those occasions was mild compared with the grinding rage aroused by the situation in Kansas. In the South the New England Emigrant Aid Society was held responsible for all the trouble, while in the North the Missouri "Blue Lodges," and the South in general, were accused of conspiracy to make Kansas a slave state. Looking upon slavery itself as evil, the antislavery section considered the attempt to force it upon Kansas as an unspeakable wrong.

CHARLES SUMNER

On Charles Sumner of Massachusetts the struggle in Kansas had created an impression not unlike that in the mind of John Brown. But Sumner was a man of far greater ability, with far more education and training, so his reaction was less elemental in character than Brown's. Brown sought to avenge murder with murder; Sumner translated his emotions into words, carefully planned and delivered where they would sting his hearers to madness. On May 19 and 20, in the Senate, Sumner shocked the Senators with a speech entitled "The Crime against Kansas," described by Cass, the oldest member of the Senate, as "the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of the members of this high body." If Sumner had spoken on the spur of the moment, in a sudden outburst of temper, there would perhaps have been more excuse for him. But he had spent weeks in preparing this speech, carefully working over every sentence and paragraph until they were polished sufficiently to accord with his exacting standards. His attack upon slavery and upon the activities of the proslavery party in Kansas were more finished, perhaps, but no more severe than others. But for some reason known only to himself, he endeavored to give additional point to his remarks by reducing them to the concrete and the personal. Selecting Senator A. P. Butler of South Carolina as his special victim, and commenting on the fact that Butler was absent at the time, he covered him with ridicule and with insults.

"Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he had made his Vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight-I mean the harlot slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator."

On the second day of his speech, he referred again to Butler, who had

"with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her [Kansas'] representative, and then upon her people. There was no extravagance of the ancient parliamentary debate which he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not make. . . . The senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure. . . He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution or in stating the law, whether in the details of statistics or the diversions of scholarship. He cannot open his mouth but out there flies a blunder."

...

Sumner also paid his respects to Douglas, in the same speech, and in about the same way, but Douglas was there, able and willing to reply in kind. Apparently Sumner went far in presuming upon his Senatorial immunity from prosecution, and Butler had no redress. Two days later, after the Senate had adjourned, Sumner was seated at his desk, writing. While he was there Preston Brooks, a member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina, and a relative of Butler, came up to Sumner. Announcing his name, but without giving Sumner a chance to rise, he pounded him over the head with a heavy gutta-percha cane. Sumner finally broke his desk free from its fastenings, and struggled to his feet, but, dazed and bewildered by the heavy blows, he could do nothing to defend himself. A Senate page ran to inform Toombs, Douglas, and Slidell, who were conversing in an anteroom, of what was going on, but they did not interfere. By the time Brooks was forcibly stopped, he had beaten Sumner into insensibility. It was three years before he had recovered sufficiently to resume his place in the Senate.

In the North, Sumner's speech was taken as a matter of course, a justifiable assault upon an evil institution, and the section was roused to horror over Brooks's retaliation. In the South the horror was over Sumner's speech, while Brooks was hailed as a hero. Perhaps nothing could illustrate so well the depth of the extraordinary bitterness which was forcing a separation. Both Sumner and Brooks were gentlemen in their ordinary relations, and yet, under the provocation of the dispute over slavery they both resorted to tactics which could be justified by no standards, no matter how low. Sumner's verbal attack upon Butler savored far more of the manner of the bar-room bully than of a Senator from a leading state in the North, while the

manner of Brooks's reply would have been scorned by an ordinary thug.

As a concrete example of the contest between two radically different sections, the struggle for Kansas was an ominous foreboding of a more extensive war. Alarmed or maddened, depending on their individual temperaments, the people turned again to a presidential campaign.

CHAPTER XLII

POLITICS AND SLAVERY, 1856-1860

With the Whigs actually going through the process of dissolution, and the Democrats threatened with a similar fate, and with the Know-Nothings piling up votes in state after state, the chaotic congressional elections of 1854 placed the Republicans in a position to jump from nothing into one of the major parties in the course of a single campaign. They had behind them the whole accumulated force of antislavery feeling, the intensity of which was greater than ever. By taking advantage of the loss of confidence in the Whigs, and of the distrust of the Know-Nothings they could capitalize any new issue that happened to arise. They found one in the civil war in Kansas. Democrats and Know-Nothings were both anxious to settle the contest there, partly because they saw in it the surest stimulus to Republican progress, while the Republicans were not unwilling to let it continue, at least during the presidential campaign, knowing that every attack upon the antislavery settlers would bring them votes.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856

The nominations of all the parties were influenced in one way or another by "bleeding Kansas." The Democrats had to select a candidate who would conciliate the wavering members of their party in the North, so they dropped both Pierce and Douglas. On the seventeenth ballot they picked James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, an old, conservative, easy-going man not likely to make trouble. One of his chief assets was his absence from the country during the debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. He had at least antagonized no one, and voters might reasonably consider him safe. The platform upheld the doctrine of popular sovereignty as the best solution of the slavery problem, in spite of the unfortunate attempt to apply it in Kansas.

The Republicans had to be even more careful in their selection than the Democrats. As a new party, composed of dissatisfied Democrats and Whigs, they could not afford to show undue favoritism

to either wing. Chase had been too good a Democrat to satisfy the Whigs, while Seward, as the ruler of the Whig machine in New York, would never draw the vote of a single convert from the Democrats. They finally took John C. Frémont, the "Pathfinder," so called, whose career in California could be made to look like an asset. Frémont could never have traveled far in politics on his own merits, but the Republicans relied upon the widespread antislavery feeling to conceal the weakness of their candidate. The platform demanded the abolition of slavery in the territories and the admission of Kansas under the Topeka Constitution.

After the campaign started, the Democrats in Congress, under the guidance of Robert Toombs, introduced a bill designed to get a fair vote of the Kansans themselves on the subject of slavery. The measure passed the Senate, but the Republicans killed it in the House. They would not consider the admission of Kansas as a slave state, even if the inhabitants there favored slavery. Because of the Republican determination to prevent Congress from acting, nothing more was done, and the new party was able to draw upon "bleeding Kansas" for the whole campaign.

The Know-Nothing party went to pieces during the campaign of 1856, even more rapidly than it had arisen. The northern and southern wings could not agree on slavery, and the northern members went over in groups to the Republicans. As the sectional party steadily gathered strength in the North, the more radical southern leaders began to renew their threats of secession. If the Republicans should win, they declared, the South would leave the Union. Senator Mason, of Virginia, went so far as to urge Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War, to provide the militia in the southern states with arms from federal arsenals.

There is no doubt that this renewed danger of disunion seriously affected the more conservative voters in the North. They were pleased by Buchanan's promise to secure a fair vote in Kansas, and they hesitated to goad the South by voting Republican. Buchanan was elected, with 174 electoral votes, to 114 for Frémont. The Democrats also secured control of both houses of Congress. In spite of the fact that the total popular vote of all non-Democratic parties and groups was larger than the Democratic total, the old party was well satisfied with the result. There seemed to be more than an even chance of getting along with no more trouble.