scheme to
subvert popular sovereignty. It was a sharp issue. The whole power of
the Administration had been invoked to carry out the Lecompton plan,
and New York congressmen were compelled to support it or be cast
aside. But in their speeches, Parker and his supporters sought to
minimise the President's part and to magnify the Douglas doctrine. It
was an easy and plausible way of settling the slavery question, and
one which commended itself to those who wished it settled by the
Democratic party. John Van Buren's use of it recalled something of the
influence and power that attended his speeches in the Free-soil
campaign of 1848. Since that day he had been on too many sides,
perhaps, to command the hearty respect of any, but he loved fair play,
which the Lecompton scheme had outraged, and the application of the
doctrine that seemed to have brought peace and a free State to the
people appealed to him as a correct principle of government that must
make for good. He presented it in the clear, impassioned style for
which he was so justly noted. His speeches contained much that did not
belong in the remarks of a statesman; but, upon the question of
popular sovereignty, as illustrated in Kansas, John Van Buren prepared
the way in New York for the candidacy and coming of Douglas in 1860.

Roscoe Conkling, now for the first time a candidate for Congress,
exhibited something of the dexterity and ability that characterised
his subsequent career. The public, friends and foes, did not yet
judge him by a few striking and picturesque qualities, for his vanity,
imperiousness, and power to hate had not yet matured, but already he
was a close student of political history, and of great capacity as an
orator. The intense earnestness of purpose, the marvellous power of
rapidly absorbing knowledge, the quickness of wit, and the firmness
which Cato never surpassed, marked him then, as afterward upon the
floor of Congress, a mighty power amidst great antagonists. Perhaps
his anger was not so quickly excited, nor the shafts of his sarcasm so
barbed and cruel, but his speeches--dramatic, rhetorical, with the
ever-present, withering sneer--were rapidly advancing him to
leadership in central New York. A quick glance at his tall, graceful
form, capacious chest, and massive head, removed him from the class of
ordinary persons. Towering above his fellows, he looked the patrician.
It was known, too, that he had muscle as well as brains. Indeed, his
no