hat had
broken the truce. The Northerners had much justification in saying that
their opponents, if not the aggressors in the Civil War, were at least
the aggressors in the controversy of which the Civil War was the
ultimate outcome.

Under the impulse of such feelings a party was formed which,
adopting--without, it must be owned, any particular appropriateness--the
old Jeffersonian name of "Republican," took the field at the
Presidential Election of 1856. Its real leader was Seward of New York,
but it was thought that electioneering exigencies would be better served
by the selection of Captain Fremont of California, who, as a wandering
discoverer and soldier of fortune, could be made a picturesque figure in
the public eye. Later, when Fremont was entrusted with high military
command he was discovered to be neither capable nor honest, but in 1856
he made as effective a figure as any candidate could have done, and the
results were on the whole encouraging to the new party. Buchanan, the
Democratic candidate, was elected, but the Republicans showed greater
strength in the Northern States than had been anticipated. The Whig
Party was at this election finally annihilated.

The Republicans might have done even better had the decision of the
Supreme Court on an issue which made clear the full scope of the new
Southern claim been known just before instead of just after the
election. This decision was the judgment of Roger Taney, whom we have
seen at an earlier date as Jackson's Attorney-General and Secretary to
the Treasury, in the famous Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a Negro
slave owned by a doctor of Missouri. His master had taken him for a time
into the free territory of Minnesota, afterwards bringing him back to
his original State. Dred Scott was presumably not in a position to
resent either operation, nor is it likely that he desired to do so.
Later, however, he was induced to bring an action in the Federal Courts
against his master on the ground that by being taken into free territory
he had _ipso facto_ ceased to be a slave. Whether he was put up to this
by the Anti-Slavery party, or whether--for his voluntary manumission
after the case was settled seems to suggest that possibility--the whole
case was planned by the Southerners to get a decision of the territorial
question in their favour, might be an interesting subject for inquiry. I
can express no opinion upon it. The main fact is that Taney, supported
by a bare