THE revolutionary movements of 1848 did much to encourage love of liberty in America, where the anti-slavery agitation was now becoming prominent in politics. The indignation against the Mexican war increased as it was found that nothing would be done to keep the promise of 1844, that Great Britain should be excluded from the Pacific. The purpose of the South, to enlarge the area of slavery but not that of freedom, was so plain that the northern Democrats proposed the Wilmot Proviso, by which slavery would have been forbidden in all territory acquired from Mexico; and they actually carried it through the House of Representatives, with the help of the Whigs, in 1846. Similar action was taken by the legislatures of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and seven other States. The Senate was so unwilling to have slavery prohibited anywhere as to oppose, merely on this account, a bill for giving a territorial government to Oregon.

I. Many of the New York delegates to the national Democratic convention in 1848 came pledged to "uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery," and were so badly treated that they withdrew. Cass was nominated as a friend to the South; the Mexican war was declared "just and necessary"; and abolitionism was denounced, as it had been in 1840 and 1844. Van Buren was nominated soon after by the anti-slavery Democrats. A similar movement had already been made by Sumner, Wilson, and other men who were known as "conscience Whigs," and who had some support from Clay and Webster. Both these candidates for the presidency were set aside in favour of a slave-holder, who had been very successful in conquering Mexico, but never cast a vote. In fact, General Taylor had taken so little interest in politics, that he was supported in the North as a friend, and in the South as an enemy, to the Wilmot Proviso. No opinion on this or any other question could be extorted from the majority; Wilson declared in the convention that he should do all he could to defeat its nominee; the conscience Whigs made an alliance with the Van Buren Democrats; and the new movement was joined by the "Liberty men," whose vote of sixty thousand had decided the election of 1844. Thus was formed the Free Soil party, whose fundamental idea, like that afterwards held by the Republicans, was preservation of the Union by checking the extension of slavery.

Douglass and other Garrisonists were present at the Free Soil convention, where he was invited to speak. The new party pledged itself to "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labour, and Free Men." The national Government was to relieve itself of "all responsibility for slavery," and begin by prohibiting its extension. There should be "no more slave States," "no more slave territory," and "no more compromises with slavery." The convention also demanded that Oregon should be organised as a territory with free labour only; and this was granted at once by President Polk and both Houses of Congress. Most of the members of the convention were Transcendental enough to think that wisdom must be spontaneous; and their scorn of political machinery left it to be used for making Van Buren the candidate. Lowell, who was then at his height of productiveness, complained that,

but Whittier exclaimed, that September:

The anti-slavery vote was nearly five times as large as in 1844. Cass would have been elected if the Free Soilers had supported him in New York. Their hostility gave that State, as well as Vermont and Massachusetts, to Taylor, who thus became President. He also carried Georgia and seven other Southern States; but the West was solidly Democratic. It was not an anti-slavery victory, but a pro-slavery defeat.

II. The first question before the new President and Congress was about California. The discovery of gold, before the country was ceded by Mexico, had brought in crowds of settlers, but scarcely any slaves. Unwillingness to have another free State prevented Polk and his Senate from allowing California to have any better government than a military one; and this was deprived of all authority by the desertion of the soldiers to the diggings. The settlers knew the value of a free government, and made one independently. The constitution which they completed in October, 1848, was so anti-slavery that it was not sanctioned for nearly two years by Congress. Meantime there was no legal authority in California to levy taxes, or organise fire departments, or arrest criminals. Robberies and conflagrations were numerous; the mushroom cities were not graded, paved, or lighted; the uncertainty of titles to land caused fights in which lives were lost; and criminals became so desperate that several were lynched by a Vigilance Committee.

The duty of admitting California as a free State was urged upon the new Congress in December, 1849, by Taylor, who promised to make an unexpectedly good President. This plan had become so popular at the North that it was recommended by the Democratic State conventions of Massachusetts and Wisconsin, as well as by the legislature of every Northern State, except Iowa. The House of Representatives could easily have been carried; for the Whigs and Free Soilers constituted a majority, and would have had some help from Northern Democrats. The Senate would probably not have consented until after another appeal to the people; but this might have been made with success at the elections of 1850.

