At the beginning of Buchanan’s administration in 1857, the Republicans almost solidly faced the Democrats. There still remained part of the division caused by the American or Know-Nothing party, but its membership in Congress had already been compelled to show at least the tendency of their sentiments on the great question which was now rapidly dividing the two great sections of the Union. The result of the long Congressional struggle over the admission of Kansas and Nebraska was simply this: “That Congress was neither to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States,”[6] and it was specially prescribed that when the Territory of Kansas shall be admitted as a State, it shall be admitted into the Union with or without slavery as the constitution adopted should prescribe at the time of admission. This was, as it proved, but a temporary settlement on the principle of popular sovereignty, and was regarded at the time as a triumph of the views of Stephen A. Douglas by the friends of that great politician. The more radical leaders of the South looked upon it with distrust, but the blood of the more excitable in both sections was rapidly rising toward fever heat, and the border men from the Free and Slave States alike were preparing to act upon a compromise which in effect invited a conflict. The Presidential election in 1856 had singularly enough encouraged the more aggressive of both sections. Buchanan’s election was a triumph for the South; Fremont’s large vote showed the power of a growing party as yet but partially organized, and crippled by schisms which grew out of the attempt to unite all elements of opposition to the Democrats. The general plan of the latter was now changed into an attempt to unite all of the free-soil elements into a party organization against slavery, and from that time forward until its total abolition slavery was the paramount issue in the minds of the more aggressive men of the north. Lincoln voiced the feelings of the Republicans when he declared in one of his Illinois speeches:— “We will, hereafter, speak for freedom, and against slavery, as long as the Constitution guaranties free speech; until everywhere, on this wide land, the sun shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil.” In the Congressional battle over the admission of Kansas and Nebraska, Douglas was the most conspicuous figure, and the language which we have quoted from Buchanan’s inaugural was the literal meaning which Douglas had given to his idea of “popular” or “squatter sovereignty.”