sands of acres of land to be sold in July, and this scheme of fered, if she came into the Union under the Lecompton constitution, five per cent of the proceeds of those sales, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars; but if she remained out she could not receive this five per cent. This, he said, was a bribe, a temptation to the public men of that Territory to come in now and thus secure the control of these lands. He predicted, however, that they would “ spurn the bribe." Mr. Seward said the bill came back from the conference chamber in the shape of" an artifice, a trick, a legislative legerdemain." It made up and presented to the people of Kausas a fictitious and false issue, bearing "the stamp of equivocation upon every page and every line." Assuming that one or both of two factions are to be deceived, all that is left for the public to consider was: Who is the dupe? He warned the Democratic party that they would fail in the contest, because, for the first time, they would go before the people of the United States stripped naked of every pretence of equality and impartiality, between freedom and slavery, no longer as a party that balances equally between freedom and slavery, but in the detested character of a party intervening for slavery and against freedom. He predicted that Kansas would survive their persecution, and that every Territory that should hereafter come into the Union, profiting by her sufferings and atonement, would come in as a free State. Mr. Cameron de nied that the people of Pennsylvania sustained the President's policy. "If the vote were to be taken to-morrow," he said, "the people of Pennsylvania would, by a majority of one hundred thousand, decide that the President had deceived them." Three Democratic members of the Senate-Douglas, Stuart, and Broderick and twenty-three members of the House had, at the opening of the session, taken their position against the admission of Kansas with the Lecompton constitution. During the contest, these members were accustomed to meet at the homes of Mr. Douglas and John B. Haskin, a member of the House from New York. Of course, Republican Senators and Representatives could not refuse to confer with anti-Lecompton Democrats if requested to do so. Mr. Wade, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Colfax, Mr. Burlingame, Mr. Covode, and one or two others, were authorized by many Republican members to hold such conferences; and for that purpose they often met in consultation Douglas, Broderick, Harris, Hickman, and Has kin. Immediately on the report of the English bill, several antiLecompton members exhibited signs of hesitation. Even Mr. Douglas seemed, to some at least, to be wavering. Mr. Broderick, ever brave and true, expressed to Mr. Wade and others his apprehension that, for political reasons, the Illinois Senator might falter, but expressed his determination that, if he did, he would denounce him in the Senate and elsewhere. Two or three evenings before the passage of the bill, there was a meeting of the anti-Lecompton Democrats at the house of Mr. Haskin, to consult on the policy to be adopted. At that conference Mr. Douglas, while avowing his own opposition to the bill, stated it as his opinion that those who had hitherto opposed the measure might consistently go for it, because they could claim that it did "virtually" submit the question at issue to the people. Seeing, as he doubtless did, many who shrank from continuing their opposition to the administration on that issue, and who would probably follow the example of Mr. English, he, from motives of expediency, threw out the suggestion. But it evoked determined opposition. Mr. Broderick indignantly denounced any sacrifice of the principle on which they had hitherto fought the Lecompton constitution. Mr. Stuart expressed similar views, and Mr. Haskin vehemently insisted that it was the duty of each and every one to continue in his opposition. "Its passage,' he said, "would enable the administration to retreat by a back-door passage from its support of a nefarious scheme and infamous legislation which President Buchanan and his heads of department should never have favored." Mr. Cox of Ohio had been the first of the anti-Lecompton Democrats to denounce the proposed constitution. As early as the 16th of December he had characterized it as "a pulseless and heartless thing," which was, "through trickery and fraud, a mass of detestable putrescence." He had branded Calhoun and his associates as Catalines, who, under obligations of principle and honor, had attempted to subjugate the people's will to their own. At this meeting, too, he had given positive assurances that he should remain true to these clearly announced convictions. And yet in spite of early speeches and this unequivocal pledge, so lately given, he expressed his purpose to support the English bill, though it did not conform to his judgment. He urged the usual claim, however, that he made the sacrifice in the spirit of concession and with a desire for harmony. He admitted that there was no proposition, "in so many words," to submit the constitution to the people, though he thought there was a provision in the bill by which, if the constitution did not meet their approbation, they could give expression to their will; indeed that, though it did not contain the "shadow," the "substance" was there. So strangely did men reason, so wildly did they talk. This