The year 1856 opened with this critical, this unprecedented condition of affairs. In all classes there was deep excitement. With thoughtful men, both North and South, there was serious solicitude. The country approached the strife of another Presidential election with the consciences of men thoroughly aroused, with their passions profoundly stirred. Three parties were coming into the field, and it seemed impossible that any candidate could secure the approval of a majority of the voters in the Union. In the Democratic ranks there was angry contention. President Pierce, who had risked every thing for the South, and had received unmeasured obloquy in the North, was naturally anxious that his administration should be approved by his own party. With all the patronage at his command, he vigorously sought a renomination. But the party desired victory, and they feared a contest which involved an approval of the President's recreancy to solemn pledges voluntarily given. He had been inaugurated with the applause and confidence of a nation. He was sustained in the end by a helpless faction of a disorganized party. The distinguished secretary of State suffered with the President. Mr. Marcy had personally disapproved the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but he made no opposition, and the people held him equally if not doubly guilty. It was said at the time that New- York friends urged him to save his high reputation by resigning his seat in the cabinet. But he remained, in the delusive hope that he should receive credit for the evil he might prevent. He was pertinently reminded that the evil he might prevent would never be known, whereas the evil to which he consented would be read of all men. New York had hopelessly revolted from Democratic control, and Mr. Marcy's name was not presented as a Presidential candidate, though he was at that time the ablest statesman of the Democratic party. Mr. Douglas was also unavailable. He had gained great popularity in the South by his course in repealing the Missouri Compromise, but he had been visited with signal condemnation in the North. His own State, always Democratic, which had stood firmly for the party even in the overthrow of 1840, had now failed to sustain him,--had, indeed, pointedly rebuked him by choosing an opposition Legislature and sending Lyman Trumbull, then an anti- slavery Republican, as his colleague in the Senate. General Cass was seventy-four years old, and he was under the same condemnation with Pierce and Marcy and Douglas. He had voted to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and Michigan, which had never before faltered in his support, now turned against him and embittered his declining years by an expression of popular disapproval, which could not have been more emphatic.