Taylor had carried Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware. The last two States had permitted some Free Soil votes to be cast; this was also the case in Virginia; and anti-slavery meetings had been held publicly in St. Louis. The pro-slavery defeat in 1848 encouraged Southerners who knew the advantage of free labour to agitate for emancipation. The convention held for this purpose in Kentucky, in 1849, was attended by delegates from twenty-four counties; and its declaration that slavery was "injurious to the prosperity of the Commonwealth," was endorsed by Southern newspapers. Clay himself proposed a plan of gradual emancipation; and such a measure was called for, according to the Richmond Southerner (quoted in Hoist's Constitutional History, vol. iii., p. 433), by "two-thirds of the people of Virginia." Admissions that "Kentucky must be free," that "Delaware and Maryland are now in a transition, preparatory to becoming free States," and that "Emancipation is inevitable in all the farming States, where free labour can be advantageously used," were published in 1853, at New Orleans, in De Bow's Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States (vols. i., p. 407; ii., p. 310; Hi., p. 60). A book which was written soon after by a North Carolinian named Helper, and denounced violently in Congress, shows how much those Southerners who did not hold slaves would have gained by emancipation; and what was so plainly for the interest of the majority of the voters would have been established by them, sooner or later, if it had not been for the breaking out of civil war.

How much danger there was, even in 1849, to slave-holders is shown by their threats to secede. They wished to increase the hostility between North and South in order to check the spread southwards of Northern views. It was in this spirit that Senators and Representatives from the cotton States demanded a more efficient law for returning fugitives. Most of the thirty thousand then at the North had come from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri; and these States were invited to act with their southern neighbours against abolitionism.

There were very few secessionists at this time, except in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. President Taylor was so popular at the South, and so avowedly ready to take command himself against rebels, that no army could have been raised to resist him. Webster declared, in February, 1850, that there was no danger of secession; and the same opinion was held by Benton of Missouri, Seward, and other Senators. There was not enough alarm at the North to affect the stock-market. All that the Whigs needed to do for the Union was to sustain it with all the strength which they could use for that purpose at the South. If they had also insisted that California should be admitted unconditionally, they would soon have had support enough from Northern Democrats in Congress. The demand for a national party of freedom was urgent. The Free Soilers were too sectional; but the Whigs had so much influence at the South that they could have checked the extension of slavery without bloodshed; and this would have ensured the progress of emancipation.

III. All this might have been done if Clay's hatred of the abolitionists, who had refused to make him President, had not made him try to cripple them by another compromise. He proposed that California should be admitted at once and without slavery; that it should be left to the settlers in Utah and New Mexico to decide whether these territories should ultimately become free or slave States; that Texas should receive a large sum of money, as well as a great tract of land which she had threatened to take from New Mexico by force; and, worst of all, that a new fugitive-slave bill should be passed. The law then on the statute books left the question whether the defendant should be enslaved to be decided by a magistrate elected by the people or appointed by the governor; and the court was so apt to be restricted by local legislation or public opinion, that recovery of fugitives was practically impossible in New England. The new law retained the worst provision of the old one; namely, that no jury could be asked to decide whether the defendant had ever been a slave. The principal change was that the judge was to come into such close relations with the national administration as to be independent of the people of the State. In short, fugitive slaves were to be punished, and disloyal Texans rewarded, in order that California might get her rights.

This plan was approved by Webster, who hoped that the grateful South would make him President, and then help him restore those protective duties which had been removed in 1846. Other Northerners called the compromise one-sided; and so did men from those cotton States which were to gain scarcely anything. President Taylor would yield nothing to threats of rebellion. It was not until after his death that Clay's proposals could be carried through Congress; and it was necessary to present them one by one. The bill by which California was admitted, in September, 1850, was sandwiched in between those about Texas and the fugitives. The latter were put under a law by which their friends were liable to be fined or imprisoned; but the new Fugitive Slave Act had only three votes from the northern Whigs in the House of Representatives; and there were only four Senators who actually consented to all Clay's propositions.

The compromise seemed at first to have silenced both secessionists and abolitionists. The latter were assailed by worse mobs in Boston and New York than had been the case in these cities for many years. The rioters were sustained by public opinion; enthusiastic Union meetings were held in the large cities; and Webster's course was praised by leading ministers of all denominations, even the Unitarian. Abolitionism had apparently been reduced to such a position that it could lead to nothing but civil war. Parker complained, in May, 1850, that the clergy were deserting the cause. Phillips spoke at this time as if there were no anti-slavery ministers left. I once heard friendly hearers interrupt him by shouting out names like Parker's and Beecher's. He smiled, and began counting up name after name on the fingers of his left hand; but he soon tossed it up, and said with a laugh, "I have not got one hand full yet."

