Chapter 24

PROGRESS OF REPUBLICANISM. The Dred Scott decision--The struggle for freedom in Kansas-- Instructive debates in Congress--Republican gains in the Thirty- fifth Congress--The English bill--Its defeat and the effect-- Defection of Douglas--Its advantages and its perils--Strange course of the New-York Tribune and other Republican papers--Republican retreat in Indiana--Illinois Republicans stand firm, and hold the party to its position--Gains in the Thirty-sixth Congress--Southern barbarism and extravagance--John Brown's raid--Cuba and the slave trade--Oregon and Kansas--Aids to anti-slavery progress--The Speakership and Helper's book--Southern insolence and extravagance --Degradation of Douglas--Slave code for the Territories--Outrages in the South--Campaign of 1860--Charleston convention and division of the Democrats--Madness of the factions--Bell and Everett-- Republican National Convention and its platform--Lincoln and Seward --Canvass of Douglas--The campaign for Lincoln--Conduct of Seward --Republican concessions and slave-holding madness.

The Republicans, however, were sorely disappointed by their defeat; but this second great victory of slavery did not at all check the progress of the anti-slavery cause. It had constantly gathered strength from the audacity and recklessness of slave-holding fanaticism, and it continued to do so. On the 6th of March, 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States harnessed itself to the car of slavery by its memorable decision in the case of Dred Scott, affirming that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the Territories, and, inferentially, that the Constitution carried with it the right to hold slaves there, even against the will of their people. The point was not before the court, and the opinion of Chief Justice Taney was therefore purely extra-judicial. It was simply a political harangue in defense of slavery. It created a profound impression throughout the free States, and became a powerful weapon in the hands of Republicans. It was against the whole current of adjudications on the subject, and they denounced it as a vile caricature of American jurisprudence. They characterized it as the distilled diabolism of two hundred years of slavery, stealthily aiming at the overthrow of our Republican institutions, while seeking to hide its nakedness under the fig-leaves of judicial fairness and dignity. They branded it as the desperate attempt of slave-breeding Democracy to crown itself king, by debauching the Federal judiciary and waging war against the advance of civilization. Their denunciations of the Chief Justice were unsparing and remorseless; and they described him as "pouring out the hoarded villainies of a life-time into a political opinion which he tried to coin into law." When Senator Douglas sought to ridicule their clamor by inquiring whether they would take an appeal from the Supreme Court of the United States to a town meeting, they answered: "Yes, we appeal from the court to the people, who made the Constitution, and have the right, as the tribunal of last resort, to define its meaning." Nothing could more clearly have marked the degradation to which the power of slavery had reduced the country than this decision, and no other single event could have so prepared the people for resistance to its aggressions. It was thoroughly cold-blooded in its letter and spirit, and no Spanish Inquisitor ever showed less sympathy for his victim than did the Chief Justice for the slave.

But the Dred Scott iniquity did not stand alone. It had been procured for the purpose of fastening slavery upon all the Territories, and it had, of course, a special meaning when applied to the desperate struggle then in progress to make Kansas a slave State. The conduct of the Administration during this year, in its treatment of the free State men of that Territory, forms one of the blackest pages in the history of slavery. The facts respecting their labors, trials, and sufferings, and the methods employed to force upon them the Lecompton Constitution, including wholesale ballot-stuffing and every form of ruffianism, pillage, and murder, need not be recalled; but all these were but the outcroppings and counterpart of the Dred Scott decision, and the horrid travesty of the principle of popular sovereignty in the Territories. The whole power of the Administration, acting as the hired man of slavery, was ruthlessly employed for the purpose of spreading the curse over Kansas, and establishing it there as an irreversible fact; and all the departments of the Government now stood as a unit on the side of this devilish conspiracy. Everybody knew the Lecompton constitution was the work of outside ruffians, and not of the people of the Territory, whose Legislature in February, 1858, solemnly protested against their admission under that Constitution, and whose protest was totally unheeded. The Congressional debates during this period greatly contributed to the anti-slavery education of the people, by more clearly unmasking the real spirit and designs of the slaveholders. We were treated to the kind of talk then becoming current about "Northern mud-sills," "filthy operatives," the "ownership of labor by capital," and the beauties and beatitudes of slavery. Such maddened extremists as Hammond and Keitt of South Carolina, and such blatant doughfaces as Petit of Indiana, became capital missionaries in the cause of freedom. Their words were caught up by the press of the free States, and added their beneficent help to the work so splendidly going forward through the providential agency of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

