Nor did she wait long before that deliverance came. Among the marvels of her early and strange history was this, stranger than all, that at the last Kansas was indebted to the madness and violence of her imbittered enemies for what the wisdom and earnestness of her warmest friends had failed to obtain; that treason wrought better for her than loyalty; and that again was seen how the wrath of man was made to praise God. Among the designed results of the election of the Republican candidate in the Presidential election of 1860, secured by the disruption of the Democratic party, was the secession of several Southern States, who made this the occasion and plea for their revolt, and who immediately led off in that "dance of blood" which afterward filled the land with suffering and sorrow, and which marked the most important epoch in the nation's history. By the retirement of those Senators who had so persistently opposed her application, a vote was secured for her admission, with this noticeable and pleasing coincidence, that the same day, January 21, 1861, witnessed both the departure of the retiring Senators and the incoming of the new and long-waiting State. And there were many who noted and appreciated the poetic justice of the Divine arrangement, by which it was left for the same hand. that had borne so heavily and cruelly upon the struggling Territory to open the door it alone had kept closed, and by a suicidal violence to destroy itself.

CHAPTER L.

IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN THE FREE AND SLAVE STATES.

New departure. ham's bill.

tory.

- Action of Kansas and Nebraska. Position of the administration.

Free colored population. Action thereon.
Hostile action defeated.

Convention in Maryland. Success in the legislature. — Gross cruelty and injustice thereof. Similar legislation in other States. Virginia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Georgia. Decision of courts. - Important decision in Virginia. - Refusal of passports. Decision of Secretary of Treasury. Northern action. Violent and revolutionary Southern utterances. Personal liberty bills. Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Ohio. Purpose of such bills. Action of Massachusetts concerning separate schools. Dred Scott decision. Decisions in Maine, Kentucky, and New York. Court of Appeals. Argument of Charles O'Connor.

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THE new departure of the propagandists, inaugurated by the compromise measures of 1850 and completed by the Kansas-Nebraska legislation and the Dred Scott decision, necessitated other and supplementary action in the same direction. Public sentiment must be further debauched to accept more kindly, or with less reluctance, the new dogma. New legislation and new decisions of courts were demanded to carry out and render effective what had been purchased at such enormous cost, and for which such persistent and protracted struggles had been necessary. Laws and decisions, adapted to the condition of things when slavery was regarded as the creature of local law alone, an evil to be tolerated because entailed and believed to be temporary, were found to be entirely inadequate under the new dispensation, when slavery was deemed national and no longer sectional, a creature of the Constitution, a good to be cherished and perpetuated. To secure the adjustment of municipal rules to this new order

of things, legislatures and courts were at once assailed, and demands were made for the needful laws and decisions to meet the new wants and provide for the new contingencies thus created.

This was specially true during Mr. Buchanan's administration. Failing in their efforts to make Kansas a slave State, the propagandists turned their eager eyes to New Mexico, Southern California, and the Indian Territory. Near the close of 1858, Mr. Otero, delegate in Congress from New Mexico, wrote from Washington to the secretary of that Territory, urging him to draw up a law, or laws, for the protection of slavery there. He claimed, indeed, that the Constitution and the laws of the United States, especially as interpreted by the Dred Scott decision, did " establish slavery in the Territories"; and yet, he thought, "advantages would result to the Territory" from such legislation. His counsel was taken, and such laws were enacted, a slave code, in the language of Mr. Sumner," most revolting in character, . . . . not only establishing slavery there, including the serfdom of whites, but prohibiting emancipation." The next year after its enactment, on motion of Mr. Bingham of Ohio, the House of Representatives passed "a bill to disapprove and declare null and void" these "Territorial acts." The Senate did not pass the bill; but, while it was on the table, Mr. Douglas took occasion to refer to it, and he boastingly pointed the propagandists to it as one of the fruits of his doctrine of popular sovereignty. "Under this doctrine," he said, "they have converted a tract of free territory into slave territory more than five times the size of the State of New York. Under this doctrine slavery has been extended from the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Cali

fornia, . . . . giving you a degree and a half more slavery than

you ever claimed."

In 1859, a bill was introduced into the legislature of California for the division of the State into two parts, with the purpose of making the portion south of the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude slave territory; but it failed to become a law.

In the Indian Territory there were four tribes of Indians, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks. Under

the fostering care of their governments slavery had become so firmly established that slaveholders thought them worthy of political fellowship, and articles in favor of their admission began to appear in the Southern press. "The progress of civilization," said the New Orleans "Picayune," "in several of the Indian tribes west of the States will soon bring up a new question for the decision of Congress. . . . . It cannot fail to give interest to this question that each of the Indian tribes has adopted the social institutions of the South." To concentrate and give direction to such efforts, a secret organization was formed to encourage Southern emigration, and to discourage and prevent the entrance into the Territory of all who were hostile to slaveholding institutions. It was hoped thus to guard against the adverse fortune which had defeated their purposes and plans for Kansas. But the Rebellion, which abolished the cause they would serve, rendered abortive all such efforts in its behalf.

The free State Territorial legislature of Kansas in 1858 passed an act abolishing slavery; but it failed to become a law, the governor holding it in his hands until the close of the session. At the next session a new bill was passed, but it was vetoed on the ground that a Territory could not exclude slavery until it became a State. So much for Democratic consistency and regard for the doctrine of popular sovereignty. The bill, however, was passed over the veto. The legislature of Nebraska enacted a law forbidding slavery in that Territory; but that, too, was promptly vetoed by Governor Black, a Pennsylvania Democrat and afterward a colonel in the war, on the ground that the act of the legislature was not properly an act of the people. The Territorial laws of Kansas had been upheld by the administration, but they were for slavery. These were for freedom, and a Democratic administration was willing, not to say anxious, to defeat them.

But the new departure and the new dogma did not afford the only occasion of increased slaveholding solicitude and activity. The ordinary dangers and difficulties, which were always embarrassing and putting in peril" property in man," were greatly intensified by the sharp conflicts and heated

discussions of those days of strife. This and the increased facilities for locomotion and for the diffusion of intelligence developed new dangers and the necessity for new safeguards. Among the evils exciting special and increased solicitude was the presence of the free colored population. Always a source of solicitude and distrust, it became doubly so then. How to diminish the numbers of such, how to dispose of them, and how to prevent their increase by manumission, became great practical problems; and to their solution was devoted no small amount of thought and heartless ingenuity. Indeed, a careful study of slaveholding effort and legislation in the slave States during the closing years of the Slave Power reveal, notwithstanding all its victories, the straits of the system, and the utter demoralization of those who had resolved to adhere to its practice and protection.

In 1859 there was a convention of slaveholders on the eastern shore of Maryland to consider the subject. At their instance a State convention was called the next year. The movers proposed the adoption of State legislation that should compel the exile or enslavement of all free colored people. Laws against "free negroism," and for the self-enslavement of any who desired, were proposed and advocated. But more humane considerations controlled, and wiser counsels, whether from prudence or principle, prevailed. Indeed, so moderate seemed the temper and purpose of the convention that some predicted that Maryland would soon become a free State. But they miscalculated. The next legislature passed an act forbidding manumission, and also one permitting a free colored person to sell himself as a slave. These two acts, or laws, were regarded as the correlated parts of one policy, the one forbidding the colored person to remain as a freeman, the other allowing him to do so as a slave. Such, indeed, had become the policy of many of the slaveholding States. Well did a contemporary speak of "the atrocious wickedness and cruelty of forcing men, guilty of no wrong, into a choice between enslavement and expulsion from their business and their homes, and from a land they love so well that exile from it is to them more bitter even than slavery."