Webster's friends boasted that Satan was trodden underfoot; but the compromise was taken as an admission by the Whigs that their party had cared too little about slavery. Many of its adherents went over, sooner or later, to the Democratic party, which had at least the merit of consistency. About half of the Free Soilers deserted what seemed to be a lost cause; but few if any went back to help the Whigs. The latter did not elect even three-fourths as many members of Congress in November, 1850, as they did in 1848; and they fared still worse in 1852. Democratic aid enabled the Free Soilers in 1851 to send Sumner to represent them in the Senate, in company with Hale and Chase. Seward had already been sent there by the anti-slavery Whigs, and had met Webster's plea for the constitutionality of the new Fugitive Slave Law by declaring that "There is a higher law than the Constitution." Sumner maintained in Washington, as he had done in Boston, that the Constitution as well as the moral law forbade helping kidnappers. He was never a disunionist; but he insisted that "Unjust laws are not binding"; and he was supported by the mighty influence of Emerson.

The effects of Transcendentalism will be so fully considered in the next chapter but one, that I need speak here merely of what it did to encourage resistance to the new law which made philanthropy a crime. The penalties on charity to fugitives were so severe as to call out much indignation from the rural clergy at the North. In November, 1850, the Methodist ministers of New York City agreed to demand the repeal of the law; and Parker wrote to Fillmore, who had been made President by Taylor's death, that among eighty Protestant pastors in Boston there were not five who would refuse hospitality to a slave. The first hunters of men who came there met such a resistance that they did not try to capture the fugitives. A negro who was arrested was taken by coloured friends from the court-house; and a second rescue was prevented only by filling the building with armed hirelings, surrounding it with heavy chains under which the judges were obliged to stoop, and finally calling out the militia to guard the victim through the streets of Boston. A slaveholder who was supposed to be trying to drag his own son back to bondage, was shot dead by coloured men in Pennsylvania. Other fugitives were rescued in Milwaukee and Syracuse. The new law lost much of its power in twelve months of such conflicts; and it was reduced almost to a dead letter by Personal Liberty bills, which were enacted in nearly every Northern State. The compromise was not making the North and South friends, but enemies.

The hostility was increased by the publication of the most influential book of the century. Uncle Tom's Cabin had attracted much attention as a serial; and three thousand copies were sold on the day it appeared in book form, March 20, 1852. There was a sale that year of two hundred thousand copies, which were equally welcome in parlour, nursery, and kitchen. Dramatic versions had a great run; and one actress played "Little Eva" at more than three hundred consecutive performances. Some of the most effective scenes were intended to excite sympathy with fugitive slaves.

The total number of votes for all parties did not increase one-third as fast between 1848 and 1852 as between 1852 and 1856, when many of "Uncle Tom's" admirers went to the polls for the first time. The Whigs were so much ashamed of their party, that they permitted every State, except Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee to be carried by the Democrats. The latter had the advantage, not only of unity and consistency as regards slavery, but of having made their low tariff so much of a success that there was another reduction in 1857. The two parties had been made nearly equal in Congress by the election of 1848; but the proportion was changed four years later, to two to one, and the beaten party soon went to pieces.

The Free Soil candidates and platform were singularly good in 1852; yet the vote was but little more than one-half as large as in 1848. There was no election between 1835 and 1865 when anti-slavery votes seemed so little likely to do any immediate good. The compromise looked like an irreparable error; and many reformers thought they could do nothing better than vote with the Democrats for free trade.

IV. The victors in 1852 might have had many years of supremacy, if they had kept true to the Jeffersonian principle of State rights. They were consistent in holding that the position of coloured people in each State ought to be determined by the local majority. The rights of Northerners had been invaded by the new law, which forbade hospitality to fugitives and demanded participation in kidnapping; but this wrong might have been endured if the South had not denied the right of Kansas to become a free State. This was guaranteed by the compromise of 1820, which had been kept by the North. Early in 1854, Senator Douglas of Illinois proposed that the compact should be repudiated, and that it should be left for future settlers to decide whether there should be freedom or slavery in a region ten times as large as Massachusetts, with a fertile soil and a climate warm enough for negro labour.

