In the territory of Nebraska an anti-Nebraska delegate in Congress was elected by a meager majority.

In Illinois the anti-Nebraska candidate for State treasurer, the only State officer to be chosen, was defeated, but an antiNebraska and Whig legislature was elected, as well as four Republican Congressmen. Douglas and his friends put forth their utmost efforts in behalf of the Democratic Nebraska candidates. In opposition to them were the ministers, churches, Abolitionists and most of the Germans. The proslavery Democrats of the other States were disheartened when they saw the inability of Douglas to control his own State.

Douglas and Lincoln held a joint debate at Springfield, the result of which was heralded as a victory for the latter. Lincoln was a candidate for Congress, but was defeated, owing to the unwillingness of the different factions to unite.

The Illinois State Journal advised against abandoning the Whig organization; hence Illinois did not join the Republican column in 1854, although a local convention at Princeton declared in favor of such a course.

In 1856, however, the State took her place firmly in the Republican line, and from that time has always chosen Republican Presidential electors and United States Senators.' She is a safe and powerful Republican commonwealth.

In California, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware and the Solid South, Republicanism had little or no standing-certainly no formal existence; hence an account of their campaigns for 1854 do not belong in this volume. Soon after, however, some of those States became and have since continued to be the most sturdy Republican portions of the Union.

There were no Republican organizations of any power in the South until after the emancipation and enfranchisement

David Davis was, by the aid of Republican opposition to Logan, elected vs an Independent, in 1877.

of the Negroes. Even then the successes of the Republican party in that section were of brief duration; and if the federal government shall continue to be too weak or too pusillanimous to protect the right of ballot and the ballot itself after it has been cast, those successes have closed forever in the late slave States.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ORGANIZING FOR THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE.

Attempt to Regalvanize Whiggery-Aggressions of the SlavocracyPlans to Capture Cuba and other Hot Countries-Riot in BostonFederal Troops in the State Court-rooms--Virginia Speaks Her Mind--The Georgia Plan of Destroying Republicans--A Slave Woman Kills Her Child to Save it From Bondage-Sentiments of the South-Call for a National Consultation Meeting-The Pittsburg Convention-Lovejoy's Petition to Almighty God-Committees-Eloquent Speeches-The Address.

There was some attempt made to regalvanize the Whig party after the successes of the Republican party in 1854, but without avail. The old-liners declared that the Republican and Whig platforms were alike in all essential particulars, and that Republicanism, being a temporary offshoot, would undoubtedly be short-lived unless safely piloted into the harbor of Whiggery.

But the political jugglers had no audience, and the year 1855 saw Republicanism stronger than ever in the West and extending into the hard-shell districts of the East. Wm. T. Miner was elected governor in Connecticut, Ralph Metcalf in New Hampshire, Salmon P. Chase in Ohio, Wm. W. Hoppin in Rhode Island and Coles Bashford in Wisconsin and the entire Republican ticket in Iowa.

In the Eastern States the Know-Nothings were so thoroughly mixed in with the two other parties that it would be

difficult to define results. In Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York the Republicans and Know-Nothings were in the preponderance. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire and Vermont clean Republican legislatures, under that name and distinctively as such, were elected. In the other Northern States, Whigs, Democrats, Know-Nothings and Republicans were in thorough confusion, while the South was divided between the Democrats and Know-Nothings.

Numerous causes were operating to solidify and strengthen Republican notions among the people of the free States. John Slidell, of Louisiana, had proposed in Congress, since both the scheme to purchase and that to seize Cuba had failed, to invest the President with power to forbid the abrogation of slavery in the Spanish West Indies. Pierre Soule, of the same State, was advocating a plan by which the entire West Indies, Mexico, Central America and the hot districts of South America should be acquired by the United States by diplomacy or force, for the nourishment and extension of slavery.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" had been dramatized and was being played throughout the North, arousing the liveliest interest in the cruelties of bondage. Escaping slaves, with their scars and stories of wrong and suffering, swarmed more thickly than ever through the free States, bringing out the Democratic man-hunters, the bribed commissioners and the Southern blood-hounds.

The air was full of Southern threats of disunion, extermination of the Abolitionists and rebellion. The shocking frauds and bloody conflicts in Kansas, by which the fleshbrokers were attempting to force slavery into free territory, were in progress. Another expedition for the seizure of Cuba had been organized in the Gulf States, forcing out another proclamation of peace from President Pierce.

In Boston the United States troops, the State militia and the Democratic police force were quartered about the courthouse to enable the Southern man-hunters to carry Anthony Burns back to slavery. A riot occured in which a citizen of Boston was killed, and Richard H. Dana was viciously assaulted by the man-stealers as he passed along the streets. The members of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts were met at the door of the court-room by the bayonets of the regular army, which was mostly in the employ of the masters. hunting escaped slaves. The court then ordered the army out of its apartments.

The sentiment of Massachusetts, maintaining that no man could be sentenced without trial and that the writ of habeas corpus could not be suspended, was attributed to Charles Sumner, and the Democratic journals advised mobbing or lynching him. The Washington Star was explicit in its advice and an article in the Union, of the same city, inciting violence against the Massachusetts Senator, was, on investigation, said to have been incited by Stephen A. Douglas.

The Virginia newspapers advocated violence as, the only method of destroying or checking Republicanism. Upon these lawless utterances the Northern press pronounced some sharp strictures, whereupon the Richmond Enquirer retorted:

Virginia, in this Confederacy, is the impersonation of the well-born, well educated, well-bred aristocrat. She looks down from her elevated pedestal upon her parvenu, ignorant, mendacious Yankee vilifiers, as coldly and calmly as a marble statue. Occasionally, in Congress, or in the nominating conventions of the Democratic party, she condescends, when her interests demand it, to recognize the existence of her adversaries at the very moment when she crushes them; but she does it without anger, and with no more hatred of them than a gardener feels toward the insects which he finds it necessary occasionally to destroy.

Although California had been admitted with a constitution forever prohibiting slavery within her borders, the South

erners were making a secret but desperate attempt to break down the barrier. When the constitution went into effect, one year was allowed in which to remove slaves from the State. At the end of that time, the masters having failed to secure a slavery amendment to the constitution, the time was extended one year. Under its operation slaves came into instead of going out of California. Encouraged by their success, a law "extending the time for removing slaves beyond the limits of the State" still another year, was enacted through the influence of the Democrats, and made to apply to blacks "carried into California since the adoption of her constitution." Where these encroachments would have ended had not the tidal-wave of 1856 swept the country, no one can say.

Observing the rapid strides of Republicanism, the Georgia Times proposed to "crush it out" by the following extraor dinary methods:

If the people of the Southern slave-holding States will be true to themselves, they need not fear anything the agitators and Abolitionists can do at the North. The moneyed and business men can control the politicians and masses, and will do so whenever you make it their interest to do so, and this can be easily done. Let the Southern States pass a law depriving the citizens and residents of Northern States of the use of our courts and officers for the collection of their debts, or the redress of any injuries to person or property they may sustain.

To be more plain, allow the defendant to plead in bar to any action that may be brought in our courts, that the plaintiff is a citizen of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and such like States-and also allow it to be a good defense to any indictment, even for murder, that the party injured was a citizen or resident of those States * It is an old adage that 'you must fight the devil with fire,' and you may rely upon it, this will be an effectual way to fight these devils.

*

*

This is a proposition not requiring much comment. It came from a section that enacted the fugitive slave law, which compelled Northern courts to obey Southern statutes and deny the writ of habeas corpus; from a section that,