* Senator Baker's Speech in the Senate, January 2, 1861. 1819.

+ Manuscript Letter of Gen. Jackson, May 1, 1888, desirous, in accordance with the spirit

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION.

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and motives of the ordinance governing enjoyment of her slave property, in a the Northwestern Territory of the original stringent Fugitive Slave Act drawn up States, to exclude slavery from this ad- by Senator Mason. The series of measditional western region. The battle wasures, taken together, were considered as long and fiercely fought, calling forth a compromise on the vexed question of many of those arguments and appeals slavery, and as such were advocated by on both sides which have of late become their author, Henry Clay, and secured so familiar to the country. The moral the support of Benton, Webster, and evil of slavery, and the duties to restrict others. In the North they were geneit, were pressed with great earnestness rally accepted; in the South they were by one party, while the other maintained received with distrust, which might have it was beyond the province of Congres- led through disaffection to open revolt, sional legislation. After long agitation, had the extreme councils of some of the the subject was settled by a compromise. | leaders, like Quitman, been adopted by Missouri was admitted as a slave State, the people. South Carolina and Missis while, with the exception of her domain, sippi were, indeed, fast ripening for reall the territory north of the line of 36 bellion, but the hour had not yet come to degrees, 30 minutes, being the northern strike. Mr. Clay's was not a good name line of Arkansas, was to be free. It fol- to conjure evil spirits. They would not lowed by natural inference, that the oc- come at that call. The conspirators cupants of all territory south of the line, waited another word of incantation. The might exercise their discretion on the love of the Union in the hearts of the subject; and, at a proper time, be admit- people was not yet lightly to be disted into the Union as States, with or lodged. without the adoption of slavery in their several Constitutions, as they preferred. Such was the opinion and practice of the nation, till the year 1845 introduced a new element into the question. Texas was then annexed, an event which was immediately followed by the war with Mexico. The termination of that conflict brought a vast additional area to the country, lying between the northern boundaries of California and the far sonthern limits of New Mexico, drawn from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. New legislation was required. By the Congressional legislation of 1850, California was admitted as a free State, the Territories of New Mexico and Utah were organized, the slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, and the South received new guarantees for the

With the passage of Mr. Clay's resolutions, it was hoped the much-agitated subject would be laid at rest, and the country enjoy the longed for repose; and this, perhaps, might have been the case, had the wise councils of the disinterested advocates of the Compromise continued to govern their successors. Four years after, when Clay had closed his mortal career, his last memorable public service being the advocacy of the measures just alluded to; and Webster, with an interval of a few months only, had followed him to the grave, the mouldering fires were stirred again in their ashes, and the flames burst forth with renewed vigor. The organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, brought the old discussion once more to the legislative halls at Washington. The adjustment

and embarrassments, confounding the councils of the President, Congress, hosts of Committeemen, troops of Governors and army officials. Out of the sickening contest came, in the end, the free State of Kansas; but its birth heralded a wide spread civil war, which had taken its first lessons of crime and desolation on that blood-stained soil.

of that matter, in the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska Act, in 1854, by which, the duty of Congress in the protection of the Territories during their pupilage being suspended, the whole question was left to be decided by chance or conflict as it might happen,-the provision of the admission of these States, with or without slavery, as the terms of their Constitution at the time of their ap- The annexation of Texas and the war plication should dictate-this abandon- with Mexico, were thus indirectly the ment of the principles of the Missouri source of the political agitations which Compromise, re-opened once more the placed Mr. Lincoln in the Presidency in whole fatal strife. The debate was trans- 1860. A war undertaken for the extenferred from the Senate Chamber to the sion of slavery, ended in its limitation. battle-field; emigrants from the free and The territory was gained, and its first from the slave States met on the soil of production was the Democratic Free-soil Kansas, in rival attempts to occupy the party of 1848. Texas, the Mexican war, ground in favor of their different modes the Wilmot proviso, the Clay comproof society. Through wrangling, per-mises, Douglas' Kansas and Nebraska plexity, fraud, and bloodshed the work Act, the rehearsal of strife and battle of colonization was carried on. The boasted Squatter Sovereignty, as the bastard system of Senator Douglas was ingloriously and not inappropriately called, proved not the so-much desired solution of a difficult question in peace and harmony, or the expected cessation of political antagonism; but on the contrary, the introduction of the wildest confusion

in the infant Territory, the rise and rapid development of the Republican party, the canvass of Fremont, the election of Lincoln, are so many events in direct sequence marking the progress of that great rivalry of ideas and institutions which, existing from the beginning, often laid to rest and never extinguished, culminated in the Great Rebellion of 1861.

CHAPTER II.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF SECESSION.

