Still the British were unable to disperse the rebels and reoccupy the city. Sir Colin Campbell left Outram with 4,000 men near Lucknow. He himself returned to Cawnpore. On approaching that city he heard the roll of a Cawnpore rises again distant cannonade. Tantia Topi had come again to the front. He had persuaded the Gwalior contingent to break out in mutiny and march against Cawnpore. General Windham resisted his advance. The whole city was in the hands of the rebel Sepoys, but the bridge of boats over the Ganges was saved to the British. Sir Colin Campbell marched over it, and in safety reached the intrenchment in which Windham was shut up. He routed the Death of Havelock Gwalior rebels and drove them out of Cawnpore. General Havelock the day after he left Lucknow succumbed to dysentery. Throughout the British Empire there was universal sorrow that will never be forgotten so long as men recall the memory of the mutinies of Fifty-seven. Havelock's victories had aroused the drooping spirits of the British nation.
The subsequent history of the Sepoy revolt is largely a recital of military operations for the dispossession of the rebels and the restoration of British supremacy. Sir Colin Campbell, now Lord Clyde, undertook a general and successful campaign against the rebels of Oude and Rohlikund, and Sir Aftermath of the Mutiny James Outram drove them out of Lucknow, and re-established British sovereignty in the capital of Oude. At the same time a column under Sir Hugh Rose and another under General Whitlock did a similar work in Central India and Bundelkund. Rose's campaign was peculiarly difficult. It was carried out amid the jungles and ravines of the Vindhya Mountains, and in the secluded regions of Bundelkund. He fought battles against baffling Rose's brilliant campaign odds, and captured the stronghold of Jhansi. He then marched against Tantia Topi, who had an army of 40,000 near Kalpi, which he routed and scattered. Having brought his campaign to a close, he congratulated his troops on having marched a thousand miles, defeated and dispersed the enemy, and King of Delhi transported captured a hundred guns. The old King of Delhi was put on trial, convicted and sentenced to transportation. He was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, but the colonists there refused to receive him. The last of the line of the Great Moguls of India had to go begging for a prison.
Toward the close of the year, when the Indian mutiny appeared to have spent its force, Lord Elgin returned from Calcutta to Hong Kong. In the meanwhile the English, French and American Governments had exchanged notes on the subject of Chinese outrages against Christians. Louis Napoleon was found to be in hearty accord with England's desire to make an example of China. Baron Gros was sent to China charged with a mission similar to that of Lord Elgin. The United States declined to join in active measures against China.
In the United States of America, James Buchanan had become President at Buchanan, American President sixty-six years of age. He had served as a member of Congress from 1821 to 1831; then as Minister to Russia from 1832 to 1834; United States Senator from 1834 to 1845; Secretary of State under Polk from 1845 to 1849, and Minister to Great Britain from 1853 to 1856.
Buchanan's first message repeated the assurance that the discussion of slavery had come to an end. The clergy were found fault with for fomenting the disturbances. The President declared in favor of the admission of Kansas with a Constitution agreeable to the majority of the settlers. He Dred Scott case also referred to an impending decision of the Supreme Court with which he had been acquainted and asked acquiescence in it. This was Judge Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case, rendered two days after Buchanan's inauguration. An action had been begun in the Circuit Court in Missouri by Scott, a negro, for the freedom of himself and children. He claimed that he had been removed by his master in 1834 to Illinois, a free State, and afterward taken into territory north of the compromise line. Sanford, his master, replied that Scott was not a citizen of Missouri, and could not bring an action, and that he and his children were Sanford's slaves. The lower courts differed, and the case was twice argued.
The decision nullified the Missouri restriction, or, indeed, any The decision restriction by Congress on slavery in the Territories. Chief-Justice Taney said: "The question is whether that class of persons (negroes) compose a portion of the people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty. We think they are not included under the word citizen in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges" of that instrument. "They were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class who had been subjugated by the dominant race—and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them. They had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior grade—and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man is bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his (the white man's) benefit. The negro race by common consent had been excluded from civilized governments and the family of nations and doomed to slavery. The unhappy black race were separated from the whites by indelible marks long before established, and were never thought of or spoken of except as property." The Chief-Justice nullified the Missouri restriction, by asserting that "the act of Congress, which prohibited a citizen from holding property of this kind north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void." This made slavery the organic law of the land. Benton said that it was "no longer the exception with freedom the rule, but slavery the rule, with freedom the exception."
It was a year of financial distress in America, which recalled the hard Financial distress times of twenty years before. The United States Treasury was empty. There had been a too rapid building of railway lines in comparatively undeveloped regions where they could not pay expenses for years to come. Settlers did not come so quickly as was expected, and a fall in railway shares resulted. Trouble with Mormons There was great loss, yet the country suffered less than in 1837. During the summer the Mormons in Utah gave new trouble. Brigham Young, after Utah was excluded from the Union, destroyed the records of the United States courts, and practically drove Federal judges from their seats and other officials from the Territory. The Mormons now numbered 40,000 members, and felt strong enough to defy the government.
In September, the Indians, believed to have been instigated by the Mormons, Massacre of Mount Meadow massacred an immigrant train of 120 persons at Mountain Meadow in Utah. Alfred Cumming, Superintendent of Indian Affairs on the upper Missouri, displaced Young as Governor of Utah. Judge Eckles of Indiana was appointed Chief-Justice of the Territory. A force of 2,500 men under Colonel A.S. Johnston was sent to Utah to suppress interference with the laws of the United States. On the arrival of the Federal troops in the autumn, they were attacked, on October 6, by the Mormons, their supply trains were destroyed, and their oxen driven off. Colonel Johnston was compelled to find winter quarters at Fort Bridger.
Early in the year a Legislature had met at Topeka, Kansas, and was immediately dissolved by the United States marshals. A Territorial Legislature also met at Lecompton and provided for a State Constitution. The people of Kansas utterly refused to recognize the Legislature chosen by the Missouri invaders, and both parties continued to hold their elections.
Manuel José de Quintana, the Spanish playwright and patriotic poet, died on March 11, at Madrid. He was one of the many Spanish writers whose first poetic inspirations were derived from the stirring incidents of the Peninsular War. On the return of King Ferdinand VII., Quintana had to Quintana expiate his liberal sentiments by a term of six years in the prison of Pampeluna. The revolution of 1820 brought about his release, but three years later he was banished again from Madrid. An ode on King Ferdinand's marriage restored him to royal favor. He was appointed tutor to the Infanta Isabella, and in 1833 was made Minister of Public Instruction. Two years before his death Queen Isabella publicly crowned the poet with a wreath of laurel in the hall of the Cortes. It was a well-merited honor, for the poet's patriotic odes and ringing lyrics long before this had taken rank among the finest productions of the modern literature of Spain.