Hitherto he had been a Whig, and during Clay's lifetime, his devoted follower, but the repeal of the compromise was followed in 1856 by the formation of a new party, and Lincoln and Whitman both became "black republicans". "Barnburners," Abolitionists and "Anti-Nebraska" men--those that is to say who opposed the application of the doctrine of "squatter sovereignty" to Nebraska and Kansas--had united to form a new Free-soil party. They nominated J. C. Frémont, the gallant Californian "Path-finder" for the Presidency; but, owing to the presence of a third candidate put forward by the Know-nothing Whigs--whose only policy seems to have been a "patriotic" hatred of all Catholics and foreigners--the Democratic nominee was elected for the last time in a generation. After his four years were out, a succession of Republican Presidents occupied the White House for twenty-four years. James Buchanan, who defeated Frémont--becoming like Lincoln, his successor, a minority President--seems to have been an honourable and well-intentioned Pennsylvanian, but he was a man whose character was quite insufficient for his new office. As an injudicious, short-sighted diplomatist, he had already, when minister at St. James's in the days of President Pierce, commended his intrigues for the annexation of Cuba. Earlier in 1856 Chief Justice Taney, of the Supreme Court, had delivered his notorious decision in the Dred Scott case; laying it down that Congress could not forbid a citizen to carry his property into the public domain--that is to say, it could not prohibit slavery in the territories--and that, in the political sense of the word, a negro was not a "man," but only property. This decision and the bloody scenes enacted in Kansas, where settlers from the North and South were met to struggle for the constitution which should make the new State either slave or free, greatly exasperated public opinion, and called forth, among others, the protests of Abraham Lincoln. In 1858, while Whitman was studying oratory, Lincoln was stumping Illinois, in those ever-memorable debates which laid bare all the plots and purposes of the Southern politicians. When the votes in that contest were counted, Lincoln held an actual majority; but Douglas was returned as Senator by a majority of the electoral votes. Though thus defeated, Lincoln was no longer hidden in a Western obscurity. He was a man with a future; and America had half-unconsciously recognised him. * * * * * Towards the close of 1859, the fire which had been kindled in Kansas flashed out suddenly in Virginia. America was startled by the news of John Brown's raid, and the capture of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry.