*

Scott, I should feel it to be my duty to vote for General Pierce. As matters now stand, however, I conceive no such necessity exists, and I shall cheerfully give my vote to that ticket which, in every respect, represents my views, namely, Troup and Quitman. * Voting for that ticket, then, I conceive to be merely an effort to organize and keep together the Southern Rights party, with a view to ulterior usefulness. If my views can have any influence with those who take an active part in the canvass, my advice would be, to avoid all efforts to irritate the feelings and excite the opposition of two great national parties in the South. These are the ranks from which we expect to draw recruits, hereafter, to the standard of the South, when occasion shall arise for rearing it."

Mr. Yancey in defeat, therefore, pursued a policy; and in good temper bided his time.

The result of the campaign was the choice of Pierce and King, by an overwhelming majority. The free States alone. cast electoral votes for him enough to elect. Scott and Graham received only the electoral votes of four States Massachusetts and Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee. The popular vote for Van Buren, the Abolition candidate of four years before, had been 291,363, but for Hale it fell to 156,149. Mr. Yancey was absent from home on election day, and did not vote.

It is immaterial what national significance should be attached to the election of the "compromise" candidates, so far as Mr. Yancey's political history may be concerned. He had nothing, in any manner, to do with the speedy repudiation of the "compromise," which followed the election, by the people of the North. The speculations of history will reach. the conclusion, that the Abolitionists held the balance of power in the free States and that the "compromise" was of the leanness of Barebones, to appease their zeal.

It had become evident that in the growth of the Union some of its practical principles, as understood by its founders, had been reversed. Mr. Madison, in the early time, believed the political honors, for example, which the States could confer would be more sought after than those the Union would have to offer. Therefore, it would not be possible to destroy the States by consolidating them. And, moreover, the United

States would never be able to raise and support an army sufficient to cope with the State militia. Mr. Yancey believed the force of this early reasoning had paled before the progress of the Abolition party.

The President, observing the pledges of his party to peace, organized his cabinet and dispensed the Executive patronage on the general principle of oblivion of the past political divisions. W. L. Marcy, of New York, was put at the head of the cabinet, whereas, the State Rights men preferred Daniel S. Dickinson, of that State. Jefferson Davis, Secessionist, was made Secretary of War, but Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, now a Democrat, aforetime a Whig, was made Attorney-General. The federal offices due to New York, were bestowed nearly evenly between the rebelling Van Buren men, of 1848, and the Cass men.

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a

A source of discord, least expected, sprung up a yellow back novel. Concurrent opinion in both sections has long assigned to this work of fiction "Uncle Tom's Cabin" decisive influence in turning the tide of events against the "compromise," and giving to radicalism a focus of irresistible potency. No narrative of the times would be justified in omitting some account of the origin and circulation of the wonderful book. It appeared in first form, as a serial, in a small semi-religious newspaper, of Washington City, published to promote the work of the memorialists for the abolition of slavery and to encourage the general disturbers of the slavery question in Congress. The fiction was conceived in deliberation and prepared with skill as a campaign document, to excite feeling in the free States against the execution of the fugitive slave provision of the "compromise." Its author, Mrs. Harriett Beecher Stowe, was one of the most aggressive of the female laborers for the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and was the wife of one of the most active political clergymen of that section, devoted to the designs of the Society. As memorialists of Congress, few were so diligent as this man and his wife. In response, therefore, to the call of the Society for literature to propagate its scheme, the tale, so modest in its birth, came into its marvelous power. By the summer of 1853, while the second of World Fairs was open at New York, the chapters were bound for cheap sale

