been
painfully discernible to far-seeing men. In 1858, Lincoln had forewarned
the country in his "House Divided" speech. As early as the beginning of
the year 1860 the Union had been plainly in jeopardy. Early in February
of that momentous year, Jefferson Davis, on behalf of the South, had
introduced his famous resolutions in the Senate of the United States.
This document was the ultimatum of the dissatisfied slave-holding
commonwealths. It demanded that Congress should protect slavery
throughout the domain of the United States. The territories, it
declared, were the common property of the states of the Union and hence
open to the citizens of all states with all their personal possessions.
The Northern states, furthermore, were no longer to interfere with the
working of the Fugitive Slave Act. They must repeal their Personal
Liberty laws and respect the Dred Scott Decision of the Federal Supreme
Court. Neither in their own legislatures nor in Congress should they
trespass upon the right of the South to regulate slavery as it best saw
fit.

These resolutions, demanding in effect that slavery be thus
safeguarded--almost to the extent of introducing it into the free
states--really foreshadowed the Democratic platform of 1860 which led
to the great split in that party, the victory of the Republicans under
Lincoln, the subsequent secession of the more radical southern states,
and finally the Civil War, for it was inevitable that the North, when
once aroused, would bitterly resent such pro-slavery demands.

And this great crisis was only the bursting into flame of many smaller
fires that had long been smoldering. For generations the two sections
had been drifting apart. Since the middle of the seventeenth century,
Mason and Dixon's line had been a line of real division separating two
inherently distinct portions of the country.

By 1860, then, war was inevitable. Naturally, the conflict would at once
present intricate military problems, and among them the retention of the
Pacific Coast was of the deepest concern to the Union. Situated at a
distance of nearly two thousand miles from the Missouri river which was
then the nation's western frontier, this intervening space comprised
trackless plains, almost impenetrable ranges of snow-capped mountains,
and parched alkali deserts. And besides these barriers of nature which
lay between the West coast and the settled eastern half of the country,
there were many fierce tribes of sa