the Democratic ticket
successful. Even Edward Everett and Rufus Choate made public
announcement of their conversion to Democracy. Large sums of money were
sent to Pennsylvania to influence the vote. Southern governors in a
conference at Raleigh proposed secession if the Democrats failed, and
Eastern radicals urged the break-up of the Union if the slave power
continued in control.

The result was a victory for the conservatives, or "reactionaries," as
we should perhaps say. The solid South voted for Buchanan; and
Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California were found in the same
column. Fremont received the support of a solid East and all the
Northwest except the States just mentioned. The fear of radicalism and
the distrust of men of great wealth everywhere had defeated the young
Republicans; the returns showed that the Democrats had polled 200,000
more votes than in 1852, and there was no reason to believe that the
874,000 which had been cast for Fillmore would not in the end be given
to the conservative Democrats in preference to the sectional
Republicans. There was no chance for the enthusiastic followers of
Seward and Chase unless the majority party could be broken into
factions, and this a wise and able Democratic leadership would avoid.

Strangely Buchanan formed his Cabinet without consulting Douglas, so far
as can now be ascertained. No friend of his was appointed to high
office, yet the support of the Northwest was the one condition of
continued success. In the foreign policy the new Administration made no
change. A part of northern Mexico and all of Cuba were still coveted
and, till the outbreak of the Civil War, efforts were made to obtain
both. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, was the master spirit of the Cabinet, and
Jefferson Davis was the Administration leader in the Senate.

The Supreme Court, composed of seven pro-Southern members as against two
anti-slavery men, undertook to give a _coup de grace_ to the quarrel
about slavery in the Territories. The Missouri Compromise had never been
passed upon by the court. Now a case came before the august tribunal
which gave opportunity for the judges to say whether slavery could be
prohibited by federal authority in the public domain. Dred Scott, a
slave belonging to a Missouri master, had been carried into Minnesota
and there held in bondage. He sued for his freedom on the ground that
slavery was unlawful in free territory, under the Compromise. The case
was befo