There was such prompt and intense indignation throughout the North at this breach of faith, that Douglas said he could find his way from Chicago to Boston by the light of the bonfires in which he was burned in effigy. The difference of opinion between city and country clergy ceased at once. An Episcopalian bishop headed the remonstrance which was signed by nearly every minister in New York City. Two other bishops signed the New England protest in company with the presidents of Yale, Brown, Williams, and Amherst, with the leaders of every Protestant sect, and with so many other clergymen that the sum total rose above three thousand, which was four-fifths of the whole number. Five hundred ministers in the North-west signed a remonstrance which Douglas was obliged to present; and so many such memorials came in from all the free States, as to show that there was very little pro-slavery feeling left among the clergy, except in the black belt north of the Ohio.

One-half of the Northern Democrats in the House of Representatives refused to follow Douglas. Leading men from all parties united to form the new one, which took the name of Republican on July 6, 1854, and gained control of the next House of Representatives. It was all the more popular because it began "on the sole basis of the non-extension of slavery." Victory over the South could be gained only by uniting the North; but Garrison still kept on saying, "If we would see the slave-power overthrown, the Union must be dissolved." On July 4, 1854, two days before the Republican party adopted its name, he burned the Constitution of the United States amid several thousand spectators. Then it was that Thoreau publicly denied his allegiance to Massachusetts, which was already doing its best to save Kansas.

Emigrants from New England were sent into that territory so rapidly that the Douglas plan seemed likely to hasten the time when it would be a free State. The South had insisted on the rights of the settlers; but they were outvoted, in November, 1854, and afterwards, by bands of armed Missourians, who marched off when they had carried the election. The Free State men were then supplied with rifles; and an anti-slavery constitution was adopted by the majority of actual residents. The minority were supported by the President, as well as by the "border-ruffians"; two rival governments were set up; and civil war began early in 1855. Lawrence, the principal town in Kansas, was sacked by command of the United States Marshal, the most important buildings burned, and much private property stolen. Five settlers, whose threats of violence had offended John Brown, were slain in cold blood by him and his men, in retaliation for the Lawrence outrage, in May, 1856. Anarchy continued; but the new State was not admitted until 1861.

Prominent among the Northerners who insisted on the right of Kansas to govern herself, was Sumner. His speech in the Senate in May, 1856, was so powerful that half a million copies were printed as campaign literature, and Whittier said, "It has saved the country." The orator had attacked some of his colleagues with needless severity; and on the day after the sack of Lawrence, he was assaulted by a Representative from South Carolina in the Senate Chamber with such ferocity that he could not return to his seat before 1860. This cruel outrage against freedom of speech was universally applauded throughout the South.

There was indignation enough at the North in 1856 to have given the election to the Republicans, if the field had been clear; but Protestant bigotry enabled the South to choose the President who failed to oppose rebellion. The Catholics had objected as early as 1840 to the Protestantism which was taught, in part at their expense, to their children in the public schools. Some ways in which this was done then have since been abandoned; but the principal controversy has been about using a book which is universally acknowledged to be a bulwark of Protestantism. There would not be so much zeal at present for having it read daily in the schools, if it has no religious influence; and our Catholic citizens have a right to prefer that their children should be taught religion in ways not forbidden by their Church. Pupils have not had much moral or even religious benefit from school-books against which their conscience rebelled, however unreasonably.

The Catholic position in 1841, according to Bishop Hughes, afterwards Archbishop, was this: "We do not ask money from the school fund;—all our desire is that it should be administered in such a way as to promote the education of all" and "leave the various denominations each in the full possession of its religious rights over the minds of its own children. If the children are to be educated promiscuously, as at present, let religion in every shape and form be excluded."

The Catholics soon changed their ground, and demanded that their parochial schools should be supported by public money. This called out the opposition of a secret society, which insisted on keeping the Bible in the schools and excluding Catholics from office. The Know Nothings had the aid of so many Whigs in 1854 as to elect a large number of candidates, most of whom were friendly to the Republicans. The leaders wished to remain neutral between North and South; but it is hard to say whether the pledge of loyalty to the Union did not facilitate the capture of the organisation by the insatiable South early in 1856. Beecher had already declared that the Know Nothing lodges were "catacombs of freedom" in which indignation against slavery was stifled.

The presidential election showed that the outburst of bigotry had done more harm to friends than enemies of liberty. The Democrats lost Maryland, but gained Pennsylvania and four other Northern States. This enabled them to retain the Presidency and the Senate, as well as to recover the House of Representatives, where they had become weaker than the Republicans. The party of freedom polled eight times as many votes as in 1852, and made its first appearance in the electoral colleges. It carried eleven States. The Whigs had accepted the Know Nothing nominee; and both these neutral parties soon dissolved.

