was to be a kind of pronunciamento, and was prepared beforehand with great care. It was read to a company of his personal and political friends, who all decided that it was too radical and too far in advance of the public sentiment. Especial objection was made to the expression: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." William H. Herndon, his law partner, was present, and states that Mr. Lincoln in reply to the objection said: "That makes no difference; that expression is a truth of all human experience, - A house divided against itself cannot stand,' and 'He that runs may read.' The proposition is indisputably true, and has been for more than six thousand years; and I will deliver it as written. I want to use some universally known figure, expressed in simple language as universally known, that may strike home to the minds of men, in order to rouse them to the peril of the times. I would rather be defeated with this expression in the speech, held up and discussed before the people, than to be victorious without it." The canvass resulted in the election of a legislature in which there was a small majority in favor of Mr. Douglas, though in the popular vote he was in a minority of some four thousand. But the vigor, ability, and skill with which Mr. Lincoln had conducted the canvass placed him at once before the country as one of its foremost men. Nor were any more ready to acknowledge this than Mr. Douglas, who told his political friends, when he was nominated by the Republicans for the Senate, that they would be obliged to do their best to defeat him. On the return of the latter to Washington, after the senatorial contest, he said to Mr. Wilson, in reply to the question as to what he thought of Mr. Lincoln: "He is an able and honest man, one of the ablest men of the nation. I have been in Congress sixteen years, and there is not a man in the Senate I would not rather encounter in debate." CHAPTER XLIV. SCHOOLS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. Slavery always obtrusive. - Brown's bill. Wilson's amendment and speech. Amendments of Clark and Harlan. - Southern hostility to the education of some of the leading citizens of Washington. - -Growth and character of the institution. - Profitable investments. - Miss Miner's death. Suspension. — Subsequent action of Congress. · Miss Miner's character and work. - Failure of Brown's bill. THE maladies of society, like those of the body, are mainly known by their symptoms. There is, therefore, no surer test of the nature, extent, and inveteracy of the disease that was preying upon the Southern portion of the country, by which, too, the North was largely affected, at the opening of the XXXVIth Congress, than is revealed by the sentiments expressed and spirit manifested in that body, especially during its first session. Overshadowing all others, it happened that whatever might be the subject before it, if it could by any means be tortured into such shape, the slavery issue became the topic of discussion, keeping the specific purpose of the debate in the background, if it was not lost sight of altogether. Jefferson Davis, by way of complaint of Republican members, it is true, though his testimony is to the point, petulantly exclaimed: "I have heard no question yet discussed as a great political and constitutional question during the present session of the Senate, but in every instance, sooner or later, and generally by a single bound, they plunge into the question of that species of property which is held in the Southern States." This was specially apparent in a short and sharp discussion of a bill introduced by Mr. Brown, proposing to surrender a certain portion of fines and forfeitures collected in the District of Columbia "for school purposes." On this seemingly unimportant and innocent proposition there sprung up a debate that revealed, as few debates of that excited session had done, the hidden life and purpose of slaveholding society. It not only challenged attention and compelled the nation to gaze upon the nakedness of the land it cursed, but it showed how naturally and necessarily such results must follow such a cause. On the motion to put the bill upon its passage, Mr. Wilson moved, as an amendment, that a million of acres of the public lands should be donated to the District for the instruction of "free children." In his remarks upon this amendment Mr. Wilson stated that there were eleven thousand children between the ages of five and sixteen, that only twenty-five per cent were in the common schools, that fifty-one per cent were in no schools at all, that hundreds of scholars sought admission in vain for lack of accommodations, and that "the schoolhouses owned by the city amount to only about ten thousand dollars." Indeed, according to the testimony of Mr. Brown himself, only some thirty thousand dollars were raised annually for schools. Such was the meagre, the disgraceful showing at the beginning of the year 1860 in the proud but slaveridden capital of the great Republic. Mr. Clark of New Hampshire moved to amend by providing that the children of no persons who were taxed under the