issues impending, and indicated that
the end of slavery extension was near.

The Dred Scott decision, announced March, 1857, had completely
overthrown, so far as it could be done by judicial-political _obiter
dicta_, Douglas's Popular Sovereignty theory, leaving him with only
the northern end (and that not united) of his party endeavoring to
uphold it.

Next came the Presidential campaign of 1860, the last in which a
slave party participated.

The Democratic party met in delegate convention in April, 1860, in
Charleston, South Carolina, and after seven days of struggle, during
which disunion threats were made by Yancey and others, the delegates
from the Cotton States--South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas--seceded, for the alleged
reason that a majority of the convention adopted the 1856 Democratic
platform which upheld the Douglas - Popular Sovereignty doctrine
as applied to the Territories.

The seceding delegates had voted for a platform declaring the right
of all citizens to settle in the Territories with all their property
(including slaves) "without its being destroyed or impaired by
Congressional or territorial legislation," and further,

"That it is the duty of the Federal Government in all its departments
to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and property in
the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority
extends."

This was not only the new doctrine of the Supreme Court, but to it
was superadded the further claim that the Constitution _required_
Congress and all the departments of the government to protect the
slaveholder with his slaves, when once in a Territory, against
territorial legislation or other unfriendly acts. By this most
startling doctrine the Constitution was to become an instrument to
_establish and protect slavery_ in all the territorial possessions
of the Republic.

Douglas failed of nomination at Charleston for want of a two thirds
vote of the entire convention as originally organized. The convention
adjourned to meet, June 11th, at Baltimore, and the seceding branch
of it also adjourned to meet at the same time at Richmond, but
later it decided to meet with and again become a part of the
convention at Baltimore. At this time the South had control of
the Senate, and May 25, 1860, before the convention reassembled,
and after a most acrimonious debate into which Douglas was drawn
and in which Jefferson Davis bitt