The Democratic candidate in his letter of acceptance did not seek to resolve the mystery of the platform, but left the question just as he found it in the resolutions of the convention. The result was that Northern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the belief, so energetically urged by Mr. Douglas, that the people of the Territories had the right to determine the slavery question for themselves at any time. The Southern people supported Mr. Buchanan in the full faith that slavery was to be protected in the Territories until a State government should be formed and admission to the Union secured. The Democratic doctrine of the North and the Democratic doctrine of the South were, therefore, in logic and in fact, irreconcilably hostile. By the one, slavery could never enter a Territory unless the inhabitants thereof desired and approved it. By the other slavery had a foot-hold in the Territories under the Constitution of the United States, and could not be dislodged or disturbed by the inhabitants of a Territory even though ninety-nine out of every hundred were opposed to it. In the Territorial Legislatures laws might be passed to protect slavery but not to exclude it. From such contradictory constructions in the same party, conflicts were certain to arise.
MR. BUCHANAN ELECTED PRESIDENT.
The Democrats of the North sought, not unsuccessfully, to avoid the slavery question altogether. They urged other considerations upon popular attention. Mr. Buchanan was presented as a National candidate, supported by troops of friends in every State of the Union. Frémont was denounced as a sectional candidate, whose election by Northern votes on an anti-slavery platform would dissolve the Union. This incessant cry exerted a wide influence in the North and was especially powerful in commercial circles. But in spite of it, Frémont gained rapidly in the free States. The condition of affairs in Kansas imparted to his supporters a desperate energy, based on principle and roused to anger. An elaborate and exciting speech on the "Crime against Kansas," by Senator Sumner, was followed by an assault from Preston S. Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, which seriously injured Mr. Sumner, and sensibly increased the exasperation of the North. When a resolution of the House to expel Brooks was under consideration, he boasted that "a blow struck by him then would be followed by a revolution." This but added fuel to a Northern flame already burning to white- heat. Votes by tens of thousands declared that they did not desire a Union which was held together by the forbearance or permission of any man or body of men, and they welcomed a test of any character that should determine the supremacy of the Constitution and the strength of the government.
The canvass grew in animation and earnestness to the end, the Republicans gaining strength before the people of the North every day. But Buchanan's election was not a surprise. Indeed, it had been generally expected. He received the electoral votes of every Southern State except Maryland, which pronounced for Fillmore. In the North, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California voted for Buchanan. The other eleven free States, beginning with Maine and ending with Iowa, declared for Frémont. The popular vote was for Buchanan 1,838,169, Frémont 1,341,264, Fillmore 874,534. With the people, therefore, Mr. Buchanan was in a minority, the combined opposition outnumbering his vote by nearly four hundred thousand.
The Republicans, far from being discouraged, felt and acted as men who had won the battle. Indeed, the moral triumph was theirs, and they believed that the actual victory at the polls was only postponed. The Democrats were mortified and astounded by the large popular vote against them. The loss of New York and Ohio, the narrow escape from defeat in Pennsylvania, the rebuke of Michigan to their veteran leader General Cass, intensified by the choice of Chandler as his successor in the Senate, the absolute consolidation of New England against them, all tended to humiliate and discourage the party. They had lost ten States which General Pierce had carried in 1852, and they had a watchful, determined foe in the field, eager for another trial of strength. The issue was made, the lines of battles were drawn. Freedom or slavery in the Territories was to be fought to the end, without flinching, and without compromise.
Mr. Buchanan came to the Presidency under very different auspices from those which had attended the inauguration of President Pierce. The intervening four years had written important chapters in the history of the slavery contest. In 1853 there was no organized opposition that could command even a respectable minority in a single State. In 1857 a party distinctly and unequivocally pledged to resist the extension of slavery into free territory had control of eleven free States and was hotly contesting the possession of the others. The distinct and avowed marshalling of a solid North against a solid South had begun, and the result of the Presidential election of 1856 settled nothing except that a mightier struggle was in the future.
DECISION IN THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT.
After Buchanan's inauguration events developed rapidly. The Democrats had carried the House, and therefore had control of every department of the government. The effort to force slavery upon Kansas was resumed with increased zeal. Strafford's policy of "thorough" was not more resolute or more absolute than that now adopted by the Southern leaders with a new lease of power confirmed to them by the result of the election. The Supreme Court came to their aid, and, not long after the new administration was installed, delivered their famous decision in the Dred Scott case. This case involved the freedom of a single family that had been held as slaves, but it gave occasion to the Court for an exhaustive treatment of the political question which was engrossing public attention. The conclusion of the best legal minds of the country was that the opinion of the Court went far beyond the real question at issue, and that many of its most important points were to be regarded as obiter dicta. The Court declared that the Act of Congress prohibiting slavery in the Territories north of 36° 30´ was unconstitutional and void. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was therefore approved by the highest judicial tribunal. Not only was the repeal approved, its re-enactment was forbidden. No matter how large a majority might be returned to Congress in favor of again setting up the old landmark which had stood in peace and in honor for thirty-four years, with the sanction of all departments of the government, the Supreme Court had issued an edict that it could not be done. The Court had declared that slavery was as much entitled to protection on the national domain as any other species of property, and that it was unconstitutional for Congress to decree freedom for a Territory of the United States. The pro-slavery interest had apparently won a great triumph. They naturally claimed that the whole question was settled in their favor. But in fact the decision of the Court had only rendered the contest more intense and more bitter. It was received throughout the North with scorn and indignation. It entered at once into the political discussions of the people, and remained there until, with all other issues on the slavery question, it was remanded to the arbitrament of war.
Five of the judges—an absolute majority of the court—were Southern men, and had always been partisan Democrats of the State-rights' school. People at once remembered that every other class of lawyers in the South had for thirty years been rigidly excluded from the bench. John J. Crittenden had been nominated and rejected by a Democratic Senate. George E. Badger of North Carolina had shared the same fate. They were followers of Clay, and not to be trusted by the new South in any exigency where the interests of slavery and the perpetuity of the Union should come in conflict. Instead, therefore, of strengthening the Democratic party, the whole effect of the Dred Scott decision was to develop a more determined type of anti-slavery agitation. This tendency was promoted by the lucid and exhaustive opinion of Benjamin R. Curtis, one of the two dissenting judges. Judge Curtis was not a Republican. He had been a Whig of the most conservative type, appointed to the bench by President Fillmore through the influence of Mr. Webster and the advice of Rufus Choate. In legal learning, and in dignity and purity of character, he was unsurpassed. His opinion became, therefore, of inestimable value to the cause of freedom. It represented the well-settled conclusion of the most learned jurists, was in harmony with the enlightened conscience of the North, and gave a powerful rallying-cry to the opponents of slavery. It upheld with unanswerable arguments the absolute right of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the Union. Every judge delivered his views separately, but the dissenting opinion of Judge McLean, as well as of the six who sustained the views of the Chief Justice, arrested but a small share of public attention. The argument for the South had been made by the venerable and learned Chief Justice. The argument for the North had been made by Justice Curtis. Perhaps in the whole history of judicial decisions no two opinions were ever so widely read by the mass of people outside the legal profession.