Gulf States and of the
Border States, of the whole Slave Power, in fact. They also felt sure
of that large minority in the Free States which had formerly acted with
them, and obeyed their most humiliating behests. They therefore entered
the Congress of the nation with a confident front, knowing that
President Buchanan and the majority of his Cabinet were practically on
their side. Before Mr. Lincoln could be inaugurated they imagined they
could accomplish all their designs, and make the Government of the
United States a Pro-Slavery power in the eyes of all the nations of the
world. Mr. Calhoun's paradoxes had heretofore been indorsed only by
majorities in the national legislature and by the Supreme Court. What a
victory it would be, if, by threatening rebellion, they could induce
the people of the United States to incorporate those paradoxes into
the fundamental law of the nation, dominant over both Congress and the
Court! All their previous "compromises" had been merely legislative
compromises, which, as their cause advanced, they had themselves
annulled. They now seized the occasion, when the "people" had risen
against them, to compel the people to sanction their most extreme
demands. They determined to convert defeat, sustained at the polls, into
a victory which would have far transcended any victory they might have
gained by electing their candidate, Breckinridge, as President.

A portion of the Republicans, seeing clearly the force arrayed against
them, and disbelieving that the population of the Free States would be
willing, _en masse_, to sustain the cause of free labor by force of
arms, tried to avert the blow by proposing a new compromise. Mr.
Seward, the calmest, most moderate, and most obnoxious statesman of the
Republican party, offered to divide the existing territories of the
United States by the Missouri line, all south of which should be open
to slave labor. As he at the same time stated that by natural laws the
South could obtain no material advantage by his seeming concession, the
concession only made him enemies among the uncompromising champions of
the Wilmot Proviso. The conspirators demanded that the Missouri line
should be the boundary, not only between the territories which the
United States then possessed, but between the territories they might
hereafter _acquire_. As the country north of the Missouri line was held
by powerful European States which it would be madness to offend, and as
the count