The book raised a tempest of denunciation. The more it was denounced the more it was read. It was easily "the best-selling book" of the time. The concrete reply of the party criticised was first to drive Helper out of North Carolina. Next his book was condemned in a resolution proposed at the opening of Congress in 1859-60, and aimed especially at John Sherman, of Ohio, the Republican candidate for speaker, who had signed a qualified recommendation of the book. After a long contest the Republicans dropped Sherman for Pennington, of New Jersey, whom they elected. _The Impending Crisis_ was a portent and an impulse of the coming catastrophe. CHAPTER XVIII JOHN BROWN About this time there was a revival of activity in the slave trade between Africa and Cuba. The American Government had always acted half-heartedly in its co-operation with the British Government for the suppression of this traffic. Now it happened that some British cruisers in the West Indies stopped and examined some vessels under the American flag, suspected of being slavers. This was resented by the American Government, which sent war ships to the scene and took the British Government to task. In Congress both parties joined in denunciation of British aggression. The right of search, exercised by England for the reclamation of her seamen from American vessels, had been one of the grounds of war in 1812. It had been left unmentioned in the treaty of peace, but England had silently relinquished the practice. Now, at the demand of the United States, she expressly relinquished the right of search in the case of supposed slave ships under the American flag, unless the result should justify the suspicion. Thus the honor of the Stars and Stripes was vindicated,--and the flag was made a great convenience to slavers. The administration, however, bestirred itself toward doing its own share in the work of sea-police, and several slave ships were captured. The crew of one of these were acquitted, by a Charleston jury, against the clearest evidence. There was some open talk in the Southern papers of legalizing the traffic. But the trade was destined to a discouraging check a year or two later, when President Lincoln signed the first death warrant of the captain of a slaver.