but without it if necessary. This became a recognized article in the Democratic and Southern policy. The Republican platform of 1856 denounced the Ostend manifesto, as the doctrine that "might makes right," "the highwayman's plea." It was left for a latter-day Republican to give to the same doctrine the politer name of international eminent domain." The American or Know-nothing party nominated exPresident Fillmore and adopted a platform inclining toward the Southern position. There was a secession of a Northern element, which nominated Banks, but he declined and supported Fremont. All the opponents of the Republican party laid stress on its sectional character. Both its candidates (for vice-president, William L. Dayton of New Jersey), were from the North; its creed aimed solely at the restriction of the South's peculiar institution; south of Mason and Dixon's line, it had an electoral ticket in four States only-Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky -and cast hardly 1000 votes. But the South itself had so completely ostracized even the most moderate anti-slavery sentiment that free political action was impossible. Thus, Professor Hedrick of the University of North Carolina said in reply to a question that he favored Fremont for President; and being denounced for this by a newspaper, he wrote to it a letter, saying in a modest and straightforward way that he had made no attempt to propagate his views, but he did desire to see the slaves free. The students burned him in effigy; the college authorities forced him to resign; a mob attacked him and he was driven from the State. It was in the same State that a college professor's right to free speech on a burning social question was vindicated by his students, his colleagues, and the community, in 1903, and that Trinity College became a leader in courageous and progressive sentiment on the questions of the hour. Few were the men bold enough even to try the question of personal independence in 1856. The suppression of free speech was in itself one of the strongest possible arguments for the Republican cause. The liberty of white men was at stake. Conservatism, apprehension, timidity, in various phases, told against the new party and its candidate. Northern commerce was largely bound up with Southern interests. The threat of disunion weighed with some; Grant, in his memoirs, says it was this that led him to vote for Buchanan. Others shrank from trusting the helm in a tempest to hands as untried as Fremont's. The mob who hated "niggers" swelled the opposition vote. Taking advantage of the Know-nothing feeling, the fiction was persistently circulated that Fremont was a Catholic. The disorder in Kansas was pacified by the dispatch of a new Governor, Geary, to reassure the North. Finally, money was spent on a scale unknown before to defeat the Republican party,-itself in the stage of poverty and virtue,—and spent probably with decisive effect in the critical October election in Pennsylvania. Against these disadvantages the young party made head gallantly. It fired the youth of the North with an ardor unknown since the early days of the republic. It inspired the poets of the people. Great crowds sang the strains of the Marseillaise, with the refrain: Free speech, free press, free soil, free men, Fremont and victory! The older heads were satisfied by the moderation and wisdom of the party's principles. The reasonable element among the Abolitionists hailed this first great popular advance, and allied themselves with it. Whittier was the chief minstrel of the campaign. Of those to whom "the Union" had been the talismanic word, that part which cared for nothing better than the Union as it was, with slavery and freedom mixed, supported Buchanan or Fillmore. The part that loved the Union as a means to justice and freedom were for Fremont. The October elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana showed that the first Presidential battle was lost. November confirmed that verdict. New England, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and the Northwest, had been outweighed by the South and its allies, and Buchanan was the next President. But never was defeat met with better courage or higher hopes for the next encounter. Some unknown poet gave the battle-song: Beneath thy skies, November, Thy skies of cloud and rain, Call the battle roll anew! If months have well nigh won the field CHAPTER XV THREE TYPICAL SOUTHERNERS In the group of leaders of public sentiment in the '30s and '40s, as sketched in Chapter V, some of the foremostClay, Webster, and Birney-were influential in both sections of the country. But in the next decade the division is clear between the leaders of the South and of the North. Let us glance at two separate groups. Jefferson Davis was in many ways a typical Southerner. He was a sincere, able, and high-minded man. The guiding aim of his public life was to serve the community as he understood its interests. Personal ambition seemingly influenced him no more than is to be expected in any strong man; and, whatever his faults of judgment or temper, it does not appear that he ever knowingly sacrificed the public good to his own profit or aggrandizement. But he was devoted to a social system and a political theory which bound his final allegiance to his State and his section. After a cadetship at West Point and a brief term of military service, he lived for eight years, 1837-45, on a Mississippi plantation, in joint ownership and control with an older brother. In these early years, and in the seclusion of a plantation, his theories crystallized and his mental habits grew. The circumstances of such life fostered in Southern politicians the tendency to logical and symmetrical theories, to which they tenaciously held, unmodified by the regard for experience which is bred from free and various contact with the large world of affairs. Davis fully accepted the theory of State sovereignty which won general favor in the South. In this view the States were independent powers, which had formed with each other by the Constitution a compact, a business arrangement, a kind of limited partnership. If the compact was broken in any of its articles, or if its working proved at any time to be unsatisfactory and injurious, the partners could withdraw at will. This theory found more or less support among the various utterances and practices of the framers of the Constitution and founders of the government. In truth, they had as a body no consistent and exact theory of the Federal bond. Later circumstances led their descendants to incline to a stronger or a looser tie, according to their different interests and sentiments. The institution of slavery so strongly differentiated the Southern communities from their Northern neighbors, that they naturally magnified their local rights and favored the view which justified them in the last resort in renouncing the authority of the Union if it should come to be exercised against their industrial system. State sovereignty was the creed, and the slavery interest was the motive. To a man living like Davis on his own plantation, the relation of master and slave seemed a fundamental condition of the social order. Not only his livelihood rested on it, but through this relation his practical faculties found their field; his conscience was exercised in the right management and care of his slaves; there was a true sentiment of protection on his side and loyalty on theirs. His neighbors and friends were situated like himself. The incidental michiefs of the system, the abuses by bad masters, the ignorance and low morality of the slaves,-these things they regarded, let us say, as an upright and benevolent manufacturer to-day regards the miseries of sweatshops and the sufferings of unemployed labor. Such things were bad, very bad, but they were the accidents and not the essen |