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sons which may hereafter appear, we forego

the task.

Incredible as it may seem, this book was bought in large numbers and issued by the Northern senators and members of Congress as campaign documents. They signed a paper recommending the disgraceful fanfaronade as a true exposition of the issue. All these acts aggravated the irritation of the Southern men, and society in Washington began to be divided by sectional lines.

The Thirty-sixth Congress opened December 7, 1859. The political outlook was gloomy, and threatening storms were lowering everywhere. The whole country was greatly excited, and armed factions were carrying on a guerilla warfare on the plains of Kansas-the factions there being divided on sectional lines. They were the shadows of the coming war.

The minds of men, both in and out of Congress, had become fixed, with feverish interest, on this petty but tragically significant conflict in the Territory. Its import was too plain to be misconstrued. It was the herald of early coming disaster to the Union. Yet, notwithstanding the impending peril, the advocates of abolition neither faltered nor moderated their unconstitutional demands and policy. On the contrary they became more aggressive.

They ignored the decision of the Supreme Court, that the Federal Government possesses no power to violate the rights of property within Territories, because these "are united with the rights of persons, and placed on the same ground by the fifth amendment of the Constitution, which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and the powers over persons and property of which we speak, are not only not granted to Congress, but are in express terms denied, and it is forbidden to exercise them."

The abolitionists affiliated with Judge Douglas's party, who maintained that at any time the people present in the Territory, voting, had a right by a majority to forbid the entrance of slave property into the Territory; while the Supreme Court decided that the only time at which this division could be a legal one, was when made by the legally authorized votes for a convention to form a State. Judge Douglas's theory was called squatter sovereignty, and was a heresy so eminently dangerous to the rights of the States to occupy without a sacrifice of their property any territory to be acquired in future, that it met with stubborn resistance from a large portion of the Southern Democracy and conservative Northern Democrats.

It may not be out of place here to give figures which reveal the steady march of the war waged, within the Union, against slavery. Although public opinion on that question was practically solidified in the Eastern States, and wholly so in the South, it had been hitherto only formative in the Middle and Western States.

About this time Mr. Seward came forward into greater prominence, and became the most noted leader of the Republican party. Mr. Buchanan said: "He was much more of a politician than a statesman, without strong. convictions; he understood the art of preparing in his closet and uttering before the public, antithetical sentences, well calculated both to inflame the ardor of his anti-slavery friends and to exasperate his pro-slavery opponents. He thus aroused passions, probably without so intending, which it was beyond his power to control."

New York, with two Republicans in the Senate, had sent to the House twenty-one Republicans out of a delegation of thirtythree. Pennsylvania, intent on getting rid of her fealty to the Democratic party as quickly as she could, had chosen one Republican for the Senate, and ten out of twenty-five representatives these latter to be augmented in the Thirty-sixth Congress to twenty. Ohio

had furnished an anti-slavery majority to the House, while Indiana and Illinois were, each, within one of a Republican majority. Missouri elected one Republican (Francis P. Blair, Jr.); Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin contributed unbroken delegations against slavery.

The results of the contests for the Speakership in these two Congresses were signifi

cant.

In the Thirty-fifth Congress, James L. Orr, Democrat, of South Carolina, had been elected on a single ballot, by 128 votes against 84 for Galusha A. Grow, the Republican candidate.

In the Thirty-sixth Congress, at the opening of the first session, the roll stood, 109 Republicans to 101 Democrats-a gain ominous for those who had hoped against hope to obtain, within the Union, the justice guaran teed by the Constitution. The Republicans, however, could not boast of a decided major. ity, the balance of power being held by a few members still adhering to the virtually extinct Whig and American (or "Know-nothing ") organizations, and a smaller number whose position was doubtful or irregular. The contest for Speaker was memorable both for its length and the fierce passions it aroused. John Sherman, of Ohio, carried his party

with him-except three votes-through more than seven weeks, from the second to the fortieth ballot. On January 30th, finding his election impossible, he withdrew. His withdrawal set free the dead-lock. Two days afterward, in the forty-fourth ballot--William Pennington, a Republican of New Jersey, accepted as a compromise candidate, was elected by a majority of one vote.

Besides the Kansas question, another cause had contributed to the rapid growth of the Republican party. This was, as Mr. Davis has elsewhere explained, "the dissension among the Democrats occasioned by the introduction of the doctrine called by its inventors and advocates 'popular sovereignty,' or 'non-intervention,' but more generally and more accurately known as 'squatter sovereignty.' Its origin is generally attributed to General Cass, who is supposed to have suggested it in some general expressions of his celebrated Nicholson letter,' written in December, 1847. On the 16th and 17th of May, 1860, it became necessary for me, in a debate in the Senate, to review that letter of Mr. Cass. From my remarks then made the fol lowing extract is taken:

"The Senator (Mr. Douglas) might have remembered, if he had chosen to recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to ex

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