THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

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had said, indeed, in the electoral campaign, that the "passions" of the people had been excited "to the highest degree," because that campaign turned upon questions of "vital importance;" but he had claimed also that the "tempest at once subsided and all was calm," when the people had made known their will. What ground was there to consider this calm a sign that the storm was gathering strength for a new outbreak with redoubled violence? Was there not rather every reason to hope that the agitation of the slavery question would cease, and that sectional or geographical parties, so much dreaded by Washington, would disappear? Since congress had evolved the "happy conception" to apply to the question of slavery in the territories the simple principle that the will of the majority must decide, the "agitation was "without any legitimate object."

If the hope that the long and violent struggle between slavery and freedom had been terminated by the electoral campaign was based only on this, it evidently did not deserve to be likened even to a soap-bubble. That "happy conception" of congress had already become a law in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854. But it was this very bill that led to the formation of the republican party; and on that very ground the last electoral battle had been fought with the high degree of passion alluded to by the president. Thus far, therefore, the people had certainly not believed that "the recent legislation of congress" had deprived the agitation of every "legiti mate object." Hence the suspicion could not but be awakened that the alleged hope that the tomahawk would now be buried, was a conscious sham; for Buchanan must have become a victim of megalomania to think that his ipse dixit would convert the people to his belief. Or

might there not be, after all, some other positive foundation for this fair hope discovered?

Much as Buchanan might admire the "great principle" of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, he could not help admitting that it had not furnished, immediately, a complete solution to the question at issue. Will or not, he had to remember that the partisans of that bill held very divergent opinions on the question, when the decision by the majority was to be made. He explained that he had always understood the bill to mean that it was to be made when the population of the territory had grown so large that they could give themselves a constitution in order to be admitted into the Union. The practical importance of the question, however, he considered very small.

Scarcely a moment before he had said that, in the electoral campaign, a "question of vital importance" was at issue. But nothing whatever had been changed by the presidential election, or since it. The republicans had performed no evolution, and the democrats were as much at variance as ever in their interpretation of the "great principle." Notwithstanding this, the controversy had shrunk, Buchanan claimed, to a question "of but little practical importance," so that the president now thought himself warranted to tell public opinion that it might turn its attention to questions of "more pressing and practical importance." This was sheer nonsense unless reason were introduced into the evident contradiction, by the sentence immediately following the assertion, that the question in controversy, when the principle of "popular sovereignty" in respect to slavery should come into force, was practically of little importance. "Besides," that sentence reads, "it is a judicial question

BUCHANAN'S POSITION.

15

which rightly belongs to the supreme court of the United. States, before whom it is now pending, and will, it is understood, be speedily and finally settled."

If this announcement were correct some meaning might be made out of the nonsensical reasoning of the president, but a meaning very different from that which the president himself intended.

What reason was there for the express assurance that he, “in common with all good citizens," would "cheerfully" submit to the decision soon to be expected?1 If it were certain that the decision lay with the supreme court of the United States, how could it be doubted that all citizens would submit to its judgment, even if not "cheerfully?" Was there not, in the allusion to the "good citizens," an expression of the anticipation that the jurisdiction of the supreme court would be contested? Bad as those citizens might be who would not submit to its decision, with respect to the practical importance of the question on which the president had laid the greatest stress, it was evident that only their number was of any influence. It was not individuals only, but the great political parties, whose creed hitherto came in conflict with the decision of the supreme court. It was not individuals only, but the great political parties, who denied its jurisdiction, and who, therefore, claimed that its judgment was not binding. Hence its decision, as a matter of fact, could not be final. In the very nature of things, the battle must be renewed with increased bitterness on both sides,

1 James Buchanan Henry, nephew of the president, says that the inaugural address was composed at Wheatland, and that Buchanan added to it, afterwards, only the portion relating to the Dred Scott decision. Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, II, p. 187. Nicolay and Hay, in their history of Lincoln, add, this "leads to the inference that it was prompted from high quarters." The Century Magazine, June, 1887, p. 215.

because the vain effort had been made to settle the con

troversy in this manner.

The supreme court of the United States must have had the same opinion of its competency as Buchanan had, if the expectation of the latter was to be fulfilled that the court would render an opinion containing a decision respecting the principle, and which, on that account, could claim to be a final settlement of the controversy. But from Buchanan's own reasoning it followed that, in this case, his good and bad citizens would undoubtedly coincide, respectively, with the two political parties. The characterization of the "principle" of the Kansas-Nebraska bill as a "happy conception " evidently contained a recognition of the unquestionable fact that, together with it, something new was introduced into the legislation. of the Union. More than this, the expression was very unhappily chosen, if this new thing, thus introduced into the country's legislation, was to be declared an absolute postulate of the constitution,-a postulate only just now discovered. But if the application of the principle of "popular sovereignty" was not required by the constitution, but only recommendable on grounds of equity or political expediency, it must, to say the least, have appeared very surprising, at the first glance, that, so far as the time at which it came into force was concerned, the question of equity and political expediency should be transformed into a pure question of law under the constitution, which was to be decided by the supreme court of the United States. A metamorphosis thus wonderful could not be understood; the most that can be said of it is that it might be taken on faith. But the Union had now lived. more than two generations under the constitution. Several territories had been organized and admitted into the Union as states during that period.

On the occasion of their admission, the slavery question had repeatedly given rise to the most violent party struggles, but they had been fought on different ground and settled in a different way. The doctrines now represented by the president were an achievement of recent years, and they had furnished a basis for the transformation and for a new formation of parties. If the announced judgment of the federal supreme court bore the character described, then the two parties to the case before that court were the two great political parties of the country; and in the constitutional creed of the republican party since its origin, two chief articles were the two principles: Congress alone has jurisdiction over the slavery question in the territories; and the doctrine of popular sovereignty, whose unconditional rejection is demanded by every political, economic, practical and moral consideration, is destitute of all constitutional foundation. It was, accordingly, a notorious fact that the republicans emphatically denied the jurisdiction of the United States supreme court on the general question, and, as they further considered the doctrine of popular sovereignty worthy of condemnation from every point of view, they could not, evidently, in the face of all the requirements of logic, believe, notwithstanding, that the special question was, as Buchanan asserted, a "judicial" one under the constitution. If, spite of this, Buchanan really expected that a judgment of the supreme court would practically be a settlement of the controversy, then he could not but believe that the republicans, for some reason or other, surrendering their constitutional, political, economic and moral convictions, would accept the supreme court as an extra-constitutional arbitration. court to whose sentence they would voluntarily submit. If this could be at all supposed, an absolute condition