The new “Republican party” in its “platform” of 1856, let me here observe, raised no question touching slavery where slavery then existed, but pronounced it to be “both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery;” this latter attack on the Mormons being a bid for votes at the West and an appeal to the religious prejudices of the East. A third remnant of the old “Whigs,” meeting in Baltimore in September 1856, appealed to the country to beware of “geographical parties,” adopted the nomination made by the Whig “Know-Nothings” of Ex-President Fillmore, and asserted that in Kansas “civil war” was “raging,” and that the Union was “in peril.” The contest was conducted by the Republicans at the North very much on the lines on which the first Whig victory of 1840 had been won—by the organisation, that is, of “Pathfinder Clubs” and processions, with brass bands, bonfires, and all the paraphernalia of “politics by picnic,” and a large popular vote was cast for the Republican candidate. But Mr. Buchanan, nevertheless had a majority of nearly 500,000 votes over Colonel Fremont at the polls in a total vote of about three millions, and he was elected President by 174 votes in the Electoral College, eight votes being cast by Maryland for Mr. Fillmore, and 114 votes being cast for Colonel Fremont, if the five votes of Wisconsin were properly included in that number—a very grave question as to that point being raised by the undisputed fact that the electoral votes of Wisconsin, which, under an obviously wise precept of the Constitution, ought to have been cast on the same day with the electoral votes of all the other States of the Union (December 3, 1856), were not cast until the next day (December 4) because the electors were prevented by a snowstorm from reaching the capital of the State in season to comply with the behest of the organic law. Events moved rapidly after the election of President Buchanan. In spite of a great financial panic in 1857, the commerce of the United States, under the salutary régime established by Democratic Secretaries of the Treasury, advanced beyond all former precedent. The net imports of the United States increased from 298,261,364 dollars in 1856, the year of Mr. Buchanan’s election, to 335,233,232 dollars in 1860, the last year of his administration, and the exports from 310,586,330 dollars in 1856 to 373,189,274 dollars in 1860. The sea going tonnage of the Union ran up to that of Great Britain;[4] and never had the country been so prosperous as during this period of Democratic ascendancy and relative fiscal freedom.