with one object in view, to restrict the institution of slavery to the States where it already existed.

The history of the growth of that party does not belong to our story. By 1856, it was strong enough to hold a national convention, and nominate candidates for President and Vice President, but its strength was confined to the non-slaveholding States. In the slave States, it was felt to be a dangerous menace to the right of private property, and so found few supporters.

In Kentucky, at the November election of 1856, the race was between James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge, the candidates of the old Democracy, and Millard Fillmore and Andrew J. Donelson, the nominees of the new, Native American party. The two tickets divided the vote, Buchanan receiving a bare majority of six thousand one hundred and eighteen votes,1 due largely to the personal popularity of John C. Breckinridge, and the pride with which his fellow Kentuckians regarded his brilliant career. The Kentucky vote for the Republican candidates, John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton, was negligible, only three hundred and fourteen within the entire State.2

James Buchanan was chosen President, upon the basis of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and by a majority which left no room for doubt as to the popular verdict upon the principles laid down in that memorable piece of legislation.

With the history of the earlier years of his administration, we are not here concerned. It was marked by the gradual melting away of the Know-nothing party, and the rapid growth of the "new party," called Republican,

1 Collins, I, p. 77.

2 Louisville "Courier," August 13, 1857.

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which labored, and labored successfully, to gather into its ranks all men, of whatever political creed, who had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, or who were willing to give their political influence toward preventing the further extension of the institution of slavery.

By November, 1860,1 the Republican party had grown into a consolidated and powerful organization. A split in the ranks of the Democracy gave it its opportunity, and Abraham Lincoln was chosen President.

Of the four national tickets which figured in that contest, three stood definitely for Union, Bell and Everett, Douglas and Johnson, Lincoln and Hamlin. A vote for any one of these was, in effect, a vote to sustain union, as opposed to the distinctly anti-union position of the Breckinridge-Lane ticket. By adding together their popular vote in Kentucky, therefore, we can easily determine the strength of the Union sentiment in that State, at the time of Lincoln's election. It amounted to over forty thousand Union majority, out of a total vote of a little less than a hundred and fifty thousand."

The strong support given by Kentucky to the so-called "Constitutional-Unionist party" of Bell and Everett, in

1 It was in this year that the so-called "Opposition" party in Kentucky took the more definite name, "Union Party," while the Democratic party was commonly spoken of as the "Southern Rights Party." Speed's "Union Cause in Kentucky," pp. 2, 18.

this election, is the more significant, when we remember that, in the State elections of the previous year, the Democrats had chosen the Governor, Beriah Magoffin, by a majority of almost nine thousand, and the Lieutenant Governor, Linn Boyd, by a still larger majority.1 It meant that Kentucky, still democratic at heart, placed loyalty to the Union far higher than mere party loyalty. It meant that, upon the very threshold of secession and civil war, the people of Kentucky were overwhelmingly in favor of preserving the Union of States, of "redressing the wrongs of the South" within the Union, and not outside of it. It meant that Kentucky's sympathies were with John J. Crittenden, John Bell, Edward Everett, and the rest of the men who had declared, as their platform, that the Constitution and the Union were the matters of greatest concern, and had intimated a willingness to compromise all other questions-not the wisest position, as we see it now, perhaps, but a position capable of rational defence from the point of view of men to whom the volume of our civil war history was not yet open.

1 Election of August 1, 1859. For Governor: Magoffin (Democrat), 76,187, Joshua F. Bell (Opposition), 67,283-majority, 8,904. For Lieutenant Governor: Linn Boyd (Democrat), 75,320; Alfred Allen (Opposition), 67,607— majority, 11,713. Figures, etc., Collins, I, p. 81.

CHAPTER XVI

LOYAL TO THE UNION

UPON the assembling of Congress for its final session, on December 3, 1860, President Buchanan found himself in a very unpleasant situation. He knew that secession projects were forming in most of the slave States, and that South Carolina had arranged for the assembling of a "Sovereignty Convention" which meant secession; but his opening message displayed none of the vigor and decision which these facts demanded. Instead of taking a bold stand upon one or the other side of the issue, he gravely straddled the question, declaring, in one breath, that secession was illegal and, in the next, that the Federal Government had no power to prevent it.

1

This message served to urge on the secession movement, by holding up to view the fancied impotency of the Federal Government, and was, therefore, bitterly attacked. Kentucky's venerable Senator, John J. Crittenden,2 however, warmly praised its peaceful tone, while dissenting from certain features of it. His plea was for a judicial attitude at this critical point of our nation's history. “The Union," he declared, "is worthy of great sacrifices and great concessions. . . . I trust there is not a Senator here who is not willing to yield and to compromise much,

1 December 3, 1860. Text, Richardson's "Messages and Papers," V,

pp. 626 et seq. See also Curtis' "Buchanan," II, pp. 337-350.

2 Crittenden had been elected Senator, January 10, 1854, to succeed Archibald Dixon, whose term expired March 4, 1855. Collins, I, p. 69.

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in order to preserve the Government and the Union. . Calm consideration is demanded of us. . . . I will waive any remarks I might have been disposed to make on the message. I do not agree that there is no power in the President to preserve the Union. . . . To say that no State has a right to secede, and that it is a wrong to the Union, and yet that the Union has no right to interpose any obstacles to its secession, seems to me to be altogether contradictory." 1

A few days later, Crittenden gave a more important expression to this spirit of compromise, in a speech before the United States Senate. Like Clay, in the days of the California discussions, he had thought out and formulated a series of resolutions which, he believed, would reconcile the sections, restore the already shattered Union, and settle permanently the chief questions which had grown out of slavery. Obtaining the floor on December 18, 18, he briefly explained his plan. "I have endeavored by these resolutions to meet all these questions and causes of discontent by amendments to the Constitution of the United States, so that the settlement, if we can happily agree on any, may be permanent, and leave no cause for future controversy. These resolutions propose, then, in the first place, in substance, the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, extending the line throughout the Territories of the United States to the eastern border of California, recognizing slavery in all the territory south of that line, and prohibiting slavery in all the territory north of it; with a proviso, however, that when any Territories, north

1 In Senate, December 4, 1860. Coleman's "Crittenden," II, pp. 220–222, for full text. Collins, I, p. 84, gives the false impression that Crittenden defended the whole of Buchanan's strange doctrine.

2 Curtis' "Republican Party," I, p. 376.