Chapter 4:
- The sectional equilibrium. -- how disturbed in 1820. -- contest on the admission of Texas. -- Compromise measures of 1850. -- declaration of a “Finality.” -- President Pierce's Administration. -- the Kansas -- Nebraska bill. -- repeal of “the Missouri Compromise.” -- origin of the Republican party in the North. -- composition and character of this party. -- amazing progress of the Anti-slavery sentiment in the North. -- New interpretation of the Kansas -- Nebraska bill by Senator Douglas. -- intended to court the Anti-slavery sentiment. -- doctrine of “non-intervention” in the Territories. -- the “Dred Scott decision.” -- “the Kansas controversy.” -- the Lecompton Convention. -- the Topeka Constitution. -- President Buchanan's position and arguments. -- opposition of Senator Douglas. -- his insincerity. -- the Northern Democratic party demoralized on the slavery question. -- Douglas' doctrine of “popular sovereignty.” -- “a short cut to all the ends of Black Republicanism.” -- Douglas as a demagogue. -- the true issues in the Kansas controversy. -- important passages in the Congressional debate. -- settlement of the Kansas question. -- Douglas' foundation of a New party. -- his demagogueical appeals. -- the true situation. -- loss of the sectional equilibrium. -- serious temper of the South. -- “the John Brown raid.” -- identity of John Brown's provisional Constitution and ordinances with the subsequent policy of the Republican party. -- curious foreshadow of Southern subjugation. -- the descent on Harper's Ferry. -- capture and execution of Brown. -- his declaration. -- Northern sympathy with him. -- alarming tendency of the Republican party to the Ultra -- Abolition school. -- “the Helper book.” -- sentiments of sixty-eight Northern congressmen. -- the conceit and insolence of the North. -- affectation of Republicans that the Union was a concession to the South. -- hypocrisy of this party. -- indications of the coming catastrophe of disunion. -- the presidential canvass of 1860. -- declarations of the Democratic party. -- the Charleston Convention. -- Secession of the Southern delegates. -- the different presidential tickets. -- election of Abraham Lincoln. -- analysis of the vote. -- how his election was a “sectional” triumph. -- ominous importance of it in that view. -- arguments for sustaining Lincoln's election. -- Seward's argument in the Senate. -- Lincoln's election a geographical one. -- how there was no longer protection for the South in the Union. -- the Anti-slavery power compact and invincible. -- another apology for Lincoln's election. -- fallacy of regarding it as a transfer of the Administration in equal circumstances from the South to the North. -- how the South had used its lease of political power. -- Senator Hammond's tribute. -- power in the hands of the North equivalent to sectional despotism. -- the North “acting in mass.” -- the logical necessity of disunion
The wisest statesmen of America were convinced that the true and intelligent means of continuing the Union was to preserve the sectional equilibrium, and to keep a balance of power between North and South. That equilibrium had been violently disturbed, in 1820, at the time of the Missouri Compromise. The relative representations of the North and South in the United States Senate were then so evenly balanced that it came to be decisive of a continuance of political power in the South whether Missouri should be an addition to her ranks or to those of her adversary. The contest ended, immediately, in favour of the South; but not without involving a measure of proscription against slavery. Another struggle for political power between the two sections occurred on the admission of Texas. The South gained another State. But the acquisition of Texas brought on the war with Mexico; and an enormous addition to Northern territory became rapidly peopled with a population allured from every quarter of the globe. On the admission of California into the Union, the South was persuaded to let her come in with an anti-slavery Constitution for the wretched compensation of a reenactment of the fugitive slave law, and some other paltry measures. The cry was raised that the Union was in danger. The appeals urged under this cry had the usual effect of reconciling the South to the sacrifice required of her, and embarrassed anything like resistance on the part of her representatives in Congress to the compromise measures of 1850. South Carolina threatened secession; but the other Southern States were not prepared to respond to the bold and adventurous initiative of Southern independence. But it should be stated that the other States of the South, in agreeing to what was called, in severe irony, the Compromise of 1850, declared that it was the last concession they would make to the North; that they took it as a “finality,” and that the slavery question was thereafter to be excluded from the pale of Federal discussion. In 1852 Franklin Pierce was elected President of the United States. He was a favourite of the State Rights Democracy of the South; and it was hoped that under his administration the compromise measures of 1850 would indeed be realized as a “finality,” and the country be put upon a career of constitutional and peaceful rule. But a new and violent agitation was to spring up in the first session of the first Congress under his administration. The Territory of Nebraska had applied for admission into the Union. Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois, reported from the Committee
