Mad as this now

peace, civilization and empire." 1 seems, it was then to the southerner an axiom. Cotton was king, and civilization would halt and disappear with the ruin which would come to southern labor with freedom.

Lovejoy, brother of the man murdered at Alton,2 brought, by a violent anti-slavery speech, a scene of disorder in the House, with threats of violence which barely escaped leading to a bloody general fight; and this was followed by a challenge to a duel from Pryor, of Virginia, to Potter, of Wisconsin, who named bowie-knives as the weapons, a quarrel which attracted the attention and intensified the feeling of the whole Union. Legislation which involved any question of slavery was at a stand-still. A bill to admit Kansas under the Wyandotte constitution passed the House April 11 by 134 to 73, but was laid aside by the Senate June 5, and the Pacific Railroad bill was postponed by relegation to a select committee.

The authorization of a committee under the chairmanship of Covode to inquire into the conduct of the president was another evidence of the violent partisan feeling in the House. The report added to the unpopularity of the president throughout the country by the dissemination of "a crude mass of malicious matter," though with

1

xvii.

Cong. Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., App., 97.

See Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.), chap. 3 Schouler, United States, V., 451.

much of truth deeply injurious to the administration.

Mexican anarchy of the period was a question worthy of the thought and space given it in the president's message. Juarez's government, acknowledged by the United States as the constitutional authority, held Vera Cruz, but was powerless in the interior, which was given over to lawlessness. Under the so-called Miramon government the republic was deeply in debt to foreign powers, and there was already hanging over her an invasion by Spain, England, and France, from which the two first were soon wisely to withdraw. The president, though only hinting at such possibility, proposed to forestall the movement by like action of our own, and "employ a sufficient military force to enter Mexico for the purpose of obtaining indemnity for the past and security for the future." His expressed intention was to aid the constitutional forces of Mexico, the country being "entirely destitute of the power to maintain peace upon her borders or to prevent the incursions of banditti into our territory." A treaty "of transit and commerce" and a convention "to enforce treaty stipulations and to maintain order and security in the territory of the republics of Mexico and the United States" was signed by our minister, McLean, December 14, 1859. For the payment of four millions the United States was to have control and a cer

1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, V., 568.

tain lien upon Mexican customs dues. While it gave the United States great advantages of isthmus trade and commerce, it gave Juarez a capital which might have enabled him to forestall the empire of Maximilian, but it would, almost beyond doubt, have fixed the grasp of the United States upon Mexico and have made a great extension of the slave power possible. Attempts (and they could only be the attempts of folly in the political situation) to secure Cuba or to extend our influence in Central America or Mexico disappeared in the caldron of sectional feeling. The underlying design was too evident; it was impossible to pass such a treaty in face of such a declaration as that of Senator Brown, of Mississippi: "I want Cuba; I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican states; and I want them all for the same reason, for the planting and spreading of slavery. I would spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion of our divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the earth." Brown could also say: "I would make a refusal to acquire territory because it was to be slave territory, a cause of disunion, just as I would make the refusal to admit a new state, because it was to be a slave state, a cause for disunion.” 1

The very favorable convention with Spain concluded at Madrid in March, 1860, establishing a joint commission for the adjudication and pay1 1 Quoted by Wilson, Cong. Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 571, 573.

ment of all claims, was to meet a like fate. The final blow to the hopes of southern extremists was, however, not to come until the very eve of the time when all effort was to be turned against the North, for September 30, 1860, William Walker was captured on the Honduras coast, and twelve days later was shot.

CHAPTER VII

PRELIMINARIES OF THE PRESIDENTIAL

THE

ELECTION

(1860)

HE Democratic convention was thus brought together at Charleston, April 23, 1860, under circumstances which foreboded trouble. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, was chosen chairman. Davis's resolutions in the Senate, supported as they were throughout the South, were evidently to be the motif of action for the more extreme southern members; and the committee on resolutions, one from each state, came together with irreconcilable views. The western members, besides a strong personal enthusiasm for Douglas, were well aware of the danger to their party in the North if an extremist platform were adopted, and insisted firmly on a platform which Douglas, as the only Democratic candidate who could carry the North, could accept. But southern members "thought Douglas as bad as Seward and popular sovereignty as hateful as Sewardism." It had been determined long before that under no circumstances should Douglas be ac1 Rhodes, United States, II., 443.

1