Anarchy in Kansas had been suppressed by United States dragoons; but they did not prevent the adoption of a pro-slavery constitution by bogus elections. Buchanan promptly advised Congress to admit Kansas as a slave State, and declared she was already as much one as Georgia or South Carolina. This opinion he based on the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Douglas insisted on the right of the people of Kansas to "vote slavery up or down." They were enabled by the joint efforts of Republicans and Northern Democrats to have a fair chance to say whether they wished to become a slave State or remain a territory; and the latter was preferred by four-fifths of the voters.

V. The South called Douglas a traitor; but leading Republicans helped the Illinois Democrats, in 1858, to elect the Legislature which gave him another term in the Senate. He might have become the next President if his opponent in the senatorial contest, Abraham Lincoln, had not led the Republican party into the road towards emancipation. On June 16, 1858, he said, in the State convention: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." Seward took the same position, four months later, in his speech about the "irrepressible conflict." Lincoln held that summer and autumn a series of joint debates with his opponent, before audiences one of which was estimated at twenty thousand. The speeches were circulated by the Republicans as campaign documents; and Lincoln's were remarkable, not only for his giving no needless provocation to the South, but for his proving that slavery ought not to be introduced into any new territory or State by local elections. He represented Douglas as really holding that if one man chooses to enslave another no third man has any business to interfere; and he repudiated the decision in the Dred Scott case, that coloured people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." He had more votes that fall than Douglas; but the latter's friends were enabled by the district system to control the Legislature. Douglas was sent back to the Senate. Lincoln gained the national reputation which made him President.

The congressional elections were more favourable to the Republicans than in 1856, for Northern indignation was growing under the stimulus, not only of the new wrong to Kansas, but of attempts to annex Cuba and revive the slave trade. Plans for emancipation were still discussed in the South; and the agitation had reached even Texas. Helper's Impending Crisis had gained circulation enough in his own State, North Carolina, to alarm the slaveholders. They knew that they constituted only three-tenths of the Southern voters, and that the proportion was less than one-sixth in Maryland. Helper proved that emancipation would be greatly to the advantage of many men who held slaves, as well as of all who did not. When this was found out by the majority in any Southern State, slavery would begin to fall by its own weight. It had been kept up by popular ignorance; but the prop was crumbling away. This way of emancipation might have been long; but it would have led to friendly relations between whites and blacks, as well as between North and South.

What was most needed in 1859 was that all friends of freedom should work together, and that no needless pretext should be given for secession. Garrison still insisted on disunion, and predicted that the South would not "be able to hold a single slave one hour after the deed is done," but he also maintained, as most abolitionists did, that nothing would be more foolish than trying to excite a slave insurrection. Precisely this greatest of blunders was committed at Harper's Ferry. If the attempt had been made six months later, or had had even a few weeks of success, it might have enabled the slaveholders to elect at least one more President. The bad effect, in dividing the North, was much diminished by John Brown's heroism at his trial and execution; but great provocation was given to the South, and especially to Virginia, which soon turned out to be the most dangerous of the rebel States. Business men were driven North by the dozen from cities which were preparing for war.

The quarrel between Northern and Southern Democrats kept growing fiercer; and the party broke up at the convention for 1860 into two sectional factions with antagonistic platforms and candidates. Douglas still led the opposition to those Southerners who maintained that the nation ought to protect slavery in the territories. A third ticket was adopted by neutrals who had been Whigs or Know Nothings, and who now professed no principle but a vague patriotism. The Republicans remained pledged to exclude slavery from the territories; but they condemned John Brown, and said nothing against the Fugitive Slave Law or in favour of emancipation in the District of Columbia. Their leaders had favoured free trade in 1857; but the platform was now made protectionist, in order to prevent Pennsylvania from being carried again by the Democrats. Illinois and Indiana were secured by the nomination of Lincoln. He was supported enthusiastically by the young men throughout the North: public meetings were large and frequent; torchlight processions were a prominent feature of the campaign. The wealth and intellect of the nation, as well as its conscience, were now arrayed against slavery; but the clergy are said to have been less active than in 1856. Lincoln had the majority in every Northern State, except New Jersey, California, and Oregon. He also had 17,028 votes in Missouri, and 8042 in other slave States which had sent delegates to the Republican convention. Not one of the Southern electors was for Lincoln; but he would have become President if all his opponents had combined against him.

