a fighting principle.

Henceforward "right and

"" wrong are the words he uses with the monotonous beat of a sledge-hammer, but fortunately for his political life he saw little in the demands of those whom he called the "plain people" which clashed with that which he considered to be right and wrong.

W

CHAPTER V

"ANTI-NEBRASKA ”

HILE Lincoln was riding on the Circuit and drinking deeply of the inner wells of life,

the country was passing through a crisis which was to culminate in a life-and-death struggle for its national integrity. They were years for the nation and for him of growing self-consciousness and knowledge, years also of strength. The Mexican War had brought with it a vast territory reaching from Texas to the Pacific Ocean, and the organization of that territory was to be the touchstone of the opposing forces in the Union. Whose was the power that would control?

The Wilmot Proviso, which had been before Congress even before the close of the war, had lost before the House. For two years the country wrangled over the subject of the organization of the new territories, and finally the great Compromise measures of 1850 were passed. California, which, as Mexican territory, was already free under the laws of the Mexican Republic, became fully populated in a few months by the gold rush of 1849, and no time was given to the United States to direct the policy of its settlement. In 1850 it became large enough to apply for admission into the Union as a state, and the inhabitants voted themselves in as free. They rejected the extension of the Missouri Compromise line, which would divide the state in half,

making the district north of 30° 36′ free, and the district south of that line slave; and Congress, voting on Clay's Compromise measures, accepted California with its free constitution. The Compromise measures acted as all compromises do. They served to gird both sides for the battle to come. Though California was admitted as a free state, New Mexico and Utah were organized with no mention of slavery. Popular sovereignty held the day, and Congress was denied the right to legislate on the slavery question in the territories. The third clause, saying that the slave-trade should be abolished, in the district of Columbia, was mitigated by giving ten million dollars to Texas, a slave state, and the passing of a stringent fugitive slave law. The North protested against this last law by various attempts at forcible rescuing of slaves, but on the whole it settled back, waiting for the next move from the aggressive South. It had won a victory in California, it had not lost positively in the rest of the Mexican territory.

The South, strong and virile as it was, had to act quickly to win here. The war, which had been begun in the hope of acquiring slave territory, ended perilously near for it in the acquisition of free territory, and raised the prestige of the Whig Party to such a degree that it won for itself the next Presidential election (1848). Whig generals displayed their valour in the battles of the war, and General Taylor, by his successes, won his way into office.

By 1852 the South had recouped its forces, and that year the election was a Democratic victory. For fear that the scheme for slavery in Mexican territory might fail entirely, the new President pledged himself

to follow the line of the " manifest destiny of America," and strenuous efforts were made to acquire Nicaragua and Cuba. The great hope was to force the administration to expand towards the South and thus outbalance Northern influence.

Inevitable as the coming war seemed to be, nevertheless the personal interests and actions of its leaders were great factors in shaping the course of its development. Stephen Douglas, the Democratic rival of Lincoln, was to have had the Democratic nomination for President in 1852 had his partisans been a little more tactful. Their attack on the " Old Fogey" element of the party, which was represented by Buchanan, was so bitter, that though it displaced Buchanan from the candidacy, his faction could not bring itself to give their votes to Douglas. For thirty ballots the Convention had stood for him as against the largest number of votes for the other candidates, and it took forty-nine ballots to agree upon a compromise candidate. Finally Franklin Pierce was nominated. Douglas, looking to the Presidential nomination of 1856, thought to ensure himself the South by a form of legislation which would be distinctly beneficial to it, and yet which on the face of it might also be pleasing to the West. He was Chairman of the Senatorial Committee on Territories, and his friend, Richardson, also of Illinois, was Chairman of the same Committee in the House. The time had come for organizing a section of the territory lying north of the Missouri Compromise line, that it might facilitate a passage-way to the Far West. On 2nd February 1853 Richardson brought in "a Bill to organize the territory of Nebraska." The only objection to it came

from some Southern members, on the ground that it entrenched upon Indian titles, and the suggestion was made that the Southern boundary be 39° 30′ instead of 36° 30′.

One member asked why the Ordinance of 1787 which had dedicated the North-West territory to freedom, was not incorporated in the Bill. The answer was that this territory lay in the section designated by the Missouri Compromise as free, and that it was therefore understood to be free, and thus the Bill was passed. In the Senate, however, the Bill was laid on the table, the reasons against it being that it encroached on Indian titles.

When Congress met again in December 1853 a great change seemed to have taken place on the question of territorial organization. It was obvious that the Democratic caucuses in the meantime had come upon a distinct understanding on the question. The Southern Democrats insisted that the Constitution recognize the right in slaves, while the Northern Democrats, headed by Douglas, said that slavery was meant to be subject to local law, and that the people of a territory, like that of a state, could establish or prohibit it. They hoped to overcome this difference in the party by proposing that the territories be organized by a delegation of Congress, furnished with all the rights that Congress could give it. What these rights were should be determined by the courts. This was the first call to be made upon the courts for determining the meaning of the Constitution of the United States. It was the foreshadowing of the radical step that was taken for this very purpose by the courts in 1856, when it went out of its way in the Dred Scott decision to announce that the