The John Brown raid was a flagrant violation of the rights of Virginia. It seemed at first to injure the anti-slavery cause; but all sympathy with it was promptly disclaimed by the Republican leaders. Its origin has not been traced beyond the narrow circle of Brown's fanatical associates. No man who was not a fit subject for the mad-house could fairly be suspected of sympathizing with an enterprise which was as preposterous as it was

criminal.

The Whig party may be said to have disbanded soon after the Presidential election of 1852. The Northern and Southern wings could no longer harmonize on the slavery question. In their desperate efforts to find new common ground to stand on, and new issues upon which to dispute the ascendency of the Democrats, they selected the narrow and illiberal one of restricting the rights of foreigners who come to this country to reside. It aimed at the political ostracism of Roman Catholics. But the pre-eminent importance of the slavery controversy overrode these side issues; and the effect of the American organization was to alienate those who might otherwise have co-operated against the rising party of anti-slavery.

The first serious struggle by the Republicans for power in the Nation was made in 1855. In that year began the famous contest over the Speakership, which, after one hundred and thirty-three ballots, resulted in the election of Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts. A bare majority of the House of Representatives was then secured by them. The great success of the new party was the legitimate fruit of the pro-slavery policy. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the attempts to force slavery into Kansas against the wishes of the people gave great impulse to the new party. In the following year, 1856, the Republicans made a formidable effort to elect a President. They were defeated under their leader, John C. Fremont, by James Buchanan. They then took the lead of the "Americans," as the great party of opposition to the Democracy. In that election, Mr. Buchanan received 1,838,169 of the popular vote, and 174 electoral votes. Mr. Fremont received 1,341,264 of the popular vote, and 114 electoral votes. Mr. Fillmore, the American candidate, received 874,534 of the popular vote, and only eight electoral votes.

While other writers have dwelt elaborately upon the teterrima causa belli, to wit, slavery, and exhaustively traced its influence from its earliest establishment in our hemisphere, the author is content to make a less elaborate chapter upon that head. Slavery has been called the trembling needle which pointed the course amidst the tumultuous discussions of our Congresses until the Civil War began. From Jan. 31, 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison established the Liberator, the discussion was never remiss upon any opportunity by the slavery and anti-slavery zealots. The motto of the abolitionist was immediate and unconditional emancipation. Considering the relation of slavery to civilization, this sealed its fate. In 1833 the

THE NORTHERN ABOLITIONISTS.

51 American Anti-slavery Society made the conflict flagrant. The right of petition, the safeguard of the Constitution, and the fugitive-slave law were only incidental and inflammatory topics leading to the one main question. In the North, abolitionists were hunted by mobs; but they were not hunted so much because they were abolitionists as because the great body of people at that time believed that the agitation of the slavery question would jeopard the Union. The Constitution had been called "a covenant with hell." But slavery could only be legally ostracized and crushed by an amendment of that instrument. This it received at the end of the war, in the mode prescribed by the framers of the Constitution. The question was finally settled by the defeat of the secession movement, which was designed to maintain slavery in full vigor on this continent.

When, in 1856, Mr. Seward declared that there was an "irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery, his political opponents charged and believed that his purpose was to bring about the conflict. They regarded him as an unscrupulous demagogue, who was willing to inflame popular passions at the risk of producing civil war, if he could thereby make himself President of the United States. But now, in the light of American history, all candid readers will admit that whatever may have been the motive of that great statesman, he enunciated the truth in trenchant language. For, from the foundation of the government down to the era of the Civil War, the collisions and irritations between our incongruous social forces became more and more frequent and exasperating as the progress of population brought them into closer contact. The increasing facilities of intercourse made it easier for slaves to run away. The Constitution required that the runaways should be " delivered up" to their masters; and the fugitive-slave acts required that the surrender should be made without a trial by jury. Such proceedings naturally awakened a strong feeling among Northern people in regard to the injustice of slavery, the inconsistency of the system with the principles of civil liberty, and their own responsibility for the existence and enforcement of the unjust laws. The extension of slavery into the territories was another great source of irritation and alienation of feeling between Northern and Southern men. It involved the moral responsibility of Northern communities in the sin of spreading the institution over the continent; while at the same time, slavery extension served to strengthen the political power and influence of slave-holders in the government. As already shown, Texas was annexed, as Mr. Calhoun avowed, for the purpose of strengthening slavery. It has been stated by Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, that, down to the year 1861, the South, although inferior in population and wealth to the North, had at all times a large majority of the Federal offices of the higher grades.

These moral and political considerations naturally tended to arouse a feeling of hostility to the South. Humane people revolted at the injustice.

of laws which called upon them to hunt down their poor neighbors who had committed no crime, and which required them to aid in sending fellowbeings into perpetual bondage. Statesmen, and even mere politicians influenced by no high regard for manhood rights, saw their advantage in strengthening a sentiment which was rapidly developing into a tremendous political force. There were in the North many earnest and able men working against slavery with singular disinterestedness and inflexible purpose, in season and out of season, by speech and writing. These, with the devotion of the prophets of old, were untiring in the great cause of arousing the public conscience against the "Sin of Slavery." These men were not always judicious; they were not just to those who differed from them. They were often extravagant and even fanatical, but they never faltered in their adherence to the great central truth of human liberty. These men would, at any time, have sacrificed the Union rather than sustain political relations with the South. On the other hand, there were in the South great statesmen, men of large humanity and generous principles, who saw no sin in slavery, who found sanction for it in Holy Writ, who believed in that system of labor as the only one adapted to their soil and climate. These men, like their brethren of the North, would also sever their Federal relations rather than submit to what they regarded as an unjust and fanatical interference with their inalienable rights under the Constitution. Of these men, John C. Calhoun was both a type and leader, in the long and bitter anti-slavery contest preceding the war. He is much misunderstood in the North. A sketch of that great and good man will close this chapter.

