ces.--American Party.--Know-
Nothings.--Origin and Growth of the Republican Party.--Pro-slavery
Development in the South.--Contest for the Possession of Kansas.--
Prolonged Struggle.--Disunion Tendencies developing in the South.
--Election of N. P. Banks to the Speakership of the House.--The
Presidential Election of 1856.--Buchanan.--Fremont.--Fillmore.--
The Slavery Question the Absorbing Issue.--Triumph of Buchanan.--
Dred Scott Decision.--Mr. Lincoln's Version of it.--Chief Justice
Taney.

The Democratic party, seeing their old Whig rival prostrate,
naturally concluded that a long lease of power was granted them.
The victory of Pierce was so complete that his supporters could
not with closest scrutiny descry an opponent worthy of the slightest
consideration. If the leaders of that party, however, had deigned
to look below the surface, they would have learned a fact which,
if not disquieting, was at least serious and significant. This
fact was contained in the popular vote, which told an entirely
different story from that disclosed by the Presidential electors.
From the people Pierce received a total of 1,601,274 votes, Scott
1,386,580, Hale 155,825. It will be noted that, while receiving
only one-sixth as many electoral votes as Pierce, Scott received
more than five-sixths as many votes at the polls. Adding the vote
of Hale, it will be observed that out of a total exceeding three
millions, Pierce's absolute majority was but 58,896. Thoughtful
men, wise in the administration of government, skilled in the
management of parties, would have found in these figures food for
reflection and abundant reason for hoisting cautionary signals
along the shores of the political sea. The Democratic leaders were
not, however, disturbed by facts or figures, but were rather made
stronger in the confidence of their own strength. They beheld the
country prosperous in all its material interests, and they saw the
mass of the people content in both sections with the settlement of
the slavery question. Since the Compromise measures were enacted
in 1850, and especially since the two political parties had pledged
themselves in 1852 to accept those measures as a finality, the
slavery agitation had to a very large extent subsided. Disturbance
was not indeed infrequently caused by the summary arrest of fugitive
slaves in various parts of the North, under the stringent and harsh
provisions of the new law on that subject. But though the