Buchanan's first message repeated the assurance that the discussion of slavery had come to an end. The clergy were criticised for fomenting prevalent disturbances. The President declared in favor of the admission of Kansas, with a Constitution agreeable to a majority of the settlers. He also referred to an impending decision of the Supreme Court, with which he had been made 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 afterwards 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 restriction by Congress on slavery in the Territories. Chief-Justice Taney said:
"The question is whether the 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."
Negroes, as a race, were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class who had been subjugated by the dominant whites, and had no rights or privileges except 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— so far inferior that they possessed no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and 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 was separated from the whites by indelible marks long before established, and was never thought of or spoken of except as property.
The Chief-Justice further annulled 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." Benton said that it was "no longer the exception, with freedom the rule; but slavery was the rule, with freedom the exception."
It was a year of financial distress in America, which recalled the hard times of twenty years before. The United States treasury was empty.
Early in this year (1856) 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 latter body which had been chosen by the Missouri invaders, and both parties continued to hold their elections.
Thus it may be seen that these episodes were the culmination of a long series of events leading to a new alignment of the country's political forces. The Republican party was the child of this ferment of unrest. The formation of a new political party, or the regeneration of an old one, is always due to events, and not to the schemes and purposes of men except as events sometimes originate in such purposes and schemes. In this case the steps in the course of events which had rendered the formation of an anti-slavery party inevitable were: The pro-slavery provisions of the Constitution, the foreign slave trade, the acquisition of the Territory of Louisiana, the invention of the cotton-gin and its effects, the Missouri Compromise, the nullification schemes of South Carolina, the colonization and annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the contest over the admission of California, the Compromise Measure of 1850, and finally the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854.
The name of the party was an incident only, and not an essential or very important incident; its principles and purposes were the vital facts. When events demand a new party, or the reorganization of an old one, all resistance is usually borne down speedily. On the other hand, it is a wasteful exhibition of human power to attempt the creation of a new party by the force of combined will and resolutions formulated in public meetings. Abraham Lincoln's great experience or keener penetration, or both, guided him at the outset of the realignments on political issues, and at the opening of the Congressional campaign of 1858, I followed him firmly and without mental reservation into the ranks of the Republican party.
Hence it was that I was present on that historic occasion when the Republican party of the State of Illinois held a convention at Springfield, June 17 of the year named, and nominated Lincoln for the seat in the United States Senate, then held by Stephen A. Douglas, who at that time was usually affectionately referred to by his partisan followers as "The Little Giant." This nomination was anticipated, and Mr. Lincoln had prepared a speech, which he then delivered, in which he set forth, in a manner now universally recognized as masterly, the doctrines of the Republican party. He arraigned the administration of Mr. Buchanan and denounced the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the lead of Senator Douglas. In that speech he made the declaration, which I remember as clearly as though an event of yesterday, then characterized as extravagant but long since accepted as prophetic: "I believe this Government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free."