bled at Topeka, refused to recognize the bogus laws, and framed a
constitution which President Pierce--"a Northern man with Southern
principles," gentlemanly and cultivated, but not strong--pronounced to
be revolutionary. Nor was ruffianism confined to Kansas. In 1856 Charles
Sumner of Massachusetts, one of the most eloquent and forceful
denunciators of all the pro-slavery lawlessness, was attacked at his
desk in the Senate chamber, after an adjournment, and unmercifully
beaten with a heavy cane by Preston Brooks, a member of the House of
Representatives, and nephew of Senator Butler of South Carolina. It took
years for Sumner to recover, while the aristocratic ruffian was
unmolested, and went unpunished; for, though censured by the House and
compelled to resign his seat, he was immediately re-elected by his
constituents.

But this was not all. In that same year the Supreme Court came to the
aid of the South, already supported by the Executive and the Senate. Six
judges out of nine, headed by Chief Justice Taney, pronounced judgment
that slaves, whether fugitive or taken by their masters into the free
States, should be returned to their owners. This celebrated case arose
in Missouri, where a negro named Dred Scott--who had been taken by his
master to States where slavery was prohibited by law, who had, with his
master's consent, married and had children in the free States, and been
brought back to Missouri--sued for his freedom. The local court granted
it; the highest court of the State reversed the decision; and on appeal
to the Supreme Court of the United States the case was twice argued
there, and excited a wide and deep interest. The court might have simply
sent it back, as a matter belonging to the State court to decide; but it
permitted itself to argue the question throughout, and pronounced on the
natural inferiority of the negro, and his legal condition as property,
the competence of the State courts to decide his freedom or slavery, and
the right of slaveholders under the Constitution to control their
property in the free States or Territories, any legislation by Congress
or local legislatures to the contrary notwithstanding. This was the
climax of slavery triumphs. The North and West, at last aroused,
declared in conventions and legislative halls that slavery should
advance no further. The conflict now indeed became "irrepressible."

At this crisis, Abraham Lincoln stepped upon the political stage, and
his gr