ion of Kansas as a free state.

3. Denied all sympathy with any kind of interference with slavery in the
states.

4. Insisted that the territories must be kept free.

5. Called for a railroad to the Pacific, and a homestead law.

The election took place in November, 1860. Of 303 electoral votes cast,
Lincoln received 180; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; and Douglas, 12.

SUMMARY

1. The Compromise of 1850 did not settle the question of slavery in the
territories, and an attempt to organize Kansas and Nebraska brought
it up again.

2. In the organization of these territories a new political doctrine,
"popular sovereignty," was announced.

3. This was applied in Kansas, and the struggle for Kansas began. The
first territorial government was proslavery. The antislavery men then
made a constitution (Topeka) and formed a free state government.
Thereupon the proslavery men formed a constitution (Lecompton) for a
slave state. This was submitted to Congress and rejected, and Kansas
remained a territory till 1861.

4. In the course of the struggle for free soil in Kansas the Whig party
went to pieces, the Democratic was split into two wings, and the
Know-nothing or Native American party and the Republican party arose.

5. The Republican party was defeated in 1856, but the Dred Scott
decision in 1857 and the continued struggle in Kansas forced the
question of slavery to the front, and in 1860 Lincoln was elected.

[Illustration: ]

CHAPTER XXVI

PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES BETWEEN 1840 AND 1860

[Illustration: Chicago in 1832]

%403. The Movement of Population.%--The twenty years which elapsed
between the election of Harrison, in 1840, and the election of Lincoln,
in 1860, had seen a most astonishing change in our country. In 1840
neither Texas, nor the immense region afterwards acquired from Mexico,
belonged to us. There were then but twenty-six states and five
territories, inhabited by 17,000,000 people, of whom but 876,000 lived
west of the Mississippi River, mostly close to the river bank in
Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The great Northwest was still a
wilderness, and many a city now familiar to us had no existence. Toledo
and Milwaukee and Indianapolis had each less than 3000 inhabitants;
Chicago had less than 5000; and Cleveland, Columbus, and Detroit, each
less than 10,000. Yet the rapid growth of cities had been one of the
characteristics of the period 1830 to 1840.

The effect of new mec