sas, and Fremont."
Nevertheless the victory of the Democrats was decisive. Their candidate,
James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, was elected by a majority of 174 to 114
electoral votes.

[Illustration: SLAVE AND FREE SOIL ON EVE OF CIVIL WAR]

=The Dred Scott Decision (1857).=--In his inaugural, Buchanan vaguely
hinted that in a forthcoming decision the Supreme Court would settle one
of the vital questions of the day. This was a reference to the Dred
Scott case then pending. Scott was a slave who had been taken by his
master into the upper Louisiana territory, where freedom had been
established by the Missouri Compromise, and then carried back into his
old state of Missouri. He brought suit for his liberty on the ground
that his residence in the free territory made him free. This raised the
question whether the law of Congress prohibiting slavery north of 36 deg.
30' was authorized by the federal Constitution or not. The Court might
have avoided answering it by saying that even though Scott was free in
the territory, he became a slave again in Missouri by virtue of the law
of that state. The Court, however, faced the issue squarely. It held
that Scott had not been free anywhere and that, besides, the Missouri
Compromise violated the Constitution and was null and void.

The decision was a triumph for the South. It meant that Congress after
all had no power to abolish slavery in the territories. Under the decree
of the highest court in the land, that could be done only by an
amendment to the Constitution which required a two-thirds vote in
Congress and the approval of three-fourths of the states. Such an
amendment was obviously impossible--the Southern states were too
numerous; but the Republicans were not daunted. "We know," said Lincoln,
"the Court that made it has often overruled its own decisions and we
shall do what we can to have it overrule this." Legislatures of Northern
states passed resolutions condemning the decision and the Republican
platform of 1860 characterized the dogma that the Constitution carried
slavery into the territories as "a dangerous political heresy at
variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself ... with
legislative and judicial precedent ... revolutionary in tendency and
subversive of the peace and harmony of the country."

=The Panic of 1857.=--In the midst of the acrimonious dispute over the
Dred Scott decision, came one of the worst business panics which ever
afflicted th