Franklin Perc

It was not safe for the Democrats to run the risk of any such result as had followed the contest against General Taylor in 1848. Victory was easier than in that year, with almost any candidate, but no one thought it wise to run any risk of putting up a strictly political candidate. So Pierce received the nomination, and his election constituted one more victory for the Democratic organization, perhaps the most significant in its history, and certainly the one which was to have most lasting results on the country's future. President Pierce was known to be an ultra adherent of the States' rights wing of his own party. He had been elected with this understanding, and therefore was at liberty to carry out in full the wishes of the voters who had put him where he was. This he did in a manner at once clever and effective. He did not belong to the noisy school of statesmen. aimed at results, not at making an impression.

He

His Cabinet was chosen with a view to making a homogeneous administration. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was his Secretary of War. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was the characteristic development not merely of the President's policy, but of the theories

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on which Calhoun had based his own course, and which was faithfully taught and adhered to by the States' rights men. As before stated in these pages, the existence of slavery in any territory North of 31° 30' had been expressly forbidden as a part of the Clay Compromise when Missouri's admission as a slave State had been consented to by the North. Now the removal by Congress of that prohibition left the status of each one of the Western Territories in doubt, and seemed to leave a thoroughly legal and constitutional path open to any owner of negroes who might choose to emigrate into any one of these prospective States. It was a radical move, logically following on the last of Mr. Clay's compromises. The Democratic party in Congress began to formulate its ideas on the doctrine of squatter sovereignty." This meant that even in the status of territorial citizens, people who had settled in the West ought to be allowed to decide the great question of slavery for themselves. was most earnestly advocated by Mr. Douglas of Illinois, and by the section of his party whom he afterwards represented as a presidential candidate. Douglas was perfectly sincere about the matter, and honestly believed that this policy afforded the best possible solution of a much vexed question. But the North, as a whole, was opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and felt that "squatter sovereignty" was only another entering wedge for the unlimited extension of slave territory. The feeling among Northern immigrants to the Territories was even more bitter than that which existed in the States. Most of the men who had gone out there from the free States had gone with the idea of making homes for themselves by working with their own hands. Anything that had a tendency to degrade manual labor was a mortal offense to them. As a result of this bitterness, violence and bloodshed in Kansas and in other territories marked the latter part of the Pierce administration. Looking at the course of events in Bleeding Kansas from a strictly judicial point of view, there can be no doubt that John Brown and a few of his fellow radicals who were given up entirely to the humanitarian hobby, did a great deal to augment the disturbance. They had gone to Kansas with the primary object of making a free State out of that Territory. Improvement of their own material condition was only a secondary object with them, if it can be called an object at all. They went there as agitators, and were met by agitators of the same fondness for violence on the other side. The majority of Northern settlers, however, were in line against slavery for other reasons. Their first object was to get a living, to make themselves

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comfortable, and nobody can say how far, if at all, their moral objection to slavery, became a motive to influence their action. At any rate, they were driven into partial or complete sympathy with Brown on the main ground of opposition to the pro-slavery influence, and did what they could to encourage his "underground railway" proceedings, which stood legally on exactly the same footing as the operation of a bank burglar, or of a highway robber. They were carried across the river into Missouri, and of course furnished a pretext for the organization of border troops, which then was not without some basis in justice. In the midst of all this agitation which stirred the whole country up, came the presidential election of 1856, in which for the first time the new Republican party showed itself within the realm of practical politics, and displayed greater strength than anyone had given it credit for. Its candidate was Gen. John C. Fremont, who had really conquered Upper California for the United States during the Mexican war, and who was very popular in the West. Fillmore was running again. The popular vote stood, Buchanan, 1,838,000, Fremont, 1,341,000; Fillmore, 875,000. That a new party in its first presidential campaign, should be able to cast between a million and a million and a half of votes was pretty good evidence of the existence of new conditions. As a matter of fact, the platform of the organization had been drawn up in such a way as to furnish common ground for free-soilers, liberty men, disgruntled Northern Democrats, and disgruntled Northern Whigs, and to hold the temporary support of the abolitionists themselves. Broadly stated, its whole creed was opposition to the extension of slavery in the Territories with an incidental affirming of the power of the National Government to make such extension impossible. But the latter plank of the Republicans brought them back, almost at once, to the ideas of Hamilton and of Washington, with reference to the Constitution's conveying inferential powers to the Federal system. It formed a precedent for all other forms of "loose construction," and fixed upon the party at once full responsibility for the maintenance of Federalism in the modified form which nearly a quarter of a century's experience had rendered necessary. In spite of the new party's phenomenal display of energy, however, Buchanan was elected in 1856, and went in as a "minority" President. President Pierce took no part in politics after his retirement from the White House. He died in 1869.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

1857-1861.

JAMES BUCHANAN, of Pennsylvania, was born in Franklin County, in 1791, and received his degree at Dickinson College in his native State. He studied law, was admitted to the bar, and, at the age of twenty-three years, was elected to the State Legislature. He was a good speaker, a logical thinker, and a man of great tact and judgment. His election to Congress in 1820 was the beginning of a long and brilliant public life. He served in the lower House for eleven years, and then resigned to take the position of Ambassador to Russia under the diplomatic service. For three years he remained at the Court of St. Petersburgh. Then he came back to America and was at once elected to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania. He was re-elected in 1836 and again in 1843. For four years, under President Polk, he was Secretary of State, and in that capacity displayed a remarkable talent for effectively carrying through diplomatic work. In 1854 Mr. Buchanan went to the Court of St. James as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. He remained there for one year only. His nomination for President in 1856 was a deserved tribute to the worth of a true and tried party servant. His election was rightly looked upon as an indorsement of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and of the doctrine of " squatter sovereignty." He entered office on March 4, 1857, with a full conviction that questions over which there had been so much and so violent discussion were at least temporarily settled. Two days later the "Dred Scott decision " was announced by the Supreme Court of the United States, and the North was thrown into a state of excitement by the side of which that produced by the Fugitive Slave Law and by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was as nothing. It would be impossible to leave some account of this decision out of a constitutional history of this period. Dred Scott was a negro who had been owned by Dr. Emerson, of the Regular United States Army. He had been kept for two years in the free State of Illinois, and for two years more in Missouri. When taken back to Missouri Scott claimed his freedom, and the courts of that State, following a long series of decisions, held that he was free. The case had first come up in the