[5] The Senator from Virginia has stated that the Republican party originated in New England, from Know Nothingism. It is not true, sir; it had no such origin; it originated in no such place and from no such source. The Republican party was born in Michigan, on the sixth day of July, 1854. It had no origin from Know Nothingism or any other thing, except the outrageous, the infamous repeal of the time-honored Missouri compromise by the Congress of that year. It was christened the Republican party at its birth. It is perfectly evident the Senator from Virginia knows nothing at all about the Republican party, its origin, its ends, or its aims. He does not know anything about its birth or its principles. I merely wish to correct the misapprehension on his part that it was born in New England or anywhere else out of the State of Michigan. There is where it was born, sir; and we glory in the production of such a child.--_Mr. Chandler in the Senate, December 14, 1859, in reply to Senator Mason, of Virginia._ [6] Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America," volume 2, page 412. CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST ELECTION TO THE SENATE. The abrogation of the Missouri compromise was followed by the arbitrary enforcement of the Fugitive Slave act in important Northern cities, and by a determined struggle between freedom and slavery for the possession of the virgin soil of Kansas. These phases of "the irrepressible conflict" were attended by many exciting incidents which constantly strengthened the new anti-slavery party in the North and in the end made it the main competitor of the Democracy in the presidential election of 1856. The decisive character of its victory in Michigan in 1854 made Republicanism especially strong in that State, and the events of each successive month of 1855 and 1856 added to its power both in numbers and in sentiment. Throughout this period Mr. Chandler labored, in public and in private, and with earnestness and effect, to inspire the new party with vigor of conviction and unflinching firmness of purpose. No man did more than he to make it thoroughly "radical," and his former prominence as a Whig rendered his efforts especially fruitful. His earliest Republican speeches did not differ from his latest in courage of opinion, in plainness of expression, or in manifest sincerity of conviction. On September 12, 1855, he addressed, with Henry Wilson, an immense mass-meeting at Kalamazoo, and denounced the border-ruffian crimes in Kansas in the strongest terms. On the 30th of May, 1856, he was one of the speakers at a large meeting held in the city of Detroit to consider the assault of Preston Brooks upon Charles Sumner. He there gave expression to Republican indignation in the plainest language. After fitly describing the era of pro-slavery murder in Kansas, and the recent crime of "a cowardly assassin on the very floor of the Senate of the United States," he offered two resolutions,