The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was the beginning of the end of slavery. It was noticed that there could be no peace with Northern industry and progress advancing rapidly and hastening the formation of new States, while the South was standing still. A number of new and very able men had been called into the political arena by the slavery agitation. Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, and Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, were both elected to the Senate by a solid Democratic vote, united with the Free Soilers of their respective Legislatures. Henry Wilson, the “Natick Cobbler,” had become more potent in Massachusetts than was Webster at the time of his death; and the antislavery sentiment was visibly and speedily growing toward immense proportions. The Whig party made its final battle in 1852, although it was nominally in the field in 1856, and a new party was created out of the odds and ends of the old Native American party. Opposition to Catholics had been intensified by Pierce appointing Judge Campbell, of Philadelphia, Postmaster-General. He was a very able and faithful Cabinet officer, and there was no pretence that his religious views in any way influenced his official appointments, but it revived the embers of Native Americanism, and the great mass of the Whigs, who knew that the Whig party had practically perished, and the antislavery Democrats were without political vocations. They were like the Federalists who first found refuge in anti-Masonry, and with anti-Masonry afterward found refuge in the Whig party. The result was the very rapid spread of the new American, or what was commonly called the Know-Nothing party, with secret lodges and its members all sworn not to divulge the movements of the organization and to vote for its nominated candidates. It exhibited wonderful strength in many localities early in 1854, and it was not uncommon in local elections, when the vote was counted, to find that all the officers elected were unknown to the public as candidates. Its first important triumph was in the municipal election of Philadelphia in May, 1854, when Judge Conrad, candidate of the Whigs and secret candidate of the Know-Nothings, was elected Mayor by an overwhelming majority. The Democrats lost a large number of their ablest men on the slavery issue, provoked to defection by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and it was evident that the party would be divided in the next national campaign; but the various elements of opposition were even more incongruous and had little prospect of anything approaching the unity necessary to succeed. Pierce, like Fillmore, Polk, and Tyler, was a candidate for re-election, but failed disastrously in his own convention after wielding the power of his position to the uttermost, and his administration ended with the country rent by sectional feuds and gravely threatened with fraternal war. THE BUCHANAN-FREMONT-FILLMORE CONTEST 1856