In the meantime, freedom had made large gains in the composition of the Thirty-fifth Congress, which now had charge of the Lecompton swindle. The Senate contained twenty Republican members and the House ninety-two. Kansas had not been forced into the Union as a slave State, but she was helpless at the feet of the Executive. In the midst of the angry debate a new proposition was brought forward, on the twenty-third of April, which was even more detestable than the Lecompton bill itself. This was known as the "English bill," which offered Kansas a very large and tempting land grant, if she would come into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution, but provided that if she voted to reject the land grant she should neither receive the land nor be admitted as a State until the Territory acquired a population sufficient to elect a representative to the House. The infamy of this proposition was heightened by the fact that these long-suffering pioneers, weary and harassed by their protracted struggle and longing for peace, were naturally tempted to purchase it at any price. It was a proposition of gigantic bribery, after bluster and bullying had been exhausted. It was, in fact, both a bribe and a menace, and measured at once the political morality of the men who favored it, and the extremity to which the slave-holders were driven in the prosecution of their desperate enterprise. After a protracted debate in both Houses, and at the end of a struggle of five months, the bill was passed and received the Executive approval; but the rejoicing of the slave- holders and their allies was short-lived. The people of Kansas were not in the market. They had suffered too much and too long in the battle for freedom to make merchandise of their convictions and sacrifice the future of a great commonwealth. They spurned the bribe, and took the chances of triumph through an indefinitely prolonged conflict, while recruits to the ranks of freedom were naturally falling into line throughout the Northern States.

In December of this year I attended another fugitive slave case in Indianapolis. The claimant was one Vallandingham, of Kentucky, whose agent caught the alleged fugitive in Illinois, and was passing through Indianapolis on his way home. The counsel for the negro, Ellsworth, Coburn, Colley, and myself, brought the case before Judge Wallace, on _habeas corpus_, and had him discharged. The claimant immediately had him arrested and taken before Commissioner Rea, for trial. We asked for the continuance of the case on the affidavit of the negro that he was free, and could prove it if allowed three weeks' time in which to procure his witnesses; but the Commissioner ruled that the proceeding was a summary _ex-parte_ one, and that the defendant had no right to any testimony. Of course we were forced into trial, and after allowing secondary proof where the highest was attainable, and permitting hearsay evidence and mere rumor, the Commissioner granted his certificate for the removal of the adjudged fugitive. We again brought the case before Judge Wallace, on _habeas corpus_, when the negro denied all the material facts of the marshal's return, under oath, and asked to be allowed to prove his denial; but the Judge refused this, and he was handed over to the marshal for transportation South. On the trial he was shown to have been free by the act of his master in sending him into a free State; but under cover of an infamous law, and by the help of truculent officials, he was remanded into slavery. The counsel for the negro, with a dozen or more who joined them, resolved upon one further effort to save him. The project was that two or three men selected for the purpose were to ask of the jailer the privilege of seeing him the next morning and giving him good-bye; and while one of the party engaged the jailer in conversation, the negro was to make for the door, mount a horse hitched near by, and effect his escape. The enterprise had a favorable beginning. The negro got out, mounted a horse, and might have escaped if he had been a good horseman; but he was awkward and clumsy, and unfortunately mounted the wrong horse, and a very poor traveler; and when he saw the jailer in pursuit, and heard the report of his revolver, he surrendered, and was at once escorted South. Walpole and his brother were for the claimant. This is the only felony in which I was ever involved, but none of the parties to it had any disposition whatever to confess it at the time.

The Republican party gathered fresh courage and strength in the year 1858 from the defection of Douglas. His unmistakable ability and hitherto unquestioned devotion to slavery had singled him out as the great leader and coming man of his party. He was ambitious, and by no means scrupulous in his political methods. The moral character of slavery gave him not the slightest concern, ostentatiously declaring that he did not care whether it was "voted up or voted down" in the Territories, and always lavishing his contempt upon the negro. He was the great champion of popular sovereignty, but at the same time fully committed himself to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, whatever it might be; and after that decision had been given, and, in effect, against his particular hobby, he defended it, while vainly striving to vindicate his consistency. But the Lecompton swindle was so revolting a mockery of the right of the people of Kansas, that his own Democratic constituents would not endorse it, and he was obliged, contrary to his strong party inclinations, to take his stand against it. It was an event of very great significance, both North and South, and gave great comfort to anti-slavery men of all shades of opinion; but it brought with it, at the same time, a serious peril to the Republican party.

