f the reasons, properly
recorded for the instruction of those who should come after, would
have left the Republican party in far better position than did the
precipitate retreat which they made without a word of apology,
without an attempt at justification.

If receding from the anti-slavery creed of the Republican party
was intended as a conciliation to the South, the men who made the
movement ought to have seen that it would prove ineffectual. The
Republicans no more clearly perceived that they risked nothing on
the question of slavery in organizing those Territories without
restriction, than the Southern leaders perceived that they would
gain nothing by it. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any
bird. The South had realized their inability to compete with
Northern emigration by their experience in attempting to wrest
Kansas from the control of free labor. They were not to be deluded
now by a nominal equality of rights in Territories where, in a long
contest for supremacy, they were sure to be outnumbered, outvoted,
and finally excluded by organic enactment. The political agitation
and the sentimental feeling on this question were therefore exposed
on both sides,--the North frankly confessing that they did not
desire a Congressional restriction against slavery, and the South
as frankly conceding that the demand they had so loudly made for
admission to the Territories was really worth nothing to the
institution of slavery. The whole controversy over the Territories,
as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to
an imaginary negro in an impossible place.

James Stephens Green, who was so prominent in this legislation,
who prepared and reported the bills, and who was followed by a
unanimous Senate, terminated his public service on the day Mr.
Lincoln was inaugurated. He was then but forty-four years of age,
and had served only four years in the Senate. He died soon after.
No man among his contemporaries had made so profound an impression
in so short a time. He was a very strong debater. He had peers,
but no master, in the Senate. Mr. Green on the one side and Mr.
Fessenden on the other were the senators whom Douglas most disliked
to meet, and who were the best fitted in readiness, in accuracy,
in logic, to meet him. Douglas rarely had a debate with either in
which he did not lose his temper, and to lose one's temper in debate
is generally to lose one's cause. Green had done more t