[4] For popular opinion on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, read Rhodes's History of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 461-470.
[5] Proslavery men from Missouri and other Southern states founded Atchison, Leavenworth, Lecompton, and Kickapoo, in the northeastern part of Kansas. Free-state men from the North founded Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, Osawatomie, in the east-central part of the territory.
[6] In 1856 border war raged in Kansas, settlers were murdered, property destroyed, and the free-state town of Lawrence was sacked by the proslavery men. In 1857 the proslavery party made a slave-state constitution at Lecompton and applied for admission, and the Senate (1858) voted to admit Kansas under it; but the House refused. In 1859 the Free- soilers made a second (the Wyandotte) constitution, under which Kansas was admitted into the Union (1861).
[7] The breaking up of old parties over the slavery issues naturally brought up the question of forming a new party, and at a meeting at Ripon in Wisconsin in 1854, it was proposed to call the new party Republican. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, a thousand citizens of Michigan signed a call for a state convention, at which a Republican state party was formed and a ticket nominated on which were Whigs, Free-soilers, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats. Similar "fusion tickets," as they were called, were adopted in eight other states. The success of the new party in the elections of 1854, and its still greater success in 1855, led to a call for a convention at Pittsburg on Washington's Birthday, 1856. There and then the national Republican party was founded.
[8] The American party was the outcome of a long-prevalent feeling against the election of foreign-born citizens to office. At many times and at many places this feeling had produced political organizations. But it was not till 1852 that a secret, oath-bound organization, with signs, grips, and passwords, was formed and spread its membership rapidly through most of the states. As its members would not tell its principles and methods, and professed entire ignorance of them when questioned, the American party was called in derision "the Know-nothings." Its success, however, was great, and in 1855 Know-nothing governors and legislatures were elected in eight states, and heavy votes polled in six more.
[9] The electoral vote was, for Buchanan, 174; for Frémont, 114; for Fillmore, 8. The popular vote was, for Buchanan, 1,838,169; for Frémont, 1,341,264; for Fillmore, 874,534. James Buchanan was born in Pennsylvania in 1791, was educated at school and college, studied law, served in the state legislature, was five times elected to the House of Representatives, and three times to the Senate. In the Senate he was a warm supporter of Jackson, and favored the annexation of Texas under Tyler. He was Secretary of State under Polk, and had been minister to Great Britain.
[10] The Chief Justice ruled that no negro whose ancestors had been brought as slaves into the United States could be a citizen; Scott therefore was not a citizen, and hence could not sue in any United States court.
[11] Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, February 12, 1809, and while still a child was taken by his parents to Indiana. The first winter was spent in a half-faced camp, and for several years the log cabin that replaced it had neither door nor wood floor. Twelve months' "schooling" was all he ever had; but he was fond of books and borrowed Aesop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, and Weems's Life of Washington, the book in which first appeared the fabulous story of the hatchet and the cherry tree. At nineteen Lincoln went as a flatboatman to New Orleans. In 1830 his father moved to Illinois, where Lincoln helped build the cabin and split the rails to fence in the land, and then went on another flatboat voyage to New Orleans. He became a clerk in a store in 1831, served as a volunteer in the Black Hawk War, tried business and failed, became postmaster of New Salem, which soon ceased to have a post office, supported himself as plowman, farm hand, and wood cutter, and tried surveying; but made so many friends that in 1834 he was sent to the legislature, and reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. He now began the practice of law, settled in Springfield, was elected to Congress in 1846, and served there one term.
[12] For a description of the Lincoln-Douglas debate of 1858, read Rhodes's History of the U. S., Vol. II, pp. 314-338.
[13] Many persons regarded Brown as a martyr. Read Whittier's Brown of Ossawatomie, or Stedman's How Old Brown took Harper's Ferry. Read, also, Rhodes's History of the U. S., Vol. II, pp. 383-398.