the State at the close of the campaign. There were voices however, from the people, and from the more prudent editors which declared: "We doubt if he would accept the Presidency; he is the leader of the people; like the old Warwick, he is king-maker." The electoral college of Alabama, meeting to cast the votes of the State, unanimously recommended him for a cabinet portfolio. He promptly interdicted any steps toward promoting the resolution.

The campaign of 1856 virtually closed the life of the party founded by Jefferson, on the principles laid down in the Kentucky resolutions. Divided America was henceforward to be ruled by the strongest numerical division. The -Constitutional argument was to face the sword.

CHAPTER 17.

The Broken Party.

1857-1858.

Mr. Douglas had no reproach for himself, in that the slave States had refused to accept his device for securing their active support in his dernier resort for saving the free States from themselves; Mr. Yancey was well content, in that the campaign had been educational of the slave States up to a unity of sentiment and purpose to protect themselves never before reached by them. There was no room for mistaking the temper of the sections, as discovered in the practical teaching of the only remaining party with both a Northern and a Southern constituency. Squatter sovereignty had been universally taught by campaign orators, in the free States, as the genius of the Cincinnati platform, and was everywhere condemned, in the slave States, from the letter of the same platform. Howell Cobb's speeches, in Pennsylvania, were plain interpretations of the platform, as Douglas taught it. Had Fremont been elected, the Georgia Platform would surely have been enforced in the slave States. Had not even a more fateful result, than Fremont's election, taken place in the success of the divided Democracy? The battle between Douglas and Yancey was on, beyond recall, to be fought to the end without terms. It was an interesting incident that the warm personal attachment of the men to each other reflected the congeniality of the character of the Northern leader with the Southern mind. All Southern men were instinctively drawn

to him. He was brave, honest, resourceful. Had Douglas needed the evidence of the one and a third million votes, cast for Fremont, to convince him that the Democratic party, on a platform demanded by the South, would lose the North? Did he need the exhibition of fanaticism portrayed in the campaign by the leaders of the Republican party to convince him of the extreme peril of liberty in the North, under that party, and to urge him to one final, if desperate effort, to bring the West and the South together to save the whole North? The South was content, prosperous, hopeful. The existing order of internal things suited the people. Would they be led by the home leader, Yancey, or fly to the alienated leader, Douglas? The President, who had overcome Douglas in convention, was soon to fall beneath the superior tact and ability of his rival; the wedge driven in the party, at Cincinnati, was to be driven to burst it asunder, long before another convention could take up the trouble to adjust it. Of all the sacrifices of mind and heart, swept into the maelstrom of revolution, none counted for more, few for so much, as the sacrifice of Douglas. The situation was plain. To reconcile the West and save the whole North from revolution, whose end no man could foresee, Mr. Douglas demanded of the South to place in the common jeopardy, its own social and political existence. Mr. Yancey led the South to see the extravagance of the demand and, finally, to resist the devices laid to entrap it into acquiesence.

In less than sixty days after the Presidential election, of 1856, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered, from the bench of the federal Supreme Court, a decree which forced the political parties of the country, and all factions of political parties, into their final attitude toward a Constitutional Union. Mr. Yancey lead public opinion at the South, in support of the political proposition, laid down by the decree; Mr. Douglas was in practical unison with the Republican party revolt against the political propositions laid down by the decree. In this Mr. Douglas finally separated himself from the Democracy of the South. With truth could it be said, Mr. Douglas realized, when the Dred Scott decree was promulgated, that the reconciliation of the divided Democracy, of 1856, was hopeless and the Northern wing must prevail in both sections, or merge into the ever expanding Republican party.

Dred Scott, held in slavery in Missouri, his wife and two children, slaves in the same State, came into court against their master, a citizen of New York, pleading the Ordinance of 1787, and the Missouri "compromise" enacting the parallel 36° 30′ as a geographical limitation of slavery, and claiming their freedom under these acts. The father and mother, many years previous to bringing action, had been carried by their master, or masters, into the territory declared free by the acts of Congress cited, and their children had been born on territory so declared free. The family were, without interruption, retained in the service of their master, or masters, nevertheless, and having been finally carried, without compulsion, to Missouri, a slave State, and there sold to the defendant in court, now appeared against him, claiming the benefit of the federal laws as against his alleged rights of property in their labor. The decree excited extraordinary interest, partly because it was in reversal of decrees of several State courts, pronounced at various times, covering a period of more than half a century. Aspasia was born of a slave mother in the Territory of Illinois, after the passage of the Ordinance of 1787. She was carried to Missouri, and there brought suit for her freedom, pleading the Ordinance of 1787, in force at the place of her birth. The Supreme Court of Missouri adjudged her free. Lydia, born a slave in Kentucky, was carried, about the year 1802, to Ohio, held in bondage there, sold to Todd, of Kentucky, and taken back to that State as his property. In a suit brought for her freedom, under the Ordinance of 1787, in force in Ohio, where she had resided, the Supreme Court of Kentucky adjudged her free. The Supreme Court of Mississippi held, in the early years of the nineteenth century (Walker's Rep.), "slavery is condemned by reason and the law of nature"; the Supreme Court of Louisiana held, in the same period (Martin's Rep.), "the right of the master exists, not by force of the law of nature or of nations, but by virtue only of the positive law." In the same line, the Supreme Court of the United States held, in Prigg vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, "the state of slavery is held to be a municipal regulation, founded upon and limited to the range of the territorial law." The Dred Scott decree, in a

season of great political agitation following the repeal of the Missouri" compromise" line, reversed all previous decrees which recognized the validity of acts of Congress restricting slavery. The Ordinance of 1787 and the act of 1820 establishing the line 36° 30′, were declared null and void for unconstitutionality. The decree set forth the history of the African race in the United States, under federal cognizance, showing that it was not included, nor intended to be included, in the benefits of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Territorial law was not necessary to make the negro a slave, and Congress could not emancipate him nor make him a citizen; nor could any State give freedom to a slave found temporarily resident in its bounds. In one of his speeches in the Southern Commercial Convention, of which more explicit mention will be made presently, Mr. Yancey expressed the intelligence of the people of the cotton States, at least, on the question of the Dred Scott decree. He said:

"I allude to Monroe-a name that Virginia honors, that the whole country honors. Therefore James Monroe will suit my purpose just as well as Thomas Jefferson in answering the expression of admiring wonder that any man in America should have the hardihood to think that Virginia statesmen of the olden day should sign a discriminating and dishonoring law. This Virginia statesman had done that very thing. Mr. Monroe signed the Missouri compromise act. And yet is there from Virginia a man who will rise in his place here and say that that was not a law that discriminated against the South, against our Constitutional rights; took from us more than one-half of that rich inheritance from our sires in land; that also put a brand of Cain upon Southern men as an unequal and inferior race that should not pollute the soil, north of the line there fixed, by their nefarious institutions? None will do that. Then my friend, who, in his vehemence of passion, permitted it to take the helm, while justice and reason slept, has lost all the force of his argument. Thus in the same spirit in which I did this morning, I must be allowed to allude to great historical facts, even if Virginia is interested, without. being accused of any desire, design, or wish to disparage Virginia of this day. If I am to be cut off from alluding to the acts of Virginia statesmen, I might as well close this