A Brief History of the United StatesMcMaster, John Bach
History
A Brief History of the United States
McMaster, John Bach
United States -- History
Another party made up of old Whigs and Know-nothings nominated John Bell
of Tennessee. This was the Constitutional Union party. The Republicans
[14] named Abraham Lincoln and carried the election. [15]
SUMMARY
1. The Compromise of 1850 was supposed to settle the slavery issues, and
the two great parties pledged themselves to support it.
2. But the issues were not settled, and in 1854 the organization of Kansas
and Nebraska reopened the struggle.
3. The Kansas-Nebraska bill and the contest over Kansas split both the
Whig party and the Democratic party, and by the union of those who left
them, with the Free-soilers, the Republican party was made, 1854-56.
4. In 1857 the Supreme Court declared the Missouri Compromise
unconstitutional, and opened all territories to slavery.
5. In 1858 this decision and other slavery issues were debated by Lincoln
and Douglas.
6. This debate made Lincoln a national character, and in 1860 he was
elected President by the Republican party.
[Illustration: SCHOOLHOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS, USED BY BROWN AS AN ARSENAL.
Contemporary drawing.]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Franklin Pierce was born in New Hampshire in 1804, and died in 1869.
He began his political career in the state legislature, went to Congress
in 1833, and to the United States Senate in 1837. In the war with Mexico,
Pierce rose from the ranks to a brigadier generalship. He was a bitter
opponent of anti-slavery measures; but when the Civil War opened he became
a Union man.
[2] The electoral vote was, for Pierce, 254; for Scott, 42. The popular
vote was, for Pierce, 1,601,474; for Scott, 1,386,580; for Hale, 155,667.
[3] Stephen A. Douglas was born in Vermont in 1813, went west in 1833, was
made attorney-general of Illinois in 1834, secretary of state and judge of
the supreme court of Illinois in 1840, a member of Congress in 1843, and
of the United States Senate in 1847. He was a small man, but one of such
mental power that he was called "the Little Giant." He was a candidate for
the presidential nomination in the Democratic conventions of 1852 and
1856, and in 1860 was nominated by the Northern wing of that party. He was
a Union man.
[4] For popular opinion on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, read Rhodes's
_History of the U. S._, Vol. I, pp. 461-470.
[5] Proslavery men from Missouri and other Southern states founded
Atchison, Leavenworth, Lecompton, and Kickapoo, in the northeastern part
of Kansas. Free-state men from the North founded Lawrence, Topeka,
Manhattan, Osawatomie, in the east-central part of the territory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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