Ste-phen A. Doug-las thought he was sure of a nom-i-na-tion for that same place. He had done much work for the men who held slaves but they did not mean to re-ward him for what he had done.
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
“Shall Kan-sas come in free or not?” was the ques-tion that, then, was up-on the minds of thou-sands up-on thou-sands of the peo-ple of the U-ni-ted States.
A-bra-ham Lin-coln, then, think-ing of the mil-lions of his fel-low-men in sla-ver-y and of that slave-mar-ket in New Or-leans, which had nev-er gone out of his mind, spoke, both in pub-lic and pri-vate, with the force that e-ven he had ne’er used be-fore. He felt God’s time was near at hand when those who had been bought and sold like beasts of the field, should be set free. He did not then see just how it would be done, but he said to a friend;
“Some-times when I am speak-ing I feel that the time is soon com-ing when the sun shall shine and the rain fall on no man who shall go forth to un-re-quit-ed toil. How it will come, I can-not tell; but that time will sure-ly come!”
It was in March 1857, when Bu-chan-an had his in-au-gu-ral ad-dress all writ-ten out with care, and he was read-y to take his seat as Chief in the land, that he was told that a great step was a-bout to be tak-en by the “Su-preme Court,” the high-est court of law in the land. It seems that the jud-ges were then to de-cide in a case which dealt with the rights of men who held slaves un-der the Con-sti-tu-tion.
Mr. Bu-chan-an thought it would be well to put a few words more in-to his ad-dress, and these up-on the theme then brought up to him. So he wrote that he hoped the steps that were to be tak-en would “for-ev-er set-tle that vex-a-tious slave ques-tion.”
In a few days Rog-er B. Ta-ney of Ma-ry-land, Chief Jus-tice, gave the peo-ple of the U-ni-ted States a great sur-prise in what he had to say a-bout two slaves.