VI. The South had nothing to fear from Congress before 1863, but she had lost control of the North. Kansas would certainly be admitted sooner or later; and there would never be another slave State, for the Republican plan for the territories was confirmed by their geographical position. The free States might soon become so numerous and populous as to prohibit the return of fugitives, abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, repeal the clause of the Constitution which allowed representation for slaves, and forbid their transportation from State to State. It was also probable, in the opinion of Salmon P. Chase, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury, and of many leading Southerners, that under Federal patronage there might soon be a majority for emancipation in Maryland, Kentucky, and other States (see Life of Theodore Parker, by Weiss, vol. ii., pp. 229, 519). The vote of thanks given to Parker in 1855 by the hearers of his anti-slavery lecture in Delaware, showed that abolitionism would eventually become predominant in the Senate, as it was already in the House of Representatives.

This prospect was especially alarming to the comparatively few men who owned so many slaves that they could not afford emancipation on any terms. Their wealth and leisure gave them complete control of politics, business, public opinion, and social life in the cotton States; where both press and pulpit were in bondage. Their influence was much less in the farming States than in 1850; but they had since come into such perfect union among themselves, as to constitute the most powerful aristocracy then extant. Their number may be judged from the fact that there were in 1850 about six thousand people in the cotton States who owned fifty slaves or more each.

It was in the interest of these barons of slavery that South Carolina seceded soon after the election, and that her example was followed by Georgia and all the Gulf States before Lincoln was inaugurated. The Garrisonists wished to have them depart in peace; but there was a strong and general preference for another compromise. Lincoln and other Republicans insisted that the territories should be kept sacred to freedom, and that "The Union must be preserved." The question was settled by those aggressions on national property which culminated in the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Lincoln's call to arms was answered by a great uprising of the united North. Loyalty to the nation burst forth in so fierce a flame that abolitionists who had been trying for many years to extinguish it now welcomed it as the destined destroyer of slavery.

War had been declared for the sole purpose of suppressing rebellion; and nothing more could at first have been attempted without violating the Constitution. Fugitives were sent back promptly by Federal generals, and anti-slavery songs forbidden in the camps. This policy seemed necessary to keep the North united, and prevent secession of doubtful States. Some of those already in revolt might thus, it was hoped, be induced to return voluntarily, or be conquered easily. These expectations were soon disappointed. A few of the slave States were kept in subjection by military force; but the people of the others united in a desperate resistance, with the aid of the slaves, who supplied the armies with food and laboured without complaint in camps and forts. But little was accomplished by the immense armies raised at the North; for the discipline was at first lax, and the generals were inefficient. Many defeats of Union armies by inferior forces showed how difficult it is for a nation that has enjoyed many years of peace to turn conqueror.

VII. The innate incompatibility of war and liberty was disclosed by the unfortunate fact that even Lincoln was obliged to consent unwillingly to war measures of a very questionable sort; for instance, the conscription and that Legal Tender Act which was really a forced loan, and which has done much to encourage subsequent violations of the right of property by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. More harm than good was done to the Union cause by arbitrary arrests for talking and writing against the war. Phillips declared, in December, 1861, that "The right of free meetings and a free press is suspended in every square mile of the republic." "At this moment one thousand men are bastilled." Hale and other Republican Senators remonstrated; and so patriotic an author as Holmes said that teapots might be dangerous, if the lids were shut. All political prisoners but spies were released by the President early in 1862; and there were no more arbitrary arrests except under plea of military necessity.

Failures of Union generals encouraged opposition to the war from men who still preferred compromise; and their disaffection was increased by the passage, in March, 1863, of a bill establishing a conscription and putting all the people under martial law. The commander of the military district that included Ohio issued orders which forbade "declaring sympathy for the enemy," and threatened with death "all persons within our lines who harbour, protect, feed, clothe, or in any way aid the enemies." These orders were denounced as unconstitutional at a public meeting before more than ten thousand citizens. Many wore badges cut from the large copper coins then in use and bearing the sacred image and superscription of Liberty. This practice brought the nickname "Copperheads" upon people who longed to have the South invited back on her own terms. Such a policy was recommended at the meeting by Vallandigham, who had recently represented Ohio in Congress. He called upon the people to vote against the "wicked war," and said he would never obey orders aimed against public discussion.

For this speech he was arrested at night, by soldiers who broke into his house, tried by court-martial, and sentenced on May 7, 1863, to imprisonment during the remainder of the war. A writ of habeas corpus was refused by the United States Court, which admitted itself "powerless to enforce obedience." At the clang of war, laws are silent.

