tates and the free States, growing more and more intense and more
and more dangerous day by day.

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

The most striking result in the political field, produced by the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was the utter destruction of
the Whig party. Had the Southern Whigs in Congress maintained the
sacredness of the work of 1820, the party throughout the country
would have been able to make a sturdy contest, notwithstanding the
crushing defeat of Scott two years before. Not improbably in the
peculiar state of public opinion, the Whigs, by maintaining the
Compromise, might have been able to carry the Presidential election
of 1856. But with the exception of John Bell in the Senate and
seven members of the House, the entire Whig party of the South
joined the Democrats in repealing the Compromise. Of these seven,
Emerson Etheridge of Tennessee and Theodore G. Hunt of Louisiana
deserve especial and honorable mention for the courage with which
they maintained their position. But when John M. Clayton of
Delaware, who had voted to prohibit slavery in all the Territories,
now voted to strike down the only legal barrier to its extension;
when Badger of North Carolina, who had been the very soul of
conservatism, now joined in the wild cry of the pro-slavery Democrats;
when James Alfred Pearce of Maryland and James C. Jones of Tennessee
united with Jefferson Davis, the Whig party of the South ceased to
exist. Indeed, before this final blow large numbers of Southern
Whigs had gone over to the Democracy. Toombs and Stephens and
Judah P. Benjamin had been among the foremost supporters of Pierce,
and had been specially influential in consolidating the South in
his favor. But the great body of Whigs both in the South and in
the North did not lose hope of a strong re-organization of their
old party until the destruction of the Missouri Compromise had been
effected. That was seen and felt by all to be the end.

Thenceforward new alliances were rapidly formed. In the South
those Whigs who, though still unwilling to profess an anti-slavery
creed, would not unite with the Democrats, were re-organized under
the name of the American party, with Humphrey Marshall, Henry Winter
Davis, Horace Maynard, and men of that class, for leaders. This
party was founded on proscription of foreigners, and with special
hostility to the Roman-Catholic Church. It had a fitful a