6. The churches were prospering under their increased attentions to education. A larger culture was coming to those who filled the pulpits at home, and devoted men like Dr. Matthew T. Yates were going to heathen lands to spend their lives for the good of other races. The Episcopal Church had abundant compensation in the wisdom and virtues of Bishop Atkinson for the loss of Bishop Ives, upon his leaving that communion for the Church of Rome. The great slavery controversy was bringing trouble and division to the Baptists and Methodists, and thus, not only statesmen and politicians, but ministers of the Gospel, were also set at variance. 1854. 7. From Massachusetts was sent, at this period, a new and startling impulse to the Northern pulpits and hustings. It had been the peculiar glory of the American people that they were the originators of the great doctrine and practice of religious liberty. A new party, calling themselves the "KnowNothings," had carried that State and were proclaiming their opposition to all Roman Catholics as public officers. The "Know-Nothings" were also called the "American Party," and their motto was "America for Americans." 8. This was to prove a short-lived and pernicious movement. It not only contravened the noblest American precedents, but at once combined all the ends and fragments of parties which had previously opposed the great organization that had been led by Jefferson and Jackson. Besides their hostility to the Roman Catholic religion, they inculcated one other principle; this was opposition to the naturalization of foreign immigrants until after a residence of twenty-one years within the borders of the United States. The success of this new party ended in the Virginia campaign between Governor Wise and T. S. Flournoy. 1855. 9. About this time another party began to be prominent in the Northern States. It was called the "Republican Party," and was the outgrowth of the notorious controversy over the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress. This statute was, in effect, but a continuance of the legislation in regard to California, and amounted to little beyond transferring the question of slave or free territory from Congress to the new States. The North, however, was fanatically bent on the destruction of slavery everywhere within the United States, and would not consent that each new State should settle the question for itself. On the contrary, it was determined to prohibit the spread of slavery whether the people in the new States and Territories desired it or not. 10. It was soon seen, therefore, in the bloody conflicts between the settlers from the North and those from the South, especially in Kansas, that "Squatter Sovereignty" would neither afford protection to Southern immigrants in removing with their property there, nor any prospect of a fair solution of a vexed question. 1857.