His accession to the Anti-Lecompton ranks was deemed so important that many leading Republicans, of different States, thought he should be welcomed and honored by the withdrawal of all party opposition to his re-election to the Senate. They argued that in no other way could the despotic power of the Democratic power be so effectually broken, and the real interests of republicanism advanced. This feeling, for a time, prevailed extensively, and threatened to put in abeyance or completely supersede the principles so broadly laid down in the national platform of 1856. The "New York Tribune" took the lead in beating this retreat. It sympathized with Douglas to the end of his canvass, and in connection with kindred agencies probably saved him from defeat. It urged the disbanding of the Republican party, and the formation of a new combination against the Democrats, composed of Republicans, Douglas Democrats, Know-Nothings, and old Whigs, but without any avowal of principles. It proposed that by the common consent of these parties the Republicans should be allowed to name the next candidate for the Presidency, and the other parties the candidate for the Vice Presidency; or that this proposition should be reversed, if found advisable, with a view to harmony. The different wings of this combination were to call themselves by such names and proclaim such principles in different States and localities as might seem to them most conducive to local success and united ascendancy. This abandonment of republicanism was likewise favored by such papers as the "Cincinnati Gazette," which pronounced the policy of Congressional prohibition worthless as a means of excluding slavery from the Territories, and openly committed itself to the admission of more slave States, whenever demanded by a popular majority in any Territory. "The Indianapolis Journal" and other leading Republican organs spoke of Congressional prohibition as "murdered by Dred Scott," and as having no longer any practical value. In the spring of this year the Republicans of Indiana, in their State convention, not only surrendered the policy of Congressional prohibition, and adopted the principle of popular sovereignty, but made opposition to the Lecompton Constitution the sole issue of the canvass. Under such leaders as Oliver P. Morton and his Whig and Know-Nothing associates, Republicanism simply meant opposition to the latest outrage of slavery, and acquiescence in all preceding ones; but this shameful surrender of the cause to its enemies was deservedly condemned in the election which followed. The Legislature of the State, however, at its ensuing session, overwhelmingly endorsed the Douglas dogma, and even the better class of Republican papers urged the abandonment of the Republican creed. But, very fortunately for the cause, the Republicans of Illinois could not be persuaded to take Mr. Douglas into their embrace on the score of a single worthy act, and forget, if not forgive, his long career of effective and untiring hostility to the principles they cherished; and his nomination by the Democrats, on a platform very offensive to Republicans, fully justified their course. The result was the nomination of Mr. Lincoln as a candidate for the succession to Mr. Douglas, and the great joint debate which did so much to educate the mind of the free States and prepare the way for Mr. Lincoln's nomination the following year, while revealing the moral unworthiness of his great rival, and justifying the policy which made necessary this memorable contest in Illinois.

