bade slavery in the Northwest Territory, but provided that fugitive slaves, taking refuge there, should be returned.

The westward migration of people from the seaboard and from the states that had grown up across the mountains, brought the subject up repeatedly. The South wanted to extend its territory; the North was gradually becoming opposed to the whole system. In 1819 there were twenty-two states in the Union-eleven free, eleven slave states. The Ohio river became the boundary between the two sections, and there were many who thought it advisable to keep the balance then existing. When Missouri applied for admission into the Union, therefore, as a slave state, violent opposition was encountered. The matter went over to the next session of Congress, whereupon Maine was ready for admission. Thus the two states came in together with the famous Compromise of 1820, which provided that slavery should not exist in the territory procured from France in 1803 north of the latitude 36° 30′, with the exception of Missouri. Thus was a sensitive problem settled for the time.

In 1833 the Antislavery Society was organized in Philadelphia. By the distribution of literature of various kinds this society did what it could to win sympathy for the slaves of the South and to create an anti-slavery sentiment. Slave owners were indignant and did all they could to prevent this society in accomplishing its ends. Violence frequently resulted, presses which printed these documents being destroyed and the mails searched for objectionable matter. The South tried in vain to have a law passed prohibiting the circulation of anti-slavery material through the mails, but succeeded in passing a bill which forbade Congress to receive petitions pertaining to slavery.

The Anti-slavery Society failed to enlist the aid of many thoughtful men who personally opposed the extension of slavery, even the very system, indeed. Such men saw that the Constitution had left the regulation of slavery to each state and believed that its abolition was not a question to be settled by Congress at all. Besides, they disliked the lawless methods of the anti-slavery men, who used any means to attain their ends.

In 1845 Texas was admitted as a state. The history of

our acquisition of this Mexican territory is more or less complicated. Many southerners had moved over the border line and settled. After Mexico declared herself free from Spain, quite a section of territory declared itself free from Mexico and formed a separate country. Those who had settled here desired to become a part of the United States and appealed to Congress for admission. To comply with this request, since Texas claimed much disputed land, was to precipitate war with Mexico. Popular feeling favored the acquirement of this territory and the war of 1848 brought a large tract of land into the possession of the country. Immediately the question arose as to whether this should be free or slave territory. Rumors of all kinds were afloat. It was said that the South would secede if it failed to gain some part of this acquisition. Finally the Compromise of 1850 settled once more the difficulties which were dividing the people. This provided that California was to be admitted as a free state, but that the remainder of the Mexican territory should be open for both free and slave settlers; that the slave trade should be abolished in the District of Columbia and a fugitive slave law should permit slave owners to recover slaves that escaped to free states.

To the surprise of all, when Congress assembled after the election of Pierce, Stephen A. Douglas brought forward a bill which provided for the formation of two territories: Kansas and Nebraska. Although both lay north of 36° 30′, Douglas intended to satisfy the South, and declared that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional at the outset, and secured its repeal. Kansas was to be free or slave, according to the will of the settlers.

Now men North and South rushed in to populate the new territory. Nebraska was too far north to make slavery profitable, but Kansas might become a prosperous slave state. For some time scenes of lawlessness were enacted in this new territory, as hot-headed partisans struggled for supremacy.

Abraham Lincoln came into prominence during these years in his debates with Douglas, while both were candidates for the United States Senate. Lincoln's clear, homely sentences went straight to the hearts of the northerners. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." So well understood was

his position upon this question that when his election to the presidency was known South Carolina seceded from the Union. Six other states followed her example and the Confederacy of the South was organized. Many hold today that the South thought by thus withdrawing that she could exact better terms from the Union than if she remained within. It is said that it was still, expected that a compromise might be made. Although secession had been argued about and threatened for many years, it came as a great surprise. Finally feeling ran so high that war seemed imminent. Four more states withdrew and in April of 1861 word reached the capital that an army of the Confederacy had fired upon Fort Sumter. From that day both sides realized that peace was no longer to be expected.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LATTER PART OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The war which had divided North and South caused tremendous loss of life and property. It has been estimated that for each day during the four years that war waged, the lives of seven hundred men were sacrificed. The federal government poured out approximately $2,500,000 for each of those fearful days-about $34,000,000,000 in all—and was left with an additional debt of $2,600,000,000. The Confederacy gave lavishly of its stores and was still left with a debt of $1,400,000,000. While the burden of debt was serious, the loss of life was more serious still. Up to 1861 the progress of civilization in America had gone steadily forward. By the elimination of a rising generation, progress received a back-set at this time, particularly as the population was soon increased by a large emigration from the more backward states of Europe. Through the seventies, eighties and nineties, Slavs, Lithuanians, Poles, etc., infiltrated into the social structure of this country in surprising numbers. "Defeated men of a defeated race," they have been called. Mentally and physically inferior, it was quite natural that their arrival just after the terrible loss of American blood should have been disastrous to continued advancement.

The first colossal task confronting the government at the close of the war was: what disposition should be made of the states which had seceded? Under what conditions were they to be received once more into the Union? Any fair and unbiased examination into the Reconstruction period must make convincingly plain the great calamity that the South received when Lincoln fell by the hand of a mad assassin. He, and he alone, was perhaps great enough to have guided the nation through the storm and stress of years characterized by intense sectional feeling. He was gifted with a generosity of heart and a delicacy of feeling seldom met. He was the leader of the entire nation—not a faction of it. Believing in the sovereignty of the state, the South had finally withdrawn from the Union and entered into a civil war to give reality to the theory. In

the struggle made to preserve the Union, the North had lost much, but the South had lost more. In the North, affairs had gone on to some extent apart from the war; in the South the war had been the one engrossing matter. In the North, four men out of every nine of suitable age had enlisted; in the South, nine out of every ten had gone to the front. Again, destruction of property was greatest in the South, since the war was principally waged there; and finally, the slaves who were set free had been the property of their owners. The South had lost utterly.

Realizing all this, the President set to work to bind up the wounds of a nation. With a kindliness and nobility of spirit, he discouraged the idle arguments that were put forward: Were the states of the Confederacy out of the Union, or had they, in fact, been in it throughout? Lincoln went so far as to say that the welfare of the country would be better served if a solution of such problems were not attempted. However, his broad policy did not meet the wishes of the Republican leaders. Filled with exultation, now that the strain was over, with coarser instincts and shorter vision, they wished the defeated states to suffer still greater humiliation. It is possible that Lincoln, whose words in his second inaugural address rang clear and true: "With malice toward none, with charity for all. with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, .. to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves," might have won opponents to his way of thinking and restored in briefer time peace and good will among men. This Johnson, who succeeded him, was wholly unable to do.

ness.

Provisional government was set up in the southern states until new constitutions should be prepared to meet the changes that had taken place. The whole country knew that some measures must be taken immediately concerning the negroes who might become a menace to society if they remained in idleThe southern states brought forward regulations by which the colored people should be bound out to service, with wages fixed by law. Such disposition had been common in England at an earlier time and was not of necessity oppressive. However, the North, failing quite to understand the conditions in the South, found the idea astounding. Men away from the