Republican
strength. The financial disturbance of 1857 appeared with great
suddenness in August. There had been fluctuations in prices, with a
general downward tendency, but when the crisis came it was a surprise
to many of the most watchful financiers. Industry and commerce were
less affected than in 1837, but the failures, representing a larger
amount of capital than those of any other year in the history of the
country up to 1893, astonished the people, associating in the public
mind the Democratic charge of Republican extravagance with the general
cry of hard times.

But whatever the cause of defeat, the outlook for the Republicans
again brightened when Stephen A. Douglas opposed President Buchanan's
Lecompton policy. The Kansas Lecompton Constitution was the work of a
rump convention controlled by pro-slavery delegates who declared that
"the right of property is before and higher than any constitutional
sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its
increase is as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property
whatever." To secure its approval by the people it was ingeniously
arranged that the vote taken in December, 1857, should be "for the
constitution with slavery" or "for the constitution without slavery,"
so that in any event the constitution, with its objectionable section,
would become the organic law. This shallow scheme, hatched in the
South to fix slavery upon a territory that had already declared for
freedom by several thousand majority, obtained the support of the
President. Douglas immediately pronounced it "a trick" and "a fraud
upon the rights of the people."[495] The breach between the Illinois
Senator and the Administration thus became complete.

[Footnote 495: This debate occurred December 22, 1857.]

Meantime, the governor of Kansas convened the territorial legislature
in an extra session, which provided for a second election in January,
1858. The December election had stood: for the constitution with
slavery, 6226; for the constitution without slavery, 569. Of these
2720 were subsequently shown to be fraudulent. The January election
stood: for the constitution with slavery, 138; for the constitution
without slavery, 24; against the constitution, 10,226. The President,
accepting the "trick election," as Douglas called it, in which the
free-state men declined to participate, forwarded a copy of the
constitution to Congress, and, in spite of Douglas, it passed the
S