The steady march of the Republican party toward ascendancy was shown in the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met in December, 1859. There were now twenty-four Republican senators, and one hundred and nine representatives. Early in the first session of this Congress an interesting debate occurred in the Senate on a proposition to provide for the education of the colored children of the District of Columbia. Mr. Mason condemned the proposition, and said it was wise to prohibit the education of the colored race. Jefferson Davis declared that the Government was not made for them, and that "we have no right to tax our people to educate the barbarians of Africa." These and kindred utterances were very well calculated to aid the work of anti-slavery progress. John Brown's raid into Virginia kindled the ire of the slave-holders to a degree as yet unprecedented, and although his act found few defenders in the Northern States, the heroism with which he met his fate, the pithy correspondence between Gov. Wise and Mrs. Child, the language of Southern senators in dealing with the subject, and the efforts made to ferret out Brown's associates, all tended to strengthen the growing hostility to slavery and prepare the way for the final conflict. The designs of the slaveholders upon Cuba, which were avowed in this Congress, and their purpose to acquire it for the extension of slavery, by purchase if they could, but if not by war, served the same purpose. The growing demand for the revival of the African slave trade, as shown by the avowals of leading men in both houses of Congress, and their cold-blooded utterances on the subject, produced a profound impression on the country, and called forth the startling fact that the city of New York was then one of the greatest slave-trading marts in the world, and that from thirty to sixty thousand persons a year were taken from Africa to Cuba by vessels from that single port. Such facts as these, and that the laws of the Union for the suppression of the traffic were not only a dead letter but that the slave masters and their allies sullenly refused to take any steps whatever for the remedy of this organized inhumanity, were capital arguments for the Republicans, which they employed with telling effect. The refusal to admit Oregon as a State without a constitutional provision excluding people of color, the rejection of Kansas on her application with a Constitution fairly adopted by her people, and the great speech of Sumner on "The Barbarism of Slavery," which this last application called forth, all served their purpose in the growth of anti-slavery opinion. So did the attempt to divide California for the purpose of introducing slavery into the southern portion; the veto of an Act of the Territorial Legislature of Kansas abolishing slavery, and of a similar act in Nebraska; the acts of several Southern States permitting free colored persons to sell themselves as slaves if they chose to do so in preference to expulsion from the land of their birth and their homes; the decision of the courts of Virginia that slaves had no social or civil rights, and no legal capacity to choose between being emancipated or sold as slaves; the refusal of the Government to give a passport to a colored physician of Massachusetts, for the reason that such privileges were never conferred upon persons of color; and the revolutionary sentiments uttered by governors and legislatures of various Southern States, some of which declared that the election of a Republican President would be sufficient cause for withdrawal from the Union. That these were important aids to the progress of freedom was shown by the passage of laws in various Northern States for the protection of personal liberty, forbidding the use of local jails for the detention of persons claimed as fugitive slaves, and securing for them the right of trial by jury and the benefit of the writ of _habeas corpus_. This healthy reaction was still further shown in wholesome judicial decisions in several Northern States affirming the citizenship of negroes, and denying the right of transit of slave-holders with their slaves over their soil.

The struggle for the Speakership in this Congress, which lasted eight weeks, was also a first-rate training school for Republicanism. Helper's famous book, "The Impending Crisis," had made a decided sensation throughout the country, and John Sherman, the principal candidate of the Republicans for Speaker, had endorsed it, though he now denied the fact. Mr. Millson of Virginia, declared that the man who "consciously, deliberately, and of purpose, lends his name and influence to the propagation of such writings, is not only not fit to be Speaker, but he is not fit to live." De Jarnette, of the same State, said that Mr. Seward was "a perjured traitor, whom no Southerner could consistently support or even obey, should the nation elect him President." Mr. Pryor said that eight million Southern freemen could not be subjugated by any combination whatever, "least of all by a miscellaneous mob of crazy fanatics and conscience- stricken traitors." Mr. Keitt said that "should the Republican party succeed in the next Presidential election, my advice to the South is to snap the cords of the Union at once and forever." Mr. Crawford of Georgia said, "we will never submit to the inauguration of a black Republican President"; and these and like utterances were applauded by the galleries. The growing madness and desperation in the Senate were equally noteworthy. This was shown by the removal of Mr. Douglas from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories, and the determined purpose to read him out of the party for refusing to violate the principle of popular sovereignty in the Territory of Kansas. The attempt to hunt down a man who had done the South such signal service in dragooning the Northern Democracy into its support could not fail to divide the party, and at the same time completely unmask the extreme and startling designs which the slave power had been stealthily maturing. But that power was now absolutely bent upon its purpose, and morally incapable of pausing in its work. Its demand was a slave code for the Territories, and it would accept nothing less. Jefferson Davis was the champion of this policy, which he embodied in a series of resolutions and made them the text of an elaborate argument; and Mr. Douglas replied in a speech which at once vindicated himself and overwhelmingly condemned the party with which he had so long acted. The resolutions, however, were adopted by the Senate, which thus proclaimed its purpose to nationalize slavery.

