occasion of great rejoicing. A salute of a hundred
guns was fired in City Hall Park, the mayor and common council
tendered him a public reception, and after hours of speech-making and
hand-shaking he proceeded slowly homeward amidst waiting crowds at
every station. At Auburn the streets were decorated, and the people,
regardless of creed or party, escorted him in procession to his home.
Few Republicans in New York had any doubt at that moment of his
nomination and election to the Presidency.

On going to Washington Seward found the United States Senate
investigating the Harper's Ferry affair and the House of
Representatives deadlocked over the election of a speaker. Bitterness
and threats of disunion characterised the proceeding at both ends of
the Capitol. "This Union," said one congressman, "great and powerful
as it is, can be tumbled down by the act of any one Southern State. If
Florida withdraws, the federal government would not dare attack her.
If it did, the bands would dissolve as if melted by lightning."[508]
Referring to the possibility of the election of a Republican
President, another declared that "We will never submit to the
inauguration of a Black Republican President. You may elect Seward to
be President of the North; but of the South, never! Whenever a
President is elected by a fanatical majority of the North, those whom
I represent are ready, let the consequences be what they may, to fall
back on their reserved rights, and say, 'As to this Union we have no
longer any lot or part in it.'"[509]

[Footnote 508: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 441.]

[Footnote 509: _Ibid._, p. 442.]

In the midst of these fiery, disunion utterances, on the 21st of
February, 1860, Seward introduced a bill for the admission of Kansas
into the Union. After the overwhelming defeat of the Lecompton
Constitution, the free-state men had controlled the territorial
legislature, repealed the slave code of 1855, and, in the summer of
1859, convened a constitutional convention at Wyandotte. A few weeks
later the people ratified the result of its work by a large majority.
It was this Wyandotte Constitution under which Seward proposed to
admit Kansas, and he fixed the consideration of his measure for the
29th of February. This would be two days after Abraham Lincoln had
spoken in New York City.

Lincoln, whose fame had made rapid strides in the West since his
debate with Douglas in 1858, had been anxious to visit Ne