McLean and Chase were mentioned, but had little chance from the start. But how about Seward, the acknowledged leader and mouth-piece of the new party, on the whole the ablest public man in it, as far as could at present be seen? To this day Seward's attitude is problematical; it seems that he hardly knew himself whether he wanted the nomination or not. Of course he would have liked to be President, but he doubted whether he or any Republican could be elected in 1856. The question seems to have taken this shape in his mind: If I run and am beaten now, will it improve or injure my chances in 1860, when victory appears probable? It is said that the influence of his friend and chief adviser, Thurlow Weed, determined him to decline the present nomination in the interest of the future. At any rate Seward lost his opportunity. He refused the place of supreme generalship in his party's first great battle, thinking of his own success more than of the cause. It was a test of the deepest fiber of his character, and could not help being so regarded by the thinking heads of his party. He abdicated leadership in the presence of the enemy, when the importunate call came to him and he heard it, not once upon a time but for many months. Never can he be President now; the nomination will never come to him again, begging; when he wants it, he can

not get it, by the judgment of his own Deed confirmed by the Gods.

Who, then, shall lead us? is the crushing question of that half-dazed Convention, finding itself leaderless in its grand emergency. It casts about, groping blindly for the wanted man, and clutches in the dark yet with all its might an adventurer. For such a term is not too harsh for John C. Fremont, when we consider his career and character. Can mortal sagacity fathom the reason why such a Convention should choose such a man, the most unfit ever nominated by a great party for the Presidency, if we consider the perilous crisis threatening the land at that time? Yet the Convention has been declared by good authority to have contained a greater number of able, pure, conscientious men, to have had in it fewer self-seekers and officeseekers than any known Convention of any party before or since. The practical politician is at hand with his explanations: Too many idealists, theorists, dreamers, reformers, Heaven-andEarth regenerators; too few of practical men like myself. We cannot accept this as an explanation in full of the phenomenon; still it contains a grain, possibly two grains of truth. But looking back through fifty years we quite involuntarily bend the knee and thank the Lord for His providential mercy when we consider what might or rather must have happened, had Fre

mont been elected President by the callow Republican party, which showed itself then such a political greenhorn, so totally unable to govern the country. For after all, it is the successful Party which must rule, not so much the Preside.t.

The Presidential Campaign.

Each side through its Convention has now prepared itself for the political struggle which involves the whole People. That little actual war on the border with its two opposing principles has widened out into a national contest, as yet peaceful, between these same principles. The two Parties, Republican and Democratic, have substantially taken the place of the two protagonists of the Kansas combat, the Free-State men and the Slave-State men. One Party supports the Kansans, the other the Administration; thus the rent on the border is cleaving the whole Nation. As the majority is supposed to rule, each Party is seeking to win that majority constitutionally, although we hear again menaces of secession from the South, in case of the election of Fremont.

More and more do we see that the little civil war of Kansas was the prediction and indeed the epitome of the Great Civil War, for which the alignment is already taking place in the political campaign of 1856. Kansas has nationalized itself in one year's time, and bids fair to universalize itself. Its sturdy pioneers are holding the advanced fortress of civilization with the valor of the old Marathonian soldiers, dimly conscious

of doing not only a national, but a world-historical deed.

Accordingly the first part of the pivotal year of 1856 may be regarded as having completed its round or cycle with the two Conventions. Now follows the second part of the year, the Campaign, proper, with its multitutinous assemblages of the folk listening to speeches and debates, with its noisy blowing of horns, particularly of fog-horns, large and little, with that vigorous churning of the masses to make them realize their Constitution and Government all of which a Presidential election brings and ought to bring. Still underneath this seemingly chaotic multiplicity of doings, there is an order, yes a process which is simple enough, and which has the same fundamental character as the one just given, though different in details. This underlying historic process is what we shall now briefly present.

1. Washington. In view of the approaching Campaign, the Administration sought not only not to irritate but to calm the Kansas troubles, which had shown such a reverberating power in the North. It was freely said by Democrats that Buchanan could not be elected unless Kansas was pacified. Accordingly the President sent a new Governor of the Territory, who was to bring peace at all hazards. Robinson, the Free-State leader, after four months' imprisonment, was