provisions of the act should be debarred from attending "some of said schools." This amendment involved the principle of providing education for colored children, though no one at that time even suggested the possibility of what has since excited. so much acrimonious discussion, "mixed schools." The most that was claimed was embodied in an amendment offered by Mr. Harlan of Iowa, that "separate schools shall be provided for the education of the colored children of the District." The ordinary arguments were urged, deduced from the necessary connection between education and the prosperity and maintenance of free institutions; Mr. Clark pertinently putting the question: "How can you better improve the city than by improving the people, as well as the earth and the streets?" The main significance of the debate, however, appeared in the arguments and admissions of those who opposed the three amendments. Mr. Brown revealed his impatience by spitefully remarking: "This thing ends where I was fearful it would end at the start. It curls in the head of a nigger." Sneering at "Northern philanthropy" for the negro, he said that the mover of the amendment knew "perfectly well that he was introducing a torpedo into this bill, which must destroy it"; for he well knew that the "thirty Southern Senators on this floor will not consent to take charge of the education of the negroes." He expressed his willingness to exempt the property of the free colored people from the taxation involved in the law; but he said he would not "insult the intelligence and dignity of this enlightened community by a proposition that looks to putting white children on an equal footing with negro children." He recognized and defended the legitimacy of the claim upon the property of the District for whatever was necessary to educate its white children; but he ignored entirely any demand for the improvement of the colored popula tion. He did not object to their taxing themselves for that purpose, but he denied entirely the obligation, and discarded the policy, of the government undertaking it. Other Southern members were far more outspoken, avowing the most diabolical sentiments, damaging alike to themselves and to the system they championed. Mr. Polk condemned the bill and all its provisions, for white as well as black. "I am opposed," he said, " on principle to the government taking charge of its citizens or the education of their children. I say, let the citizens take care of themselves, and let the fathers educate their own children." Mr. Mason, referring to the admission of Mr. Brown that he had no objection to the col ored people taxing themselves for the purposes of education, said: "I dissent from him altogether." And he proceeded to state that the policy of Virginia and Maryland was " to prohibit the education of the negro race," a policy he characterized as "wise," and in harmony with those laws of Virginia which made it a "misdemeanor " for a negro to remain in the State after his emancipation. This being the policy in those States, he objected to the introduction of any policy in the District not in harmony with that which they had adopted. Nor would he, he said, depart from the general legislation of the slave States. That this policy and spirit of exclusion and ignorance enunciated by these Senators was that of the slaveholders, and of the great body of the Democratic party as well, was made apparent by the admission of Mr. Brown that he was depending on Republican votes, as he had been able to secure only "two" Democratic votes for his measure. Speaking reproachfully to the Republicans for putting in peril his bill for the white children by their overweening regard for the black, he said: "Seeing that I had no support on this side for educating either whites or blacks, I thought myself justified in appealing to the other side in favor of our own race." Such was the record, not of a few Southern extremists alone; but in the year of grace 1860, such was the humiliating confession which a prominent Democratic politician, at the head of an important committee, was compelled to make of the Democratic party itself. Jefferson Davis was no less emphatic in the expression of the extreme opinions that ruled the hour. Speaking of the admission that there might be separate schools, he inquired with lordly impatience: "What right have you to take charge of that race at all? Where do you get your authority? The government was not made for them." "Can it be expected," he asked again, "that we shall sit here and hear the question argued as to the equality of the races?" Contending that the equality had never been admitted in any section of the Union, he exclaimed: "This pseudo philanthropy is an excrescence on the American mind, springing from a foreign. germ." A sharp colloquy having sprung up between him and Mr. Wilson on the equality of the races, in which the latter had contended that the negro race had an equal right to life, liberty, and property, Mr. Davis proceeded in a very offensive manner to lecture him on the impropriety and lack of senatorial courtesy in such utterances. "Sir," he said, "as long as |