Rise of the Southern Party--Formation of the Abolition and the Free Soil Parties--Judge Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill--Douglas defeated by Lincoln--Lincoln resigns as Candidate for Congress--Lincoln’s Letter on Slavery--The Bloomington Speech--The Fremont Campaign--Election of Buchanan--The Dred-Scott Decision. The great storm of civil war which now threatened the American Ship of State had been long brewing. Year by year the party of slave-owners--small in number but strong in union, and unanimously devoted to the acquisition of political power--had progressed, until they saw before them the possibility of ruling the entire continent. To please them, the nation, after purchasing, had admitted as slave territory the immense regions of Louisiana and Florida, and in their interests a war had been waged with Mexico. But, so early as 1820, the North, alarmed at the incredible progress of slave-power, and observing that wherever it was established white labour was paralysed, and that society resolved itself at once into a small aristocracy, with a large number of blacks and poor whites who were systematically degraded,[21] attempted to check its territorial extension. There was a contest, which was finally settled by what was known as the Missouri Compromise, by which it was agreed that Missouri should be admitted as a slave state, but that in future all territory North and West of Missouri, above latitude 36° 30´, should be for ever free.[22] [Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.] While the inhabitants of the Eastern and Western States applied themselves to every development of industrial pursuits, art, and letters, the Southerners lived by agricultural slave-labour, and were entirely devoted to acquiring political power. The contest was unequal, and the result was that, before the Rebellion, the slave-holders--who, with their slaves, only constituted one-third of the population of the United States--had secured _two_-thirds of all the offices--civil, military, or naval--and had elected two-thirds of the Presidents. Law after law was passed, giving the slave-holders every advantage, until Governor Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, declared in Congress that slavery should pour itself abroad, and have no limit but the Southern Ocean. He also asserted that the best way to meet or answer Abolition arguments was _with death_. His house was afterwards, during the war, used for a negro school, under care of a New England Abolitionist. Large pecuniary rewards were offered by Governors of slave states for the persons--_i.e._, the lives--of eminent Northern anti-slavery men. Direct efforts were made to re-establish the slave-trade between Africa and the Southern States.