—the colonizing stream with which the great and populous State of Ohio, from 1840 fecundated the prairies of the West might have poured to a considerable extent into the valleys of the Blue Ridge, the Alleghany and the Cumberland mountains along the lines of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad to meet and mingle with the stream which had been moving westward from South Carolina, since 1820.[151] In such a case the country might and in all probability would have developed at a slower pace; but it would have been as a more homogeneous people. It is idle to declare that there was an irrepressible conflict. That has always been the claim of those who are determined to precipitate such and are absolutely dead to— “the influence of a free, social and commercial intercourse, in softening asperities, removing prejudices, extending knowledge and promoting human happiness.” FOOTNOTES: [143] U. S. Census, 1850 p. 190. [144] McMaster, The people of the United States, between 1854 and 1860, Vol. VIII. Hanleiter, Speech Robert Harper, 1858. [145] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 255. [146] Trotter, Finances of North American States, p. 244. [147] Pinckney, Life of John C. Calhoun, p. 212. [148] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 266. [149] Stephens, History of the United States, p. 561. [150] Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 247. [151] McCrady, History of S. C. Vol. I, p. 1. CHAPTER VIII The presidential election of 1852, tended at first to allay excitement. A New Englander, affiliating closely with Southern men, Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, won the Democratic nomination over competitors much more prominent. Of these competitors Buchanan and Cass had long and intimately been connected with the party leaders of their States in the time of Andrew Jackson; trained in the old school of politics; drawing what strength they had from faithful service. The third competitor, a comparatively new leader in the West, forceful, aggressive and impatient of restraint, Stephen A. Douglas, was of an entirely different type. Determined to make a spoon or spoil a horn, he evolved the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, and with it soon had the country in a turmoil.