action of Mr. Cox created much asperity of feeling, and was most vehemently condemned by Mr. Haskin and many antiLecompton Democrats. The House on the 30th of April passed the bill by a vote of one hundred and twelve to one hundred and three,- Winter Davis and Humphrey Marshall voting in the negative. Twelve of the twenty-three anti-Lecompton Democrats in the House resisted every influence, and stood firm to the end. They were Colonel Thomas L. Harris, the acknowledged leader of the anti-Lecompton forces in that body, Isaac N. Morris, Aaron Shaw, Robert Smith, Samuel S. Marshall of Illinois, John G. Davis of Indiana, Garnett B. Adrian of New Jersey, John B. Haskin and Horace F. Clark of New York, John Hickman and Henry Chapman of Pennsylvania, and Joseph C. McKibbin of California. These gentlemen, who remained firm throughout this stormy struggle against the pressure of political associates and the influences and appliances of the administration, were deserving of high commendation. "Undoubtedly," said Mr. Haskin, in a letter to Mr. Wilson, "some of the anti-Lecompton Democrats who finally voted for the English bill were influenced by official patronage, and some of them, perhaps, by official gifts. Well do I remember that Senator Slidell, the fidus Achates of James Buchanan. during the whole of his administration, endeavored to tempt me with a grant of a township of land if I would change my views and support the Lecompton policy. Patronage and gifts were freely given and made to seduce the anti-Lecompton Democrats; and I am proud that the twelve who were true. to the last could not be silenced in any way by the blandishments of power, of patronage, or through any corrupt means whatever. I should not," says Mr. Haskin, "omit to refer in terms of commendation of the action of Mr. McKibbin. His father had been for nearly half a century the confidential friend of Mr. Buchanan. He held at the time the position of naval officer in Philadelphia. During the struggle he came to Washington more than once, begged and implored his son, on account of the relations which he had borne to Mr. Buchanan and the office he held, to sustain the policy of the administration. Nevertheless, from the commencement to the end of the struggle, no member was more faithful and more determined in his hostility to Lecompton, in all its shapes, than Joseph C. McKibbin of California." The bill was brought to a vote in the Senate on the same day it passed the House, and was carried by a vote of thirtyone to twenty-two, Douglas, Crittenden, Broderick, and Stuart voting against it. Thus, after a struggle of five months, in which the administration made no concealment of its unscrupulous purpose to use in unstinted measure its power and patronage for the object aimed at, the Lecompton constitution received the vote of both houses of Congress and the executive approval. But the "condition" affixed made the victory but partial, and the rejoicing of the victors but brief. The people of Kansas had suffered too much, and were too deeply in earnest, to be seduced by the offer of the promised benefits of the bill, its liberal grants of lands, and its admission as a State, or driven by the menace of being kept out, to accept a constitution they had no agency in forming, and which they so thoroughly detested. As predicted, they did “ "spurn the bribe," and they rejected it by a majority of more than ten thousand. CHAPTER XLIII. THE LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS DEBATE. Defection of Douglas. Its significance and effects. Conferences with Republicans. — Republican hopes. —Lincoln's nomination. - Proposed discussion. — Character of contestants. - Representative men. Springfield speech. — Its great thought. Similar sentiment of Mr. Seward. — General line of argument. Mr. Douglas's reply. - Misrepresentation of Lincoln's position. — Indorsement of the Dred Scott decision. - Generally decorous and dignified manner of the debate. Specimens. — Mr. Lincoln's appreciation of the gravity of the discussion. Not always satisfactory to antislavery men. — Devotion to principle. - Results. The prominence it gave Lincoln. — Douglas's estimate. -- THE defection of Mr. Douglas on the Lecompton issue produced a profound impression. It became an important fact in those political complications and that general break-up it heralded, and of which it was a signal example. The prominent part he had taken in the strife, his undoubted ability, his influence with the party, his past unquestioning adhesion to Southern interests, and his uncompromising denunciation of all who refused the same, especially of those who based their refusal on conscientious scruples, all pointed to him as, of all others, the one to lead the Democratic hosts, as unblushingly, and without concealment, they were fighting the battles of the Slave Power. For him to falter then, who had never faltered before, just, too, as the last and final assault on the citadel of freedom was to be made, was well calculated to send consternation into the camp where he had hitherto been so potent and so much at home. Nor did the reasons that impelled his course mend the matter. His plea of consistency and his mode of putting it were more damaging still. Having overthrown the Missouri compromise on the plea of "popular sovereignty," he contended that they could, with no show of reason, support the Lecompton constitution, which completely |