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Democratic, Mr. Buchanan recommended them to accept and ratify the Lecompton Pro-Slavery Constitution.

In March, 1858, the Senate passed a Bill-against the efforts of Stephen A. Douglas-accepting it. In the House, however, a substitute offered by Mr. Montgomery (Douglas Democrat) known as the Crittenden-Montgomery Compromise, was adopted. The Senate refused to concur, and the report of a Committee of Conference-providing for submitting to the Kansas people a proposition placing limitations upon certain public land advantages stipulated for in the Lecompton Constitution, and in case they rejected the proposition that another Constitutional Convention should be held-was adopted by both Houses; and the proposition being rejected by the people of Kansas, the ProSlavery Lecompton Constitution fell with it.

In 1859 a Convention, called by the Territorial Legislature for the purpose, met at Wyandot, and framed a Free State Constitution which was adopted by the people in October of that year, and at the ensuing State election in December the State went Republican. In April, 1860, the House of Representatives passed a Bill admitting Kansas as a State under that Constitution, but the Democratic Senate adjourned without action on the Bill; and it was not until early in 1861 that Kansas was at last admitted.

In the meantime, the Free Trade Tariff of 1846 had produced the train of business and financial disasters that its opponents predicted. Instead of prosperity everywhere in the land, there was misery and ruin. Even the discovery and working of the rich placer mines of California and the consequent flow, in enormous volume, of her golden treasure into the Eastern States, could not stay the wide-spread flood of disaster. President Fillmore, who had succeeded General Taylor on the latter's death, frequently called the attention of Congress to the evils produced by this Free Trade, and to the necessity of protecting our manufactures "from ruinous competition from abroad." So also with his successor, President Buchanan, who, in his Message of 1857, declared that "In the midst of unsurpassed plenty in all the productions and in all the elements of national wealth, we

find our manufactures suspended, our public works retarded, our private enterprises of different kinds abandoned, and thousands of useful laborers thrown out of employment and reduced to want." Further than this, the financial credit of the Nation was at zero. It was financially bankrupt before the close of Buchanan's Presidential term.

CHAPTER IV.

"POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY."

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SPRING

DOUGLAS'S THEORY OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY ILLINOIS LEGISLA-
TIVE ENDORSEMENT OF IT, 1851-DOUGLAS'S POSITION ON KAN-
SAS-NEBRASKA BILL, 1854 DRED SCOTT DECISION
FIELD, ILLINOIS, REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1858-LINCOLN'S
REMARKABLE SPEECH TO THE CONVENTION-PIERCE AND BU-
CHANAN, TANEY AND DOUGLAS, CHARGED WITH PRO-SLAVERY
CONSPIRACY-DOUGLAS'S GREAT SPEECH (JULY 9TH, 1858) AT
CHICAGO, IN REPLY LINCOLN'S POWERFUL REJOINDER, AT
CHICAGO, (JULY 10TH)-THE ADMIXTURE OF RACES-THE VOT-

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66

ING UP OR DOWN OF SLAVERY THE ARGUMENTS OF
KINGS -TRUTHS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE-

DOUGLAS'S BLOOMINGTON SPEECH (JULY 16TH), OF VINDICATION

AND ATTACK-HISTORY OF THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA STRUGGLE-
THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE - THE TWO POINTS AT ISSUE - THE
"WHITE MAN'S" COUNTRY-DOUGLAS'S PLEDGES TO WEBSTER
AND CLAY-DOUGLAS'S SPRINGFIELD SPEECH, JULY 17TH-THE
IRRECONCILABLE PRINCIPLES AT ISSUE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND
HIMSELF LINCOLN'S GREAT SPEECH, AT SPRINGFIELD, THE
SAME EVENING-DOUGLAS'S TRIUMPHANT MARCHES AND ENTRIES
-THE OFFICES SEEN IN HIS ROUND, JOLLY, FRUITFUL FACE
LINCOLN'S LEAN-FACED FIGHT, FOR PRINCIPLE ALONE-DOUG-
LAS'S VARIOUS SPEECHES REVIEWED THE REAL QUESTION BE-
TWEEN REPUBLICANS AND DOUGLAS MEN AND THE BUCHANAN
MEN-JACKSON'S VETO OF THE NATIONAL BANK CHARTER-
DEMOCRATIC REVOLT AGAINST THE SUPREME COURT DECISION

