John Brown.
[1860]
Notwithstanding all this the Democracy might still have elected a
president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud
with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that
very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State
and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the
northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the
doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede
from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did
not so desire, but sincerely believed in that doctrine as part and
parcel of the true democratic faith. But it was now obvious that the
working out of the Douglas theory was absolutely sure to make free all
the western States henceforth to be formed. This would, of course,
remove the Senate from the domination of slavery. Hence the South was
irrevocably opposed to it, and insisted with all its might upon the
Calhoun-Taney contention that the national Government must protect
slavery in all the Territories to which it pleased to go. In a passage
at arms with Douglas as they were stumping Illinois for the senatorship
in 1858, Lincoln keenly forced upon him the question whether under the
Dred Scott decision any Territory could possibly be kept free from
slavery. "If," said he, "Douglas answers yes, he can never be President;
if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator." Douglas replied in
the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South
a doomed man.
The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic
convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the
delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though
willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott
decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from
Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from
Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded.
Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not
two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and
when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds
vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new
seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The
so-called Constitutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket,
Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and
Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between
the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted.
The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal
Hamlin, of Maine. Lincoln was already a marked man in his party,
especially in the West, his brilliant joint debate with Judge Douglas
during some months in 1858 having brought out his matchless good sense
and good nature, his rare knowledge of our history and law, and his high
quality as thinker and speaker. Born in Kentucky in 1809, removing to
Indiana in 1816, to Illinois in 1830, reared in extreme poverty and
wholly self-educated, this man had risen by his wits, his sturdy
perseverance and industry, his extraordinary ability, and his proverbial
honesty, to be the acknowledged peer of the "Little Giant" himself. He
began political life a Whig and ably represented that party in the
national Congress from 1847 to 1849, making his voice heard against the
high-handed procedure of the Administration in the Mexican War. But as
with Seward, Greeley, Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, Sherman, Dayton,
Corwin, and Collamer, subsequent events had intensified his anti-slavery
feeling, convincing him, as he avowed, that the Union could not
"permanently continue half slave and half free." He was thus drawn to
unite his fortunes with the Republicans. His nomination was received
coolly in the East, where Seward had been preferred; but as men studied
Lincoln's record they were convinced of the wisdom which had made him
the party's leader. He swept New England, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin,
California, Minnesota, and Oregon, having 180 electoral votes to
Breckenridge's 72, Bell's 39, and Douglas's 12.

William H. Seward.
From a photograph by Brady.
CHAPTER VIII.
MATERIAL PROGRESS
[1860]
The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,443,321. In spite of
the threatening political complications between 1840 and 1860, these
years were characterized by astonishing economic prosperity. The decade
after 1848 was, indeed, in point of advance in material weal, the golden
age of our history. Between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the nation
swelled 120 per cent., the value of its farms 103 per cent., its total
manufacturing product 87 per cent., its manufactured export 171 per
cent., its railroad mileage 220 per cent. Making all due allowance for
the rise of prices during the period, this is still a remarkable
exhibit.
The great West continued to come under the hand of civilization. Between
1850 and 1860 our centre of population made a longer stride westward
than during any other decade--from east of the meridian of Parkersburg,
W. Va., to the meridian of Chillicothe, O. Florida and Texas having been
admitted to statehood in 1845, Iowa followed next year, Wisconsin in
1848, California in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized
Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska,
Utah, and Washington Territories were organized before 1860. By this
date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was
sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in
1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In
1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable
routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties
the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places
become dense.

Elias Howe.
Immigration hither was unfortunately checked a little later by Indian
hostilities, the gravest attacks being in 1847 and 1855. In the latter
year Major Haller, leading an exploring party, was surrounded by the
savages and cut off from food and water, only making his escape by a
fight of two days against overwhelming odds. He and his party at last
hewed their desperate way through, losing their entire outfit, besides
one-fifth of their number. The whole territory was harassed by Indians
on the war path, and General Wool had to be sent up from San Francisco
to restore peace. This done, immigration was renewed. A thousand new
inhabitants came to Oregon in 1852, and its northern half was organized
as Washington Territory the following year. The Pacific Mail Steamship
Company had been chartered in 1848, and four years earlier a newspaper
started, the first in English on that coast. Its seat was Oregon City,
its name the Flumgudgeon Gazette.

The Vandalia. The Pioneer Propeller On the Lakes.

Old Stone Towers of the Niagara Suspension Bridge.
The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common
with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting
sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The
same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its
theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to
be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built
in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856.
The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855.
The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of canals. The
Miami Canal, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 1825,
was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and
Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts was, in
1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to
railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the
State the canal and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and
soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller
from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next
year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga.,
was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston
& Maine Railway finished to Berwick.