Thus James Buchanan became President of the United States, March 4, 1857,--stigmatized somewhat too severely as "a Northern man with Southern principles;" in fact an honest man and of good abilities, who, in ordinary times, would have left a fair reputation as a statesman of the second rank; but a man hopelessly unfit alike in character and in mind either to comprehend the present emergency or to rise to its demands.[66] Yet, while the Democrats triumphed, the Republicans enjoyed the presage of the future; they had polled a total number of votes which surprised every one; on the other hand, the Democrats had lost ten States[67] which they had carried in 1852 and had gained only two others,[68] showing a net loss of eight States; and their electoral votes had dwindled from 254 to 174. On the day following Buchanan's inauguration that occurred which had been foreshadowed with ill-advised plainness in his inaugural address. In the famous case of Dred Scott,[69] the Supreme Court of the United States established as law the doctrine lately advanced by the Southern Democrats, that a slave was "property," and that his owner was entitled to be protected in the possession of him, as such, in the Territories. This necessarily demolished the rival theory of "popular sovereignty," which the Douglas Democrats had adopted, not without shrewdness, as being far better suited to the Northern mind. For clearly the people enjoyed no sovereignty where they had no option. Consequently in the Territories there was no longer a slavery question. The indignation of anti-slavery men of all shades of opinion was intense, and was unfortunately justifiable. For wholly apart from the controversy as to whether the law was better expounded by the chief justice or by Judge Curtis in his dissenting opinion, there remained a main fact, undeniable and inexcusable, to wit: that the court, having decided that the lower court had no jurisdiction, and being therefore itself unable to remand the cause for a new trial, had then outstepped its own proper function and outraged legal propriety by determining the questions raised by the rest of the record,--questions which no longer had any real standing before this tribunal. This course was well known to have been pursued with the purpose on the part of the majority of the judges to settle by judicial authority, and by a _dictum_ conspicuously _obiter_, that great slavery question with which Congress had grappled in vain. It was a terrible blunder, for the people were only incensed by a volunteered and unauthorized interference. Moreover, the reasoning of Chief Justice Taney was such that the Republicans began anxiously to inquire why it was not as applicable to States as to Territories, and why it must not be extended to States when occasion should arrive; and in this connection it seemed now apparent why "States" had been named in the bill which repealed the Missouri Compromise.[70] In spite of this menace