Part 35 (2/2)

1. Of what does this chapter treat ? How was the election of President, Pierce considered ?

2. What is said of internal improvements?

3. What educational progress was being made?

4. How was the value of lands increasing?

5. What is said of the Presidential campaign of 1852?

6. In what condition were religious matters?

8. How was the question of slavery affecting some of the religious denominations?

7. What new party was organized in Ma.s.sachusetts? What was the main policy of the ”Know-Nothings”?

8. What is said of this new party?

9. What party next originated?

10. How was the South affected by ”Squatter Sovereignty”?

11. What fatal accident befell Dr. Elisha Mitch.e.l.l in 1857?

12. What changes in the government of the State are now mentioned?

CHAPTER LIV.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND THE WAR.

A. D. 1860 TO 1861.

1860.

After seventy years of party struggles touching the relations of the General Government to the individual States, the Presidential contest of 1860 opened with such notes of violence and public confusion, that it was at once seen that at last the supreme crisis had come.

2. The only issue apparently before the American people was that of slavery in the Territories. The Democrats were divided into two fragments. Those supporting Judge Douglas for the Presidency advocated ”Squatter Sovereignty.” The Breckinridge men said that the question of slavery should only be settled as to the new States at their const.i.tutional conventions; while Republicans supporting Abraham Lincoln, proclaimed that only the enactment of the ”Wilmot Proviso” would satisfy them. The Whig candidates, Messrs. Bell and Everett, and the Whig party, were silent on all these stormy differences, and were not of much significance in the general upheaval.

3. Back of this question, however, about slavery in the Territories, and involved in it, was the real issue between the Republican and Democratic parties, and that was whether the Federal Const.i.tution should be the supreme law of the land. The right of property in slaves was guaranteed by that Const.i.tution, and if the Republican party could thus destroy that right it might when it so pleased, destroy any and all other rights. The Democrats hold that the Const.i.tution was supreme; the Republicans held that there was a still higher law unwritten and undefined.

One was certainty, the other chaos.

4. It was seen at an early period of the contest, that the bulk of the Southern people would be found supporting Breckinridge and Lane. * It was generally held in all the slave-holding States that the election of Mr. Lincoln would be significant of a purpose among Northern men to disregard their rights, and that the inauguration of the abolition policy by the Federal officers would compel and justify the secession of the Southern States from the Union.

*Joseph Lane was born in Buncombe county in this State, and was the cousin of Colonel Joel Lane, who once owned the lands upon which Raleigh was built. He had served gallantly as a Brigadier General in Mexico, afterwards in Congress, and as Governor of Oregon.

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