John Caldwell Calhoun was of Irish Presbyterian stock. He was descended from a race of Calvinists, distinguished above all others for holding "fast to the faith" that was in them. With men of this stock, to believe was to know. To know was to act. No argument, opposition or persecution in any form, could dissuade them from action. Calhoun saw no wrong in slavery. In his eyes the institution was "a good — a positive good."

Calhoun was born in Abbeville, South Carolina, March 18, 1782. His grandfather was James Calhoun. He emigrated from Donegal, Ireland, in 1733, to Pennsylvania. He afterwards moved out on the Kanawha in Virginia. In 1756 he settled in South Carolina. James' son, Patrick, married Martha Caldwell, the daughter of an Irish Presbyterian emigrant. was the mother of John C. Calhoun.

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John spent his youth on his mother's farm. His father died while he was a child. Although his mother was left in moderate circumstances, he had few advantages of early schooling. When he reached the age of eighteen he began a course of systematic study. He prepared for college under the instruction of his brother-in-law, Dr. Waddel, a Presbyterian clergyman. He entered Yale, and at the age of twenty-two graduated with high honors.

After this, he devoted three years to the study of law. Half of this

time he spent at the law-school in Litchfield, Conn. Having completed this course, he returned to Abbeville and engaged in the practice of his profession. But the law was not his forte. The great questions of the day attracted his scrutiny. Politics offered a field for his eloquence. They suited his fervid nature and patriotic ambition. Soon he represented his district in the state legislature. In 1811 he was elected as a Representative to the Twelfth Congress. The same year he married his cousin Floride. She was possessed of sufficient means to enable him to pursue the career on which he had entered, with the assurance of a modest competence. He took an exceptionally high position in the House from the beginning. At his first session Henry Clay- then Speaker-appointed him to the second place on the Committee on Foreign Relations. That committee had before it the question of the proposed war with Great Britain. The part of the President's message which related to the outrages committed against our commerce and flag by that Power was referred to this Committee.

Mr. Calhoun wrote the report that was afterwards presented to the House. It was strongly in favor of war, as will be seen by the following

extract:

"The period has arrived when, in the opinion of your committee, it is the sacred duty of Congress to call forth the patriotism of the country."

There was a boldness in this report, and in his speech in favor of the Resolutions which were afterwards adopted, that was characteristic of the man and of the period. Randolph opposed the report. He opposed all measures looking to war. He opposed them with great bitterness. But Calhoun, although in his first session, was a worthy foeman. His was no compromising spirit, ready to yield a part to save the residue. His motto was expressed in his first speech. It was this: "The law of self-preservation is never safe, except under the shield of honor."

But it is not intended here to review the career of this great American. It is only intended to describe his true status and stature in respect to the two great questions with which his name has been associated, to wit: "Nullification" and "Secession "; both inspired by the hope to protect slavery. He was a nullifier, but never a secessionist. He regarded secession as revolution, no more, no less. There is not one word in his writings or public utterances that can fairly be construed into holding secession to be a constitutional remedy. He always spoke of that remedy as something outside of the Constitution. He never advocated it. Nullification is a different question. He regarded it as a constitutional remedy. His opinion was that each state of the Union had the power to decide for itself in respect to the constitutionality of any Federal law, and to resist its enforcement within the state, if the people regarded it as unconstitutional. This he believed to be the right of the people within the Union; and he saw no inconsistency in this doctrine.

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Mr. Calhoun regarded slavery as a natural relation. Of all the questions of the period, it was the abolition movement that gave him the deepest concern. He firmly believed that in the event of its success, the fate of the Southern people "would be worse than that of the aborigines." To destroy the relation of master and slave would be to restore the fruitful fields of the South to their primeval condition. Calhoun clearly saw the coming conflict. He did not see anything but ruin in emancipation. "To destroy the existing relations," said he, "would be to destroy the prosperity of the Southern States, and to place the two races in a state of conflict which must end in the expulsion or extirpation of one or the other." He regarded social and political equality as the necessary incidents of emancipation, and believed that such equality between the races was impossible. How fallible at the best is human judgment! In Calhoun's life-time, the great mass of the American people were conscientious believers in the incompatibility of the two races. Even Lincoln, at first, looked to the expatriation of the emancipated slaves, as the only practicable course. Yet, what a change of conditions; what an explosion of political and social fallacies, and decay of prejudices has this generation witnessed! Slavery has been abolished. Each year brings to the South a larger return from its industries. In Calhoun's own state the former slave and master now exercise the political and civil functions of citizenship with equal right. Social equality still remains as impracticable as Calhoun regarded it. It does not exist in any race or people. It never will. Some must ever be the masters. The mass must ever be the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. He had less apprehension of the destruction of the Union by the assertion of states rights through secession, than of its destruction by consolidation. Any one who has observed the tendency toward the latter mode of destruction will not be disposed to disregard its dangers.

In the commencement of his career, Mr. Calhoun favored what was afterwards known as Whig measures, viz., a national bank, a protective tariff, and the development of internal improvements by the general government. About the year 1823 he changed his views in regard to these measures, and in 1828 he characterized the tariff bill of that year as a "bill of abominations." This was the bill that led to the nullification act in South Carolina. He devoted his life to the maintenance of slavery and the preservation of the Union. He died on the last day of March, 1850, almost in the forum. The last words of his last speech in the Senate, uttered in the early part of that month, were these: "Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability, both to the Union and my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the consolation, let what will come, that I am free from all responsibility." Two friends then led him out of the Senate Chamber, and his seat

was vacant.