and the volume entered upon a career unexampled in partisan literature. "Thanks for the fugitive slave act," wrote the poet Whittier in a letter of acknowledgment to the author of her fearful work. Under the guise of an attempt to educate public opinion against the fugitive slave provision of the "compromise," the author discussed the practices of slavery and their results on the master class. Its assumptions of facts were exaggerations, not more applicable to slavery, as it was, than to the relations of free wage labor to capital, and the abuses of those relations, the world over; its main conclusions were irreconcilable with its premises of the degradation of slaves in the South, inasmuch as the conclusions proved, that, under the plantation system, the African had advanced in the South to social enjoyments which Africans no where else were blessed with. But, learned men read and wept aloud, as if in a trance, over the weird commingling of sensational eloquence and fateful humanitarianism. The mechanic took the book of pathetic rhetoric and morbid statecraft in his pocket to read on his way and as he paused for his noon day rest. Kings and nobles devoured its pages. A child's edition was printed. The languages of the world were exhausted to spread its teachings. Translations were made in German, Polish, Italian, Bohemian, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Welsh, Russian, Armenian, and in different dialects for the use of different classes. Everywhere, and in every language, whence came immigrants to America the fiction was distributed, to prepare the fresh influx of population in lessons of hatred for the South and the Southern people.

CHAPTER 14.

The Nebraska-Kansas Bill.

1854.

So complete was the reconciliation, in Alabama, between parties that the Secessionist, John Anthony Winston, was chosen Governor, in 1853, without appreciable opposition.

Clay, first and Webster soon after, followed Calhoun to the grave.

There was not a Secessionist in the Senate Chamber, from the South.

A bill was reported in the first session by the ThirtyThird Congress, in February, 1853, to organize the Territory of Nebraska, an area as great as all the States North of the Ohio and Potomac, where only three white men were known to reside, but where some fifty thousand Indians yet held lands, the titles to which rested in them. The bill was the initial of a Territorial Policy, supposd to be demanded by the changed American conditions-the organization of civil government over wild regions, to superinduce their settlement. In the case of Nebraska, it was found that the land lay across the overland route to California and it was argued that settlements planted there would promote the safety of immigrants to the Pacific, on their journey. The bill passed the House by more than two-thirds majority and, upon the announcement of the vote, Mr. Giddings "thanked God for one piece of legislation free from the slavery agitation." The bill reached the Senate, late in the short session, and was referred to the

Committee on Territories, of which Mr. Douglas was chairman. It was reported back and taken up for discussion. Those who objected to it questioned the right or duty of Congress to interfere with the Indians and the policy of creating a civil government in advance of white population. Senator Atchison, from Missouri, spoke at some length and his remarks covered a wide ground. A paragraph from his speech will indicate the surprise the country was destined to receive in the early subsequent course of the Committee on Territories reporting, with amendment of its own, the same bill.

Mr. Atchison said:

"I had two objections to the bill. One was, that the Indian title had not been extinguished in that Territory, or, at least a very small portion of it had been. Another was the Missouri Compromise, or, as it is commonly called, the slavery restriction. It was my opinion, and I am not now very clear on that point, that the law of Congress, excluding slavery from the Louisiana Territory, North of 36° 30', would be enforced in that Territory, unless it was especially rescinded, and whether that law was in accordance with the Constitution or not, it would do its work, and that work would be to exclude slave holders from going into that Territory. Now, sir, I am free to admit, that at this moment, at this hour, and for all time to come,I should oppose the organization and settlement of that Territory, unless my constituents and the constituents of the whole South of the slave States of this Union -- could go into it upon the same footing and with equal rights and equal privileges, carrying that species of property with them, as other people of this Union. Yes, sir, I acknowledge that that would have governed me, but I have no hope that the restriction will ever be repealed.

"I have always been of opinion, that the first great error committed in the political history of this country was, the Ordinance of 1787. The next error was the Missouri Compromise, but they are both irremediable. There is no remedy for them. We must submit to them. I am prepared to do so. It is evident the Missouri Compromise cannot be repealed. So far as that question is concerned, we might as well agree to the organization of this Territory now, as next year, or five or ten years hence."

The session expired, by law, before the Senate reached a vote on the pending measure. Mr. Douglas had reported a bill to organize a Territory, without an expressed or implied provision repealing the Missouri "compromise" of 1820. It is singularly interesting that the expiration of the legal Senate, in 1846, alone prevented Senator Cass from casting his vote for the Wilmot Proviso, and cutting off thus, by his own act,