virginia, in June, and invited the Democracy of the country who sympathized with them to meet them there.

The original convention adjourned to meet in Baltimore in June, and postponed the nomination of a candidate until that time. They reassembled there on the eighteenth of June, with Mr. Cushing in the chair. There was a lively time again, the subject of slavery being the exciting cause. Sentiments were uttered which caused Mr. Cushing and most of the Massachusetts delegation to withdraw. Benjamin F. Butler, before leaving, said: "We put our withdrawal before you upon the simple ground, among others, that there had been a withdrawal, in part, of a majority of the states; and further (and that, perhaps, more personal to myself), upon the ground that I will not sit in a convention where the African slave-trade-which is piracy by the laws of my country-is approvingly advocated."

The seceders at Charleston, who had met at Richmond and had done nothing, were now in Baltimore. They and the later seceders from a "National Democratic Convention," nominated for President John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, then vice-president of the United States. The regular convention nominated Senator Douglas for the Presidency. Representatives of a "National Constitutional Union party," then sitting in Baltimore, having for a motto, "THE UNION, THE CONSTITUTION, AND THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAWS," nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice-president.

Meanwhile the Republican party, in a representative convention at Chicago (May 16), held in an immense temporary building, called "the Wigwam," and in the presence of a vast multitude of people, nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, for President, and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, for vice-president. The convention adopted a platform of principles in seventeen resolutions, which embodied a declaration of war against the principles and purposes of the oligarchy of the slave-labor states—a proclamation of a revolt against the tyranny which was rapidly enslaving the Nation.

In the early summer-time of 1860, the most important political campaign ever known in this country was opened, with four parties in the field of strife. Only two of them, the Republican, led by Mr. Lincoln, and the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic party, led by Vice-President Breckenridge, exhibited tangible convictions. The wing of the Democratic party, led by Senator Douglas, assumed not to know positively whether slavery might or might not have a lawful existence in the territories, without the action of the inhabitants thereof, but expressed a willingness to abide by the decision of the supreme court. The Bell-Everett party declined to express any opinions on any subject. The conflict from July till November was incessant. leaders traversed the southern states in all directions, and by incendiary harangues excited the fears and the passions of the people to the highest pitch. Among these orators the most eloquent, bitter and effective was W. L. Yancey of Alabama, who, like an incarnation of discord, cried substantially as he had written two years before, "Organize committees all over the cotton states; fire the southern heart; instruct the southern mind; give courage to each other; and at the proper moment, by one organized, concerted action, precipitate the cotton states into revolution."

The pro-slavery

Mr. Lincoln was elected by a large plurality of the popular vote, yet the fact that he received near 1,000,000 votes less than did his competitors collectively, gave factitious vigor to the cry that was immediately raised that Lincoln would be a usurper when in office, because he had not received a majority of the aggregate vote of the people; also that he was pledged to wage relentless war upon the slave system and the rights of the southern people. It was said in effect to that people: "Your rights, your liberties and your property are in danger. Prepare for battle. To your tents, O Israel.'"

But the significant fact was carefully hidden that in nine slave-labor states the conspirators would not allow the people to have an electoral ticket, and thereby prevented an expression of the popular will. The temper and conduct of the citizens of the free labor states were misrepresented, and in that work of defamation and alienation the press and the

pulpit, regarded by simple folk as oracles of truth and wisdom, were conspicuous. "Perhaps," wrote a southerner in the third year of the war, "there never was a people more bewitched, beguiled and befooled than we were when we drifted into this rebellion."

There was great rejoicing among the political leaders in the south when the election of Mr. Lincoln was certified.. The people were in such a state of bewildering excitement that it was an easy matter for their politicians to control them. The governors of the slave labor states had been elected by the party then in affiliation with the pro-slavery power, and it was believed that the disunionists would have the active sympathy of that party at the north. Members of Buchanan's cabinet were among the conspirators, and they believed he would give them his passive sympathy, if no more. His secretary of the interior wrote to a leader in South Carolina: "Buchanan is the truest friend of the south I have ever known at the north. He is a jewel of a man."

Mr. Lincoln's election was the preconcerted signal for open and armed rebellion. A system of terrorism was at once inaugurated for the suppression of the still powerful Union sentiment in the south. The promise of a North Carolina senator that the voices of Union men should be "hushed by the swift attention of vigilance committees" was speedily fulfilled. Measures were at once adopted for effecting a dissolution of the Union. By common consent South Carolina took the initial step in the march of rebellion. A convention was called at the state capital to adopt an Ordinance of Secession and to re-organize the commonwealth as a "sovereign, independent nation." This action was soon imitated by the politicians in Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

The people of the north saw with amazement this awful spectre of rebellion rising suddenly before their vision and menacing with blight, business, social order, domestic happiness, free institutions, and all that men hold most dear. Their eyes were suddenly opened to a perception that what for years had been regarded as mere idle threats, and simply boastings of southern politicians, were hints and warnings of a deeply laid conspiracy to either nationalize slavery or to destroy the Union; and yet very few justly appreciated the magnitude of the danger.

The National congress was about to assemble at the capital. To the wisdom and patriotism of that body and the Chief Magistrate of the Republic, the loyal people looked with confidence and hope. Alas! they did not know that the President was surrounded by plotting traitors in his cabinet seeking to mould his actions so as to promote their foul designs, and that the halls of legislation would soon teem with banded enemies of the Republic, bold, trenchant and defiant.

Congress met on the third of December, 1860. The President's an

nual message was disappointing. It satisfied nobody, but intensified the anxiety of the whole nation. Its indecisiveness and inconsistency, so unlike the characteristics of Mr. Buchanan hitherto, and its general aspect of weakness in arguments and conclusions, distracted the minds of the people of the north and of the south with doubt and disquietude.

While the President denied the right of secession, declared the doctrine of state supremacy a dangerous heresy, and showed the causelessness of a revolutionary movement in the cotton states, he so pointedly cited the alleged wrongs which the people of those states had suffered as a consequence of an anti-slavery agitation at the north, that he seemed to almost justify rebellion. While he admitted the puissance of the Executive as the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, he declared, by the advice of the astute attorney-general, who sympathized with the secessionists, that the President had no legal power to coerce a state into obedience to the National laws-the Calhoun doctrine of nullification, pure and simple. While the President admitted his power to enforce the laws, he declared his inability to execute them in the state of South Carolina at that time.

Commenting on the message, Senator Hale of New Hampshire said: "If I understand the meaning of it on the subject of secession, it is thisSouth Carolina has just cause for seceding from the Union; that is the first proposition. The second is, she has no right to secede. The third is, we have no right to prevent her seceding." Jefferson Davis of Mississippi defined the message as "having all the characteristics of a diplomatic paper, for diplomacy, it is said, abhors certainty as nature abhors a vacuum. It is not within the power of man to reach any fixed conclusion from that message."

The President appealed to congress to secure immunity from civil war by amending the Constitution so as to recognize "the rights of the southern states in regard to slavery in the territories," and he appealed to northern states to repeal the Personal Liberty acts and yield obedience to the odious Fugitive Slave law and the opinion of the chief-justice. "Unless this shall be done without unnecessary delay," he said, "it is impossible for any human power to save the Union. The southern states, standing on the Constitution, have a right to demand this act of justice from the states of the north. Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all the states are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder. In that event the injured states, after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union."

Surely if the patriotic and sorely perplexed President, then burdened with the weight of seventy years and animated by an intense desire to save the Union at almost any sacrifice, had been made a confidant of the