The long political struggle was over. A more serious one was about to begin. For the first time in the history of the government, the South was defeated in a Presidential election where an issue affecting the slavery question was involved. There had been grave conflicts before, sometimes followed by compromise, oftener by victory for the South. But the election of 1860 was the culmination of a contest which was foreshadowed by the Louisiana question of 1812; which became active and angry over the admission of Missouri; which was revived by the annexation of Texas, and still further inflamed by the Mexican war; which was partially allayed by the compromises of 1850; which was precipitated for final settlement by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, by the consequent struggle for mastery in Kansas, and by the aggressive intervention of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. These are the events which led, often slowly, but always with directness, to the political revolution of 1860. The contest was inevitable, and the men whose influence developed and encouraged it may charitably be regarded as the blind agents of fate. But if personal responsibility for prematurely forcing the conflict belongs to any body of men, it attaches to those who, in 1854, broke down the adjustments of 1820 and of 1850. If the compromises of those years could not be maintained, the North believed that all compromise was impossible; and they prepared for the struggle which this fact foreshadowed. They had come to believe that the house divided against itself could not stand; that the Republic half slave, half free, could not endure. They accepted as their leader the man who proclaimed these truths. The peaceful revolution was complete when Abraham Lincoln was chosen President of the United States.