THE introduction to this opening drama the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. was the election for the Presidency. Of these, Mr. John C. Breckenridge, of The canvass of 1860 brought four candidates into the field, representing different shades of political opinion, turning more or less directly on the free-soil agitation which had vexed the country since

Kentucky, was the candidate of a minority of the Democratic party, the ultra pro-slavery party of the South; and stood pledged by the resolutions of his supporters in the conventions, at Char

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

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declarations on the Territorial question, came in Mr. Douglas, the nominee of the majority of the Democratic Convention at Baltimore, who was understood to advocate a doctrine of non-intervention by Congress, or "popular sovereignty." A fourth body of delegates, professing to represent a certain "Constitutional Union" conservatism, met also at Baltimore in May, and with the simple declaration, "that it is both the part of patriotism and duty to recognize no political principles other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the en

selves to "maintain, protect, and defend those great principles of public liberty and national safety." Their nominee for the Presidency was Mr. John Bell, of Tennessee, with Mr. Edward Everett for the Vice Presidency.

leston in April and at Baltimore in June, to the fullest protection of the institution. Not only, by the terms of those resolutions, had Congress or the Territorial Legislature no power to abolish or prohibit the introduction of slavery in the Territories, or impair its assumed rights, but it was declared to be the duty of the Federal Government, if necessary, to afford to such property active protection. Diametrically opposed to this doctrine stood the declarations under which Mr. Lincoln accepted his nomination, from the Republican National Convention at Chicago, in May. The "plat-forcement of the laws," pledged themform" of that body explicitly set forth, in language made remarkable by subsequent events, "that the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit With principles thus pronounced, the provisions of that instrument itself, with case was given to the country in Novemcontemporaneous exposition, and with ber, when it appeared that of the entire legislative and judicial precedent, is rev-popular vote, 4.662,170, Mr. Lincoln re.... olutionary in its tendency, and subver- ceived 1.857,610; Mr. Douglas, 1.365, sive of the peace and harmony of the country." It was also further declared, "that the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; that as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain the provisions of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.' Intermediate between these

976; Mr. Breckenridge, 847,953; and Mr. Bell, 590,631. Every free State, except New Jersey, where the vote was divided, voted for Lincoln, giving him seventeen out of the thirty-three States which then composed the Union. In nine of the slave States, besides South Carolina, he had no electoral ticket. Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Texas, cast their vote for Breckenridge; Bell received Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia; Douglas, Missouri. The electoral vote stood for Lincoln and Hamlin, 180; for Breckenridge and Lane, 72; for Bell and Everett, 39; for Douglas and Johnson, 12.

Such was the expression of the popu- the old elements of Whiggism, cerlar voice, after a canvass conducted with tainly did not present a revolutionary earnestness on both sides, and, apart aspect. It rather appeared to lean to from the intrigues and divisions of the conservatism. Its candidate had been politicians of the Democratic party in chosen as eminently a safe, prudent their Charleston Convention, with re- leader. Indeed, in the delicate relations markable moderation and freedom from of the times, the country would not have acerbity. It appeared the calm, sober, tolerated a violent agitator or disturber regular assertion of the judgment of the of its peace. The intention of the viccountry on a question of national policy torious party, if we regard the declarawhich had been long discussed and fully tions of its interpreters, was to adhere to investigated. The Republican speakers and maintain the sound constitutional had, indeed, been denied a hearing at doctrines of the fathers of the Republic. the South; but of this, while they felt If any resistance was to be offered to its inconvenience and injustice, they made slavery, it was not to the privileges conno complaint, for they were successful ceded to it by the Constitution, but to without it. The public had yet to learn its extension into new fields of which what such exclusiveness foreboded; they Congress was the guardian. did not read in it incipient treason and rebellion, or if the suspicion crossed the mind, it was rejected as uncharitable and incredible. On the other hand, Southern orators like Yancey, openly threatening rebellion, and partizans of their way of thinking, had spoken freely in Northern cities; and their language, however unpalatable, had been listened to with respect. The defeated party had nothing to complain of on that score. If their divisions had elected Lincoln, it was ob-clared, in the most emphatic manner, viously their own fault. They were not such children in political science, as to be taught the propriety of submission to the authoritative declarations of the ballot-box.

The vote, if we interpret it by the professions of the Republicans, and they were entitled to the benefit of their promises till they should refute them by their actions,said that, while the influence of the new government was to be on the side of freedom, yet that every principle of the Constitution was to be maintained. The party, absorbing largely

Mr. Lincoln, whose election was so often made the pretence of hostility,as if the whole Government were in the hands of the President,-had openly pronounced his sentiments on the chief measures in agitation in the country in reference to slavery; and in each instance had shown not only the highest deference to the Constitution and the laws, but a prudent regard to the peace and welfare of the country. He had de

that he considered the people of the Southern States entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law; though he thought the one in existence might be amended, while he had no intention of impairing its efficiency. He would not, he said, "introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of slavery." He would even, he admitted. much as he should dislike the necessity, acknowledge the claim of a new State to be admitted with a slave constitution, though he would have the noxious element of slavery kept away from it while