a short account of their debates see the _Century Magazine_
for July, 1887, p. 386.]

[Footnote 2: Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. II., pp.
308-339. Nicolay and Hay's _Life of Lincoln_, Vol. II., Chaps. 10-16.
John T. Morse's _Life of Lincoln_, Vol. I., Chap. 6.]

%399. John Brown's Raid into Virginia%.--As slavery had become the
great political issue of the day, it is not surprising that it excited a
lifelong and bitter enemy of slavery to do a foolish act. John Brown was
a man of intense convictions and a deep-seated hatred of slavery. When
the border ruffianism broke out in Kansas in 1855, he went there with
arms and money, and soon became so prominent that he was outlawed and a
price set on his head. In 1858 he left Kansas, and in July, 1859,
settled near Harpers Ferry, Va. (p. 360). His purpose was to stir up a
slave insurrection in Virginia, and so secure the liberation of the
negroes. With this in view, one Sunday night in October, 1859, he with
less than twenty followers seized the United States armory at Harpers
Perry and freed as many slaves and arrested as many whites as possible.
But no insurrection or uprising of slaves followed, and before he could
escape to the mountains he was surrounded and captured by Robert E. Lee,
then a colonel in the army of the United States. Brown was tried on the
charges of murder and of treason against the state of Virginia, was
found guilty, and in December, 1859, was hanged.

[Illustration: Harpers Ferry]

%400. Split in the Democratic Party.%--Thus it was that one event
after another prolonged the struggle with slavery till 1860, when the
people were once more to elect a President.

The Democratic nominating convention assembled at Charleston, S.C., in
April, and at once went to pieces. A strong majority made up of Northern
delegates insisted that the party should declare--"That all questions in
regard to the rights of property in states or territories arising under
the Constitution of the United States are judicial in their character,
and the Democratic party is pledged to abide by and faithfully carry out
such determination of these questions as has been or may be made by the
Supreme Court of the United States."

This meant to carry out the doctrine laid down in the Dred Scott
decision, and was in conflict with the "popular sovereignty" doctrine of
Douglas, which was that right of the people to make a slave territory or
a free territory is perfect and c