gave a momentary peace to the
distracted and baffled settlers.

We pass over the administration of Geary, the third of the Kansas
Governors,--a period in which the ravages of the marauders were
continued, but under meliorated circumstances. The great uprising of the
Northern masses, in the Presidential election, had impressed upon the
most desperate of the Pro-Slavery faction the necessity of a restrained
and moderated zeal. Geary went to the Territory with some desire to deal
justly with all parties. He fancied, from the promises made to him, that
he would be sustained in this honorable course by the President. It was
no part of his conception of his task, that he should be called upon
to screen assassins, to justify perjury. But he had reckoned without
knowledge of what he had undertaken. He was soon involved with the
self-styled judiciary of Kansas, whose especial favorites were the
promoters of outrage; his correspondence was intercepted, his plans
thwarted, his motives aspersed, his life menaced; and he resigned
his thankless charge, in a feeling of profound contempt and bitter
disappointment,--of contempt for the restless knot of villains who
circumvented all conciliatory action, and of disappointment towards
superiors at Washington who betrayed their promises of countenance and
support.

With the advent of Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency a new era was
expected, because a new era had been plainly prescribed by the entire
course and spirit of the Presidential campaign. All through that heated
and violent contest, it was loudly promised on one side, as it was
loudly demanded on the other, that the affairs of Kansas should be
honestly and equitably administered. As the time had then come, in the
progress of population, when the Territory might be considered competent
to determine its political institutions,--the period of its immaturity
and pupilage being past,--the election turned upon the single issue of
Justice to Kansas. Mr. Buchanan and his party,--their conventions,
their orators, and their newspapers,--in order to quell the storm of
indignation swelling the Northern heart, were voluble in their pledges
of a fair field for a fair settlement of all its difficulties. In the
name of Popular Sovereignty,--or of the indisputable right of every
people, that is a people, to determine its political constitution for
itself,--they achieved a hard-won success. On no other ground could they
have met the gallant charge of