nor allow that slavery might be carried into the free States, or imposed upon the territories against the wishes of the inhabitants. This the President soon found to his cost, for he could not control Congress, though it was Democratic in both branches. It would not impose the Lecompton Constitution upon Kansas without submitting it to the people; neither would it favor his Cuban scheme of annexation, or allow him to make war upon the Central American States, or put the control of the army into his hands, or make appropriations for any such purpose. Indeed, the President had scarcely finished half his term of office before his administration had completely broken down. The House of Representatives had become Republican. Senator Douglas, the ablest man of his party, and the most prominent Democratic candidate for the next presidency, was opposing his policy. General Cass, his Secretary of State, who acquiesced at first in the measures he proposed, finally resigned his place in the cabinet. Attorney General Black, who sanctioned, if he did not draw up some of the President's most objectionable messages, found at last that he must retire from the cabinet. Then came the State elections which were to sanction or condemn Mr. Buchanan's pro-slavery policy, and of the great States which had helped to elect him, New York and Pennsylvania gave their majorities against him, until every Northern State, save one, had withdrawn from him its support. And when at last this "Old Public Functionary," as he styles himself in his final message, finds that in trying to obey that Dred-Scott Decision and serve the party that elected him, he has broken up his party and encountered the reprobation of all lovers of freedom, whether at the North or in the South, and discovers that he has only been the tool of the South in cutting away the very foundations of the Union, which he really desired to preserve, and was making so many concessions to preserve, he becomes one

of the most pathetic figures in political history. Had he been a wiser and stronger man he might still have retrieved his reputation. He might even at that late hour have made such a change in policy as, firmly carried out, would have placed him in the list of great Presidents. But he was not of such material.

Thus the year 1859 closed, to be followed by the evermemorable presidential canvass of 1860.

CHAPTER III.

THE NOMINATION OF MR. LINCOLN.

The Election in Connecticut in the Spring of 1860-Its Importance to the Nation-The Frauds by which Democratic Politicians Sought to Carry the State-Governor Buckingham's Re-election-Lincoln's Campaign-His Acquaintance with Governor Buckingham and Its Effect-The Presidential Election of 1860.

The year 1859 closed with important political changes, with a startling and most disturbing occurrence in Virginia, and with such bitter discussion and threats of secession in Congress as might well have alarmed all sober-minded people at the South, as well as at the North.

The administration had lost its control of the country. The few State elections that took place in the spring of 1859, as in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, were in favor of the Republican candidates, though New Hampshire had always been a reliably Democratic State, and Connecticut was just as likely to vote the one way as the other. But when the other State elections came, which were generally in the autumn, Massachusetts was Republican by 23,000 plurality, and the State of New York by 25,000, and Pennsylvania, for the first time, by over 26,000. It began to look as if the coming presidential election might be carried by the Republicans, and the administration of the general government in regard to the subject of slavery be completely revolutionized. Thus the Norwich Bulletin says in the autumn of 1859: "The first session of the next Congress, which will commence on the first Monday of December, will make the next President of the United States, and will doubtless unmake several presidential

aspirants. Mr. Buchanan was barely elected in 1856, and since his election his administration has been constantly weakening the party that elected him. The results of the congressional elections in the several States during the past year, point unmistakably to a Republican administration in 1860, and were the presidential election to come off next November, instead of a year hence, no Democratic candidate could carry a single Northern State." And the Springfield Republican says: "When the Whig and Democratic parties divided the country, at occasional intervals a Democratic State was carrried by the Whigs on the strength of some local question, or by the force of some great excitement. But the succeeding election was pretty sure to restore to the Democrats their ascendency. The Republican party, starting out with a fixed idea and a consistent national policy, has relied upon the progress of individual conviction, and has made steady gains of town. after town, county after county, State after State, until its ascendency is established in nearly all the free States. Thus it has conquered one Democratic State after another, and what it takes it holds. New Hampshire and Maine are now as fixedly Republican as they once were Democratic."

Such was the political aspect of the times when Congress came together at the close of the year 1859. The administration had lost control of the House of Representatives, many of whom had just been elected, though the Senate was still Democratic, since its members were elected for a longer term of service. The House could not elect a speaker, and it was two months before they had succeeded and were organized. The President had waited three weeks for this before sending in his message, though the country was impatient to learn what he was to recommend in that critical state of affairs. When it was published, he was found to have in no respect modified his pro-slavery policy, but to be more completely under the control of the Southern members

of his cabinet than ever. He still asked that more of the war-making power which belongs to Congress, and particularly the Senate, be put into his hands, to be used with reference to Mexico and the Spanish American States. He recommended the organization of a military force on purpose to interfere with Mexican politics, and place the Juarez party in power, and seize such portions of territory as we may consider proper indemnity for our old claims, and as furnishing security for the future.

Then began in Congress those long and bitter and treasonable debates, which were enough to inflame any people into madness, especially after all that had gone before. John Brown's raid and execution had just taken place, and one of the first things done in the House, when Congress came together, was to raise a committee of inquiry into that matter, with the expectation of implicating in it some of the Republican leaders, who seemed to have been just as much surprised by it as others. Then Helper's book, "The Impending Crisis," a vigorous arraignment of the system of slavery, especially in its social and economic bearing, which had been recommended by some of our public men and considerably circulated in some of the border slave States, was used with terrible earnestness to blast the prospects of certain politicians at the North. In the Senate, too, Jefferson Davis had introduced the ultimatum of the South: The rebuke of all slavery agitators, the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law and repeal of the personal liberty laws, and the recognition of property in slaves as an indefeasible right of territorial settlers, and entitled to congressional protection; which was made the text of all manner of provoking debate and treasonable talk. It seems incredible now, that men in other respects dignified and honorable; honorable and dignified enough to represent the States in the Congress of the nation, and to be entrusted with the declaration of war and peace, and