Indignation meetings in great cities voted that "The Union cannot be restored without freedom of speech." Loyal newspapers regretted that Vallandigham was under "a penalty which will make him a martyr." A petition for his release was sent to Lincoln, who had not ordered the arrest and admitted that it was not justified by the speech. He concluded that the culprit's behaviour towards the army had been so dangerous that he had better be sent South, beyond the lines. This was done at once; but the agitator was allowed to return through Canada in the last summer of the war. Even Lincoln found it difficult to respect individual liberty under the pressure of military necessity. A strong government was needed; and that fact has opened the way for Congress to interfere with private business, for instance in changing the tariff, during the latter part of the century much more frequently and extensively than had been done before. Another significant fact is that the old controversy about internal improvements has died away since our government was centralised by war; and much money is wasted under that pretext by Congress.

VIII. The impossibility of putting down the rebellion without interfering with slavery gradually became plain, even to men who had formerly hated abolitionism. The only question was how to turn what was the strength of the Confederacy into its weakness. In March, 1862, Congress forbade the army to return fugitives; and many thousand fled into the Union camps, where they did good service, not only as teamsters and labourers, but even as soldiers. The number under arms amounted finally to more than a hundred thousand; and they did some of the best fighting that took place during the war. The colour prejudice at the North yielded slowly; but the leading Republicans saw not only the need of more soldiers, but the justice of setting free the wives and children of men who were risking death for the nation. An Emancipation League was formed during the first gloomy winter of the war; and Frederick Douglass said on the Fourth of July amid great applause: "You must abolish slavery, or abandon the Union"; "for slavery is the life of the rebellion."

Lincoln was already thinking of setting free the slaves in all the States which should continue in rebellion after the close of the year; and his draft of a proclamation, announcing this purpose, was read to the Cabinet on July 22, 1862. The army in Virginia had been so unfortunate that summer as to cause a postponement; but the victory of Antietam was followed by the publication, on September 22d, of the formal notice that emancipation might be proclaimed on the 1st of January. How welcome the new policy was to loyal citizens may be judged from the approbation expressed by the clergy of all denominations, even the New School Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic. When New Year's Day dawned there was much doubt whether the promise would be fulfilled. Abolitionists and coloured people met in Boston and other cities, and waited hour after hour, hoping patiently. It was evening before the proclamation began to pass over the wires. It promised freedom to all slaves in Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, besides most of those in Louisiana and Virginia. Tennessee and some other States were not mentioned, because held to have been brought back into the Union. There was to be freedom thenceforth wherever the Stars and Stripes waved. No wonder that the news caused great audiences to shout or weep with joy, and many to spend the night in praise and prayer. The North was now inspired by motives amply sufficient to justify even a war of conquest; and her men and money were given freely, until superiority in resources enabled General Grant to close the war in April, 1865. The revolted States came back, one by one, and left slavery behind. Even where it had not been formally abolished, it was practically extinct. Douglass was right in saying "It was not the destruction, but the salvation of the Union, that saved the slave."

An amendment to the Constitution, which swept away the last vestiges of slavery, and made it for ever impossible in the United States, was adopted on December 18, 1865. It had been proposed two years before; but the assent of several States then actually in revolt would have been necessary to secure the majority of three-fourths necessary for adoption of an amendment. It was by no means certain that even the nominally loyal States would all vote unanimously for emancipation. In order to increase the majority for the Thirteenth Amendment, the admission of Nevada and Colorado as States was voted by Congress, despite some opposition by the Democrats, in March, 1864. Nevada had a population of less than 43,000 in 1870. There were not 46,000 people there in 1890, and there had been a decline since 1880. It is not likely that her inhabitants will ever be numerous enough to justify her having as much power in the Senate as New York or Pennsylvania. Senators who represent millions of constituents have actually been prevented from passing necessary laws by Senators who did not represent even twenty-five thousand people each. Nevada is still the worst instance of such injustice; but it is by no means the only one; and these wrongs can never be righted, for the Constitution provides that. "No State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." The Thirteenth Amendment did not, I think, come into force a day earlier than it would have done if Nevada had never been admitted, for the bona-fide States came forward with unexpected willingness. Colorado was not fully admitted before 1876. Lincoln's favouring the bills for admitting these States was a serious error, though the motive was patriotic. His beauty and grandeur of character make the brightest feature of those dark, sad years. No name stands higher among martyrs for freedom.

