In the sultry, ominous decade before the Civil War storm, there is a long list of events upon which the opinions of any great journal are of interest. What did the _Evening Post_ think in 1850 of Webster’s Seventh of March speech? How in 1852 did it regard the dismal contest between Pierce and Winfield Scott? What estimate did it place upon “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”? What in 1856 did it say of Brooks’s assault upon Sumner, and of the fierce Buchanan-Fremont contest; and what the next year of the Dred Scott decision? How did Bryant express himself upon the crimes and martyrdom of “Osawatomie” Brown? Readers of an old file of newspapers for those tense years have a sense of sitting at a drama, waiting the approach of a catastrophe which they perfectly foresee, but which the players hope to the last will be avoided. Bryant in the campaign of 1848 had bolted from the regular Democratic ticket along with the other “Barnburners” of New York. The nickname referred to the Dutchman who burned his barn to exterminate the rats, for they were accused of trying to destroy the party to get rid of slavery in the territories. It was impossible for the _Evening Post_ to support the regulars’ nominee, Lewis Cass, who had expressed pro-slavery views, or the Whig nominee, Gen. Zachary Taylor, who owned four hundred slaves. It predicted in June that Taylor would be elected by an enormous majority, and bitterly taunted Polk and the other pro-slavery Democrats because their Texan policy had given the Whigs, headed by the hero of Buena Vista, the Presidency. Its attitude was hostile to both the parties, but particularly to that which had betrayed the ideals of Jackson and Benton. The Barnburners nominated their candidate for the Presidency, Van Buren, at an enthusiastic August convention on the shores of Lake Erie, in Buffalo. The leaders were Bryant, Chase, Charles Francis Adams, Joshua R. Giddings, Preston King--an intimate friend of Bigelow’s--and David Dudley Field. All these men knew they had no chance of victory, and Bryant frankly said as much. But the trumpet-blast of the convention, “We inscribe on our banner Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men,” was echoed and reëchoed by the _Evening Post_ till the day of election. The final appeal, on the day that 300,000 voters cast their ballots for Van Buren, shows how militant its position was: Shall the great republic of the western hemisphere, the greatest which has yet blessed the anxious hope of nations, to which the eyes of millions, now engaged in a desperate struggle for emancipation in Europe, turn as their only encouragement and solace, the republic which was founded by Washington and nourished into vigor by Jefferson and Jackson--shall this republic make itself a byword and a reproach wherever its name is heard? Shall the United States no longer be known as the home of the free and the asylum of the oppressed, but as the hope of the slave and the oppressor of the poor?