about to grant another of those concessions which have become habitual here to the power of slavery in this Republic. For the second time in a period of nearly three months, the brilliant chandelier above our heads is lighted up; the passages and galleries are densely crowded; all the customary forms of legislation are laid aside; the multifarious subjects which have their rise in all parts of this extended country are suddenly forgotten in a concentration of feeling upon a single question of intense interest. The day is spent without adjournment. Senators, foregoing their natural relaxation and refreshment, remain in their seats until midnight approaches." He analyzed the bill and characterized it as a novelty in the laws of the country. He declared that all the trouble about slavery in its latest agitation arose from the Fugitive Slave Act and closed an impressive speech with a serious and vigorously expressed admonition and counsel to his hearers. "If you wish to secure respect to the Federal authority, to cultivate harmony between the States, to secure universal peace, and to create new bonds of perpetual union, there is only one way before you. Instead of adding new penalties, employing new agencies, and inspiring new terrors, you must go back to the point where your mistaken policy began, and conform your Federal laws to Magna Charta, to the Constitution, and to the rights of man."

Mr. Sumner closed the debate. He reverted to his former address against the Fugitive Slave Act, when to address Congress upon the subject was regarded as untimely. Said he: "On a former occasion, as slavery was about to clutch one of its triumphs I arose to make my final opposition at midnight. It is now the same hour

It is hardly an accidental conjunction which thus constantly brings slavery and midnight together." He proceeded to show the unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act after the manner in which he had formerly dissected it and, with eloquent and fitting words, rebuked the demand of the South to be let alone by tracing the progressive steps by

which that section had obtained ever increasing power over the country by legislation. Taking up the words of the South, he employed them for the North and declared that the North now asked at the hands of the South only to be let alone. He did not ask that the Fugitive Slave Law should be rescinded, he made no plea for the North as against the onerous condition resting upon it through that measure. He merely asked that the legislatures of the Northern States should not be hampered in their handling of that measure within the limits of their undoubted rights by the imposition of a sweeping law whose design was subversive of their liberties. Said he: "Let us alone. Do not involve us in the support of slavery. Hug the viper to your bosoms, if you perversely will, within your own States, until it stings you to a generous remorse, but do not compel us to hug it too; for this, I assure you, we will not do."

Sumner then moved an amendment repealing the Fugitive Slave Law, which received but nine votes. The main bill was then passed by a vote of thirty to nine, although no vote was taken upon it in the House.

CHAPTER XII

REALIGNMent of poLITICAL PARTIES

THE Consummation of the Kansas-Nebraska scheme did more to shake the free States in their sentiments of union than any other occurrence in the history of the nation. The North had accepted the Compromise of 1850 as fixing the conditions of a perpetual union of the States of the two sections, and indeed the South also had accepted that settlement as final. Now was disclosed the fact, startling even to a large part of the South, that when a motive for aggression was offered to the slaveholding States they were ready to push their claims to the farthest limit without regard to the danger to the Union. Northern Whigs, who had favored conciliation were now convinced that the limits of concession had been reached. They were grieved that the Southern Whigs had, by their support, made possible the passage of the obnoxious measure. "Repudiate such fraternity, throw old party considerations to the winds, and appeal to the honest people of the free States, without distinction of parties." This was the sentiment that found favor throughout the North and led the Northern Whigs to make common cause with anti-slavery Democrats, Freesoilers and all others who would fight with them in the common cause of freedom. Upon the common political ground of resistance to slavery these all met. Thus the repeal of the Missouri Compromise cemented Northern opposition and fixed firmly the lines of sectional distinction.

Added to this great cause of irritation in the North were other matters productive of dissatisfaction. These were the marauding enterprises sent out from the South to Cuba and elsewhere, and the Burns and other cases under the Fugitive Slave Law. The state of feeling in the country is illustrated by what occurred in Indiana, May 24 and 25, 1854. In this State a party revolt was threatened, and the Democratic convention secured the passage of a resolution pledging support to the Nebraska bill. The next day the Free-soil Democrats of the State met at Indianapolis and denounced the bill in the strongest terms. Shortly after the passage of the Nebraska bill, members of Congress who had opposed it issued an address setting forth the reasons for their opposition. This declaration contended that the free States had lost "all guarantee for freedom in the territories contained in former compromises; while all the States, both slave and free, had lost the guarantees of harmony and union which those compromises afforded." They also affirmed that this measure looked to the wider extension of slavery in the future, and that the annexation of Cuba and portions of Mexico at any cost of money or blood was included in the slaveholders' programme. They also declared that the slave States wished to cause war against England, France, and Spain in coöperation with Russia, and wanted the United States to effect an alliance with Brazil to extend slavery into the valley of the Amazon. This address was severely criticised by Southern members, especially James C. Jones, of Tennessee, who declared that it was a mass of fiction and wild imaginings.

The project for a fusion of all persons in the North opposed to slavery extension was popular, as that section was prepared for coöperative action on the part of those who gave adherence to similar principles. Men who were diametrically opposed in their views with regard to practical emancipation found themselves in agreement upon the subject of slavery extension. By the 4th of July, Union conventions had been called in Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan,