The hostility was increased by the publication of the most influential book of the century. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had attracted much attention as a serial; and three thousand copies were sold on the day it appeared in book form, March 20, 1852. There was a sale that year of two hundred thousand copies, which were equally welcome in parlour, nursery, and kitchen. Dramatic versions had a great run; and one actress played "Little Eva" at more than three hundred consecutive performances. Some of the most effective scenes were intended to excite sympathy with fugitive slaves. The total number of votes for all parties did not increase one-third as fast between 1848 and 1852 as between 1852 and 1856, when many of "Uncle Tom's" admirers went to the polls for the first time. The Whigs were so much ashamed of their party, that they permitted every State, except Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee to be carried by the Democrats. The latter had the advantage, not only of unity and consistency as regards slavery, but of having made their low tariff so much of a success that there was another reduction in 1857. The two parties had been made nearly equal in Congress by the election of 1848; but the proportion was changed four years later, to two to one, and the beaten party soon went to pieces. The Free Soil candidates and platform were singularly good in 1852; yet the vote was but little more than one-half as large as in 1848. There was no election between 1835 and 1865 when anti-slavery votes seemed so little likely to do any immediate good. The compromise looked like an irreparable error; and many reformers thought they could do nothing better than vote with the Democrats for free trade. IV. The victors in 1852 might have had many years of supremacy, if they had kept true to the Jeffersonian principle of State rights. They were consistent in holding that the position of coloured people in each State ought to be determined by the local majority. The rights of Northerners had been invaded by the new law, which forbade hospitality to fugitives and demanded participation in kidnapping; but this wrong might have been endured if the South had not denied the right of Kansas to become a free State. This was guaranteed by the compromise of 1820, which had been kept by the North. Early in 1854, Senator Douglas of Illinois proposed that the compact should be repudiated, and that it should be left for future settlers to decide whether there should be freedom or slavery in a region ten times as large as Massachusetts, with a fertile soil and a climate warm enough for negro labour.