Chicago: Its History and Its Builders
DOUGLAS IN CHICAGO-THE OLD UNIVERSITY
FOUR YEARS OF EXCITING EVENTS-NORTH MARKET HALL MEETING IN 1854-MR. BROSS' ENCOUNTER WITH DOUGLAS-SHEEHAN'S ACCOUNT OF THE MEETING-BROSS' REVIEW EARLY PAVING AND GRADING RAISING THE TREMONT HOUSE TO NEW GRADE AN ENTIRE BLOCK ON LAKE STREET RAISED-POPULARITY OF THE NICHOLSON PAVEMENT-GENERAL TRADE IN THE FIFTIES-APPRECIATION OF REAL ESTATE -TRADE REVIEWS-PROGRESS IN RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION-PANIC CONDITIONS IN 1857-THE OLD CHICAGO UNIVERSITY-INTEREST OF SENATOR DOUGLAS IN THE UNISTUDENTS-FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES-CESSA
TION OF ACTIVITY-TABLET PLACED IN HONOR OF DOUGLAS REMINISCENCES OF THE OLD UNIVERSITY-STUDENTS WHO AFTERWARDS BECAME EMINENT-RIOTS OF 1855-THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY.
AN INTERVAL OF FOUR YEARS
HE four years following the events narrated in the last chapter of the preceding volume were years of intense political excitement. The deep feeling of resentment prevailing throughout the North caused by the enactment of the Fugitive Slave law was not allayed, but settled into a permanent conviction that slavery must be exterminated. Even Lincoln had at last awakened from his conservatism, and had declared that the country could not continue to exist "half slave and half free." Talk of disunion among the Southern statesmen already filled the air, and one of the remembered phrases of Lincoln's "lost speech" was that memorable utterance, "We won't go out of the Union, and you shan't."
Douglas had been the chief instrument in carrying through the bill organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, one clause of which repealed the Missouri Compromise. This was May 30th, 1854. The Missouri Compromise had for thirtyfour years been the main reliance of the conservative element in its efforts to quiet