who, it was understood, urged no pretensions to the nomination; but it was equally evident, that the doctrine of supposed "availability" was applied to the case, and that the direct issue before the people was thus in some measure avoided. The Democrats were shrewd enough to be aware, that a great many persons would vote for the candidate of the party, who had never read the resolutions. It was upon these grounds, therefore, that it was thought best to take up a fresh candidate, whose name had not been mingled with the agitating Kansas imbroglio. It may well be questioned, whether that was not the propitious moment for meeting the issue fairly and squarely, upon its very face. Not to do so indicated something of a shiver in the breeze. There is good reason to believe that President Pierce would have been reëlected; and such a result would have definitively settled, in due time, and would have afforded the most favorable means of settling the Kansas question, if the administration, under which the original measure was adopted, had been sustained by the popular suffrage. The line was already drawn with considerable clearness, though not so stiffly as afterwards between those who accounted themselves the unswerving supporters of constitutional principles, and those who, upon sectional grounds, had made the sectional nominations of Mr. Fremont, of California, for President, and Mr. Dayton, of New Jersey, for Vice-President; the first instance in which one or the other of the candidates for these offices had not been selected from a slave State.

In the election which ensued, Kentucky, so strongly impregnated with Whig opinions, and Tennessee, which also had voted for General Scott in 1852, notwithstanding allegations likely to prejudice his cause in a slave State, now cast their weight into the scale for Mr. Buchanan. In all the fifteen slave States, including Delaware, Mr. Fremont received but about twelve hundred votes; and in all but four of those States, not a single ballot was thrown for the ticket which bore his name. It was felt to be a moment, indeed, when all other considerations should be postponed, for the one great

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cause of sustaining the Constitution and upholding the Union. Hundreds of thousands of young men, probably, acted for the occasion with the party which supported the Fremont ticket, attracted by the air of spirited adventure which surrounded his name, who might, at a favorable future moment, have been drawn back to their old allegiance. It is likely, considering the immediate relation of affairs, that the whole Democratic strength, which was given to Mr. Buchanan, would have been equally at the command of the party, had it chosen to renominate Mr. Pierce. Nor does it look at all unlikely, that such a manifestation of firmness, on the part of the “unterrified” Democracy, might have secured it a still more decisive majority. Without meaning to institute any comparison between the candidates, in other respects, it seems obvious that the constitutional cause would have been powerfully confirmed, by a frank attitude and by resolute action; and that this course would have tended to the easier and earlier settlement of the impending troubles. And even if the turn of the political contest had proved in favor of Mr. Fremont-matters were not then so ripe for civil disruption as four years afterwards, and might have been more readily adjusted. At all events, had the "Fremonters" then succeeded, the people would have had more cheaply a lesson of the most salutary influence, which might have saved them from the abyss into which they were finally induced to plunge.

The Democratic success in the election proved, in fact, but a hollow victory. It led to the entanglement of a question, clearly enough before the people, with novel complications, which tended to expedite the final catastrophe. The cry of the Freesoilers was-"No more slave territory." According to the action of Congress, ratified by a great majority of the nation, the people of the several territories were left to determine this question for themselves, when they came to form their State constitutions. It was a clear issue, upon which the Freesoilers were in a very decided minority; and nothing was needed but strict adherence to the point, and magnanimous efforts to hold the friends of constitutional

principles together, to preserve the constitutional majority, and to add to it great numerical gains. It will be alleged, that the sort of spirit manifested by the leaders of public opinion in the South prevented such a consummation. Doubtless a great diversity of views existed in the South. There were, here and there, zealous disunionists in that quarter, as there were at the North, who had long cherished the idea of separation. But it cannot be doubted, that the vast body of the people in every slave State, during the progress of these events, including the most able, influential, and by far the most in number of their leading men, were heartily attached to the Union, sincerely anxious to preserve it, and desired only to maintain those principles of the Constitution—whether right or wrong, in some of their interpretations of themupon which the Union was founded, and which were essential to its preservation, unimpaired in its original purity and integrity. For example, after general religious communion between the North and the South had ceased,' and general stagnation prevailed, as to their social intercourse, Mr. Jef ferson Davis spent the summer months of the year 1858 in New England, with his family; visited its principal cities and addressed public assemblies, on several occasions with great acceptance. A visitor of his character and standing could not fail to enjoy ample opportunity of conversation with all classes of citizens; and it was well known that he left for his Southern home with strong impressions, derived from the prevalent tone of sentiment, that the disputes which had so long tended to alienate the two sections from each other would pass by, without leading to any more serious consequences