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VINDICATION OF CLAY-" NEGRO EQUALITY "-MR. LINCOLN'S
66 CONSPIRACY AND DECEPTION" TO
CHARGE, OF
66 NATIONALIZE
SLAVERY," RENEWED-GREAT JOINT DEBATE OF 1858, BETWEEN
LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS, ARRANGED (FOR JOINT DEBATE, SEE
APPENDIX A")......

66

.Pages 47 to 82.

UT now occurred the great Presidential struggle of 1860 -which involved not alone the principles of Protection, but those of human Freedom, and the preservation of the Union itself-between Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, the candidate of the Republican party, as against Stephen A.

Douglas of Illinois, the National or Douglas-Democratic candidate, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the Administration or Breckinridge-Democratic candidate, and John Bell of Tennessee, the candidate of the Bell-Union party. The great preliminary struggle which largely influenced the determination of the Presidential political conflict of 1860, had, however, taken place in the State of Illinois, two years previously. To that preliminary political contest of 1858, therefore, we will now turn our eyes—and, in order to fully understand it, it may be well to glance back over a few years.

In 1851 the Legislature of Illinois had adopted* the following resolution: "Resolved, That our Liberty and Independence are based upon the right of the people to form for -themselves such a government as they may choose; that this great principle, the birthright of freemen, the gift of Heaven, secured to us by the blood of our ancestors, ought to be secured to future generations, and no limitation ought to be applied to this power in the organization of any Territory of the United States, of either Territorial Government or State Constitution, provided the government so established shall be Republican and in conformity with the Constitution of the United States." This resolution was a practical endorsement of the course of Stephen A. Douglas in supporting the Compromise measures of 1850, which he had defended as being "all founded upon the great principle that every people ought to possess the right to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way," and that "the same principle" should be "extended to all of the Territories of the United States."

In accordance with his views and the resolution aforesaid, Mr. Douglas in 1854, as we have already seen, incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill a clause declaring it to be “the true intent and meaning of the Act not to legislate Slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

His position, as stated by himself, was, substantially *The vote in the House being 65 yeas to 4 nays.

that the Lecompton Pro-Slavery Constitution was a fraud upon the people of Kansas, in that it did not embody the will of that people; and he denied the right of Congress to force a Constitution upon an unwilling people-without regard, on his part, to whether that Constitution allowed or prohibited Slavery or any other thing, whether good or bad. He held that the people themselves were the sole judges of whether it is good or bad, and whether desirable or not.

The Supreme Court of the United States had in the meantime made a decision in a case afterward known as the "Dred Scott case," which was held back until after the Presidential election of 1856 had taken place, and added fuel to the political fire already raging. Dred Scott was a Negro Slave. His owner voluntarily took him first into a Free State, and afterward into a Territory which came within the Congressional prohibitive legislation aforesaid. That decision in brief was substantially that no Negro Slave imported from Africa, nor his descendant, can be a citizen of any State within the meaning of the Constitution; that neither the Congress nor any Territorial Legislature has under the Constitution of the United States, the power to exclude Slavery from any Territory of the United States; and that it is for the State Courts of the Slave State, into which the negro has been conveyed by his master, and not for the United States Courts, to decide whether that Negro, having been held to actual Slavery in a Free State, has, by virtue of residence in such State, himself become Free.

Now it was, that the meaning of the words, "subject only to the Constitution," as used in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, began to be discerned. For if the people of a Territory were to be "perfectly free," to deal with Slavery as they chose, "subject only to the Constitution" they were by this Judicial interpretation of that instrument "perfectly free" to deal with Slavery in any way so long as they did not attempt "to exclude" it! The thing was all one-sided. Mr. Douglas's attitude in inventing the peculiar phraseology in the Kansas-Nebraska Act-which to some seemed as if expressly "made to order" for the Dred Scott decision-was

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