Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[69] on the subject of slavery. For six months the Kansas question occupied Congress, and held the country in anxiety and suspense. It was a contest for political power between North and South. The mere industrial interests or morals of slavery had nothing to do with it.

The sum of the controversy was that the South struggled for the principle of equality in the Territories, without reference to the selfish interests of slavery, and even with the admission of the hopelessness of those interests in Kansas; while the North contended for the narrow selfish, practical consequence of making Kansas a part of her Free-soil possessions. This was evident in the debates in Congress. At one stage of the discussion, Mr. English, of Indiana, asked the question: “Is there a Southern man here who will vote against the admission of Kansas as a Free State, if it be the undoubted will of the people of that Territory that it shall be a Free State--if she brings here a Constitution to that effect?” --and there was a general response “Not one” from the Southern side of the House. At another period of the debate, Mr. Barksdale of Mississippi put the question to Black Republican members whether they would vote for the admission of Kansas into the Union with a Constitution tolerating slavery “if a hundred thousand people there wished it.” Mr. Giddings of Ohio replied that he “would never vote to compel his State to associate with another Slave State.” Mr. Stanton, his colleague, added: “I will say that the Republican members of this House, so far a I know, will never vote for the admission of any Slave State north of 36° 30'.”

The result of the dispute was the report of a bill for the admission of Kansas, which became a law in June, 1858, and substantially secured nearly all that the North had claimed in the matter. The people were authorized to form a new Constitution. Kansas did not come into the Union until nearly three years afterwards, just as it was going to pieces; and then it came in with an anti-slavery Constitution, and President Buchanan, consistently, signed the bill of admission.

But the trouble did not end with the solution of the Kansas difficulty. The true character of that event, and the debates which had attended it in Congress, convinced the South that it could hardly expect, under any circumstances, the addition of another Slave State to the Union. The pernicious doctrines of Mr. Douglas were used to erect a party which, while it really pandered to the anti-slavery sentiment of the North, imposed upon the South by cheap expressions of conservatism, and glozed statements of its designs. Mr. Douglas proclaimed his views to be in favour of non-intervention by Congress on the subject of slavery; he avowed his continued and unalterable opposition to Black-Republicanism ; his principles were professed to be “held subject to the decisions of the Supreme Court” --the distinction between judicial questions and political questions