mous that they sound like fables. Men left their homes and families in the East to seek their fortunes here. The greater part failed in their search, or if they found wealth, found it in other ways than digging for it in the earth. The whole story of this California "gold fever," is a sad, sad story of disappointment and failure to thousands. But it served to populate a new State, and open up a trade on the Pacific coast, which has since led to the building of a railroad across this continent, and a commerce with the East, such as Columbus had in view when he started from Palos to find the new route to the Indies. Gold mining in California became an organized form of labor, and is now a feature of the State.

In 1849 California asked to be admitted into the Union. The following year her petition was granted. One of the two senators sent first to Congress from the young State, was John Charles Frémont, now a large land-holder in the territory he had first declared

a part of the United States. California was not admitted without a terrible struggle. She had decided to come in as a State without slaves, and the Southern States did not like that. I am going shortly to tell you the whole story of slavery, so I will not now go into detail about the California dispute.

In the midst of it all, President Taylor, on whom the hopes of those opposed to slavery were set, suddenly died, in July, 1850. Like Harrison, he had lived hardly long enough to show what he

would have done as president. His vice-president, Millard Fillmore, succeeded him.

Nothing very remarkable happened during the three years in which Fillmore administered the government. We were a great

and prosperous nation, all the time growing stronger, and taking a more assured place among the nations of the earth. In 1853, when Fillmore's term of office expired, General Franklin Pierce, one of the officers who had figured in the Mexican War, and been wounded at Churubusco, was elected president. I have told you from time to time how the North and South, at first represented by Massachusetts and Virginia, had been growing farther and farther apart, and that the difference in their institutions, and especially their different views on the subject of slavery, had been growing more and more intense. At this time the slave power had grown to be the strongest power in the nation, and was able to elect whomsoever it chose to the presidency. So far the largest proportion of presidents had been from the South. Of the eleven men already elected to that office, six had been born in Virginia, and two in North Carolina.

The other three had been from Massachusetts and New York. As Fillmore's rule drew to a close it was thought politic to select a Northern man for the next candidate. The Democratic party, who now represented the slave power of the South, chose Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire as the man to receive their votes, and he was elected and installed president in March, 1853. In his administra- · tion the first blood in an arising civil conflict was shed on the plains of a new Territory called Kansas. In order that we may fully understand the meaning and cause of this war, I must ask you to read the chapters which follow on the history of slavery in our country. Without them you cannot understand fully the history of the War for the Union.

CHAPTER XXIV.

SLAVERY IN UNITED STATES.

Beginning of African Slavery..

First Triumph of Slavery in Georgia. - The North and South. - Washington's Letter to Lafayette. Slavery in the Constitution. - The Slavetrade. - Turner's "Slave-ship."-Disputes about Slavery.-Chattel Votes. wants to be a Free State. - Anger of the South.

- California

WHEN that Dutch trading ship of which I told you early in this history anchored in Jamestown harbor, and sold twenty slaves to the planters there, she sowed the seeds of a terrible harvest in America. It had been better for our dear country and for the civilized world, if that ship had sunk to the bottom with every man on board her, if by that shipwreck slavery could have been kept out of this fair, new land. But remember, we needed hands to labor in this country more than anything else. England could not furnish them fast enough, when all at once this little company of blacks from Africa, naked, uncivilized savages, with robust frames formed to endure torrid heats, in short, just the people needed to hoe the newly planted tobacco fields of Virginia, were offered for sale on the shore.

"They will be much better off on my plantation," reasoned the planter, "with plenty to eat and drink, a snug little cabin to sleep in by night, and all the privileges of a Christian land, than when roaming in the uncivilized wilds of Africa, living and dying like beasts."

This was good reasoning on the surface, and the generous and