IX. There is no grander event in all history than the emancipation of four million slaves. This was all the more picturesque because done by a conquering army; but it was all the more hateful to the former owners. They refused to educate or enfranchise the freedmen, and tried to reduce them to serfdom by heavy taxes and cruel punishments for petty crimes. The States which had seceded were kept under military dictators after the war was over; and their people were forced to accept the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave protection to coloured people as citizens of the United States.

In 1867 there were twenty-one Northern States; but only Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont gave the ballot freely to illiterate negroes without property. Massachusetts had an educational test for all voters; there were other restrictions elsewhere; and no coloured men could vote in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or the North-west. In fact, very few had ever voted anywhere when Congress gave the suffrage to all the freed men for their own protection, with no discrimination against illiteracy.

The result of this measure in the District of Columbia was that unscrupulous politicians gained strong support from needy and ignorant voters of all colours. Public money was spent recklessly; taxation became oppressive; and the public debt grew to alarming size. On June 17, 1874, when Grant was President and each branch of Congress was more than two-thirds Republican, the House of Representatives voted, ten to one, in favour of taking away the suffrage, not only from the blacks who had received it seven years before, but even from the whites who had exercised it since the beginning of the century. All local government was entrusted to three commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. There was no opposition; for the arrangement seemed only temporary. It proved permanent. Even taxation without representation has been thought better than negro suffrage; and the citizens of the national capital remain in 1899 without any voice in their own municipal government.

The problem has been still more difficult in those eleven States which had to accept negro suffrage, in or after 1867, as a condition of restoration to the Union. The extension of franchise made in all the States by the Fifteenth Amendment, in 1870, seemed such a blessing to the Republicans that Frederick Douglass was much censured for holding that it might possibly have been attained without special supernatural assistance. It soon became plain, however, that Congress ought to have given the spelling-book earlier than the ballot. The suffrage proved no protection to the freedman; for his white neighbours found that he could be more easily intimidated than educated. Congress tried to prevent murder of coloured voters by having the polls guarded by Federal troops and the elections supervised by United States marshals. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended by President Grant in districts where the blacks outnumbered the whites. It was hard to see what liberty had gained.

The negro's worst enemies were his own candidates. They had enormous majorities in South Carolina; and there, as Blaine admits, they "brought shame upon the Republican party," "and thus wrought for the cause of free government and equal suffrage in the South incalculable harm." Between 1868 and 1872 they added ten millions by wanton extravagance to the State debt. Large sums were stolen; taxes rose to six per cent.; and land was assessed far above its value, with the avowed purpose of taking it away from the whites. Such management was agreed at a public meeting of coloured voters under Federal protection, in Charleston, in 1874, to have "ruined our people and disgraced our State." Negro suffrage was declared by the New York Evening Post to have resulted in "organising the ignorance and poverty of the State against its property and intelligence."

This took place all over the South, and also in Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities. Here the illiterate vote was largely European; and the corruption of politics was facilitated by the absorption of property-holders in business. There was great need that intelligent citizens of all races, parties, and sections should work together to reform political methods sufficiently to secure honest government. Some progress has already been made, but by no means so much as might have been gained if the plundered taxpayers at the South had made common cause with those at the North in establishing constitutional bulwarks against all swindlers whose strength was in the illiterate and venal vote.

Unfortunately, prejudice against negroes encouraged intimidation; and fraud was used freely by both parties. When elections were doubted, Republican candidates were seated by Federal officials and United States soldiers. These latter were not resisted; but the Southern Democrats made bloody attacks on the negro militia. One such fight at New Orleans, on September 14, 1874, cost nearly thirty lives. What was called a Republican administration collapsed that day throughout Louisiana; but it was soon set up again by the army which had brought it into power.

At last the negroes found out that, whoever might conquer in this civil war, they would certainly lose. They grew tired of having hostile parties fighting over them, and dropped out of politics. The Republicans held full possession of the presidency, both branches of Congress, the Federal courts, the army, the offices in the nation's service, and most of the State governments; but they could not prevent the South from becoming solidly Democratic. The new governments proved more economical, and the lives of the coloured people more secure. The last important result of negro suffrage in South Carolina and Louisiana was an alarming dispute as to who was elected President in 1876. The ballot has not been so great a blessing to the freedmen as it might have been if it had been preceded by national schools, and given voluntarily by State after State.

These considerations justify deep regret that emancipation was not gained peaceably and gradually. Facts have been given to show that it might have been if there had been more philanthropy among the clergy, more principle among the Whigs, and more wisdom among the abolitionists.