1 There were very few pulpits at the North, at this period, to which a pastor would venture to invite a brother clergyman from a slave State, should such a one happen to be in the neighborhood, to preach a Gospel addressed to all nations, in any one of which, at the time of its promulgation, slavery was the common practice, and in regard to which practice it contains no reproof. The American Tract Society had already been formally divided; the main office remaining at New York, while the New England seceding branch had its headquarters at Boston, and became an active organ of abolition.

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than those which had been already experienced. It was supposed that Mr. Davis repaired to New England for the purpose of satisfying himself and his Southern friends on this very subject—in a word, to learn, by personal investigation, whether the idea was seriously entertained by considerable masses of the Northern population, as was more or less indicated by the tone of not a few members of Congress from that quarter, of pressing the question of slavery or antislavery to the point of submission, or resistance by the South. Many others of the chief citizens of that part of the country also visited the North, at or about the same period, probably with the same general view of inquiry and observation; and two years earlier, Mr. Toombs, by invitation of the Boston "Mercantile Library Association," delivered before a numerous assembly of that literary body, a lecture which was devoted to the discussion of domestic slavery, as it existed in the United States, in its constitutional and social relations.1

Indeed, President Lincoln himself, while the war was still raging, without apparent prospect of speedy termination, did not hesitate to say, in one of his characteristic addresses to the public, that, except in South Carolina, he believed that a majority of the people in every Southern State were still for the Union at heart. Nor does there seem to be any room for rational doubt, that the fact, more or less correspondent with his opinion, continuing unchanged to the end of the war, rendered the success of the Confederacy impracticable, and hastened the final result.

1 On the evening of January 24th, 1856.

2 In a debate in the Senate on the state of the Union, on the 10th of December, 1860, when affairs had so nearly ripened for open secession, Mr. Dixon, of Connecticut, declared that the true way to restore harmony was, "by cheerfully and honestly assuring to every section its constitutional rights. No section professes to ask more; no section ought to offer less." He added that three-quarters of his constituents would uphold him in this position. Whereupon, Mr. Davis's colleague, Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, said: “If the same spirit could prevail which actuates the Senator who has just now taken his seat, a different state of things might be produced in twenty days.”—Cor gressional Globe, December 11th, 1860.

CHAPTER XII.

Hostility to a fundamental Provision of Law led to the War.-Other Causes which concurred.-Mr. Webster's Expression, "A Bargain broken on one Side, is broken on all Sides," in 1851, showing his Opinion of the State of Things at that Period.-The Book, called "The Impending Crisis of the South," recommended by Republican Members of Congress and others.-The "Harper's Ferry Invasion.”

THE future impartial historian of the republic will not be likely to fail in the conclusion, that those gradually accumulating causes which at length, according to the ordinary motives which govern the actions of mankind, rendered the war inevitable-though unwise and certainly needless, could the calmer sentiment of the country, on both sides, have found means to exercise its due influence-resulted, by immediate occasion, from hostility to a fact in the domestic life of one section of the country, which was recognized as a matter of fundamental national law, by the spirit and the terms of the original compact between all the States.

Other causes of discord had coöperated with this one, from time to time; but they were either temporary in their nature, or of minor importance, or of a character less capable of attracting and engrossing popular interest. They were able, neither singly nor in combination, to produce such a general sense of incompatibility of temper and interest between the sections, or such deep-seated alienation of feeling, as to impel a civilized and Christian nation to contemplate the dread arbitrament of civil war. But, during the progress of the ten years immediately preceding that event, the sole topic of slavery, in one aspect or another, had mainly engaged the popular mind, in connection with every political