In the meantime these remarkable legislative proceedings had their counterpart in increasing lawlessness and violence throughout the South. This was illustrated in such facts as the expulsion of members of the Methodist Church North from Texas, the imprisonment of Rev. Daniel Worth, in North Carolina, for circulating Helper's "Impending Crisis"; the exile from Kentucky of the Rev. John G. Fee and his colony of peaceable and law-abiding people, on account of their anti-slavery opinions; and the espionage of the mails by every Southern postmaster, who under local laws had the power to condemn and "burn publicly" whatever he deemed unfit for circulation, which laws had been pronounced constitutional by Caleb Cushing, while Attorney General of the United States under Mr. Pierce, and were "cheerfully acquiesced in" by Judge Holt, Postmaster General under Buchanan. In Virginia the spirit of lawlessness became such a rage that one of her leading newspapers offered a reward of fifty thousand dollars for the head of Wm. H. Seward, while another paper offered ten thousand dollars for the kidnapping and delivery in Richmond of Joshua R. Giddings, or five thousand dollars for his head. In short, the reign of barbarism was at last fully ushered in, and the whole nation was beginning to realize the truth of Mr. Lincoln's declaration, which he borrowed from St. Mark, that "a house divided against itself can not stand." The people of the free States were at school, with the slaveholders as their masters; and the dullest scholars were now beginning to get their lessons. Even the Know-Nothings and Silver-Grey Whigs were coming up to the anxious seat, under the enlightening influence and saving-grace of slaveholding madness and crime. The hour was ripe for action, and the dawn of freedom in the South was seen in the coming emancipation of the North.

The Presidential Campaign of 1860 was a very singular commentary on the Compromise measures of 1850 and the "finality" platforms of 1852. The sectional agitation which now stirred the country outstripped all precedent, and completely demonstrated the folly of all schemes of compromise. The Democratic National Convention met in the city of Charleston on the twenty-third day of May. Its action now seems astounding, although it was the inevitable result of antecedent facts. The Democratic party had the control of every department of the Government, and a formidable popular majority behind it. It had the complete command of its own fortunes, and there was no cause or even excuse for the division which threatened its life. The difference between the Southern Democrats and the followers of Douglas was purely metaphysical, eluding entirely the practical common sense of the people. Both wings of the party now stood committed to the Dred Scott decision, and that surrendered everything which the extreme men of the South demanded. It was "a quarrel about goats' wool," and yet the Southern Democrats were maddened at the thought of submitting to the nomination of Douglas for the Presidency. His sin in the Lecompton affair was counted unpardonable, and they seemed to hate him even more intensely than they hated the Abolitionists. A committee on resolutions was appointed, which submitted majority and minority, or Douglas and anti-Douglas, reports. These were hotly debated, but the Douglas platform was adopted, which led to the secession of the Southern delegates. On the fifty-seventh ballot Mr. Douglas received a clear majority of the Electoral College, but the Convention then adjourned till the eighteenth of June, in the hope that harmony might in some way be restored. On reassembling this was found impossible, and the balloting was resumed, which finally gave Mr. Douglas all the votes cast but thirteen, and he was declared the Democratic nominee. The Convention then nominated for the Vice Presidency Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia, a disciple of Calhoun, whose extreme opinions were well known. He was unequivocally committed to the doctrine that neither the General Government nor a Territorial Government can impair the right of slave property in the common Territories. This illustration of the political profligacy of the Douglas managers, and burlesque upon popular sovereignty, was as remarkable as the madness of the seceders in fighting him for his supposed anti-slavery prejudices. The bolters from this convention afterward nominated John C. Breckenridge as their candidate for President and Joseph Lane for Vice President. The Democratic canvass was thus inaugurated, and the overthrow of the party provided for in the mere wantonness of political folly.

On the ninth of May what was called the Constitutional Union Party held its convention at Baltimore, and nominated John Bell for President and Edward Everett for Vice President. It adopted no platform, and owing to its neutrality of tint, its action had no significance aside from its possible effect on the result of the struggle between the Democrats and Republicans.

The Republican National Convention met at Chicago on the sixteenth of May. It was attended by immense numbers, and its action was regarded with profound and universal solicitude. The platform of the Convention affirmed the devotion of the party to the union of the States and the rights of the States; denounced the new dogma that the Constitution carried slavery into the Territories; declared freedom to be their normal condition; denied the power of Congress or of a Territorial Legislature to give legal existence to slavery in any territory; branded as a crime the reopening of the African slave trade; condemned the heresy of Know-Nothingism, and demanded the passage of a Homestead law. The principles of the party were thus broadly stated and fully re-affirmed, and the issues of the canvass very clearly presented. The leading candidates were Seward and Lincoln, who pretty evenly divided the Convention, and thus created the liveliest interest in the result. The friends of Mr. Seward had unbounded confidence in his nomination, and their devotion to his fortunes was intense and absolute. The radical anti-slavery element in the party idolized him, and longed for his success as for a great and coveted national blessing. The delegates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, representing a superficial and only half-developed Republicanism, labored with untiring and exhaustless zeal for the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, fervently pleading for "Success rather than Seward." Henry S. Lane and Andrew G. Curtin, then candidates for Governor in the States of Indiana and Pennsylvania, respectively, were especially active and persistent, and their appeals were undoubtedly effective. When Seward was defeated many an anti-slavery man poured out his tears over the result, while deploring or denouncing the conservatism of old fossil Whiggery, which thus sacrificed the ablest man in the party, and the real hero of its principles. Time, however, led these men to reconsider their estimate both of Seward and Lincoln, and convinced them that the action of the convention, after all, was for the best. On the second ballot Hamlin was nominated for Vice President over Clay, Banks, Hickman, and others, and the Republican campaign thus auspiciously inaugurated.

The canvass for Douglas was prosecuted with remarkable energy and zeal. He was himself the great leader of his party on the stump, and his efforts evinced singular courage, audacity, and will. It soon became evident, however, that his election was impossible; but this did not cool his ardor or relax his efforts. He kept up the fight to the end; and after his defeat, and when he saw the power that had destroyed him organizing its forces for the destruction of the Union, he espoused the side of his country, and never faltered in his course. But as to slavery he seemed to have no conscience, regarding it as a matter of total moral indifference, and thus completely confounding the distinction between right and wrong. During the closing hours of his life he probably saw and lamented this strange infatuation; and he must, at all events, have deplored the obsequious and studied devotion of a life-time to the service of a power which at last demanded both the sacrifice of his country and himself. The canvass for Lincoln was conducted by the ablest men in the party, and was marked by great earnestness and enthusiasm. It was a repetition of the Fremont campaign, with the added difference of a little more contrivance and spectacular display in its demonstrations, as witnessed in the famous organization known as the "Wide-Awakes." The doctrines of the Chicago platform were very thoroughly discussed, and powerfully contributed to the further political education of the people. The speeches of Mr. Seward were singularly able, effective and inspiring, and he was the acknowledged leader of his party and the idol of the Republican masses everywhere. This was the day of his glory, and nothing yet foreshadowed the political eclipse which awaited him in the near future. The triumph of the Republicans in this struggle was not, however, final. A great work yet remained to be done. A powerful anti-slavery party had at last appeared, as the slow creation of events and the fruit of patient toil and endeavor; but it had against it a popular majority of nearly a million. Both Houses of Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States disputed its authority and opposed its advance. The President-elect could not form his cabinet without the leave of the Senate, which was controlled by slavery, nor could he set the machinery of his Administration in motion, at home or abroad, through the exercise of his appointing power, without the consent of his political opponents. As Mr. Seward declared in the Senate, "he could not appoint a minister or even a police agent, negotiate a treaty or procure the passage of a law, and could hardly draw a musket from the public arsenal to defend his own person." The champions of slavery had no dream of surrender, and no excuse whatever for extreme measures; and with moderate counsels and the prudent economy of their advantages, they were the undoubted masters of their own fortunes for indefinite years to come. But their extravagant and exasperating demands, and the splendid madness of their latter day tactics as illustrated in their warfare against Douglas, were the sure presages of their overthrow. There was method in their madness, but it was the method of self-destruction. This was made still more strikingly manifest during the months immediately preceding the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. The Republicans, notwithstanding their great victory, so recoiled from the thought of sectional strife that for the sake of peace they were ready to forego their demand for the Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories. They were willing to abide by the Dred Scott decision and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave law. They even proposed a Constitutional amendment which would have made slavery perpetual in the Republic; but the pampered frenzy of the slave oligarchy defied all remedies, and hurried it headlong into the bloody conspiracy which was to close forever its career of besotted lawlessness and crime.