THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTHERN CONSPIRACY--THE ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Mr. Chandler became a Senator of the United States at the time when the Southern followers of John C. Calhoun had determined that the preservation of slavery was impossible without disunion, and had commenced preparations for that desperate measure of defense. The heavy vote given to Fremont in the North, the failure of the attempt to plant slavery in Kansas, the widening schism in the Democracy itself on the issue of slavery-extension, and the certainty that the census of 1860 would greatly increase the voting power in Congress of the North and Northwest--all made it plain that the South could not reinforce its waning strength with new slave States. Its leaders saw that the alternative before them was a systematic repression of slavery pointing toward its ultimate extinction, or the creation of a new government pretending to be a republic but "with its foundations laid, its corner-stone resting upon, the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."[8] Every civilized instinct urged them to assent to peaceful and gradual emancipation, but they chose the alternative of disunion from a belief that in no other way could the political ascendancy so long enjoyed by the ruling classes of the South be maintained. The administration of James Buchanan was their period of preparation. Whatever of needed assistance his sympathy failed to supply was furnished by his imbecility of purpose. In his Cabinet and in federal offices throughout the South active disunionists plotted and labored to make all things ready for rebellion and unready for its suppression. Chronic compromisers, Northern believers in slavery, and State Rights theorists were their useful allies. In Congress they threatened and bullied, and month by month made the demands of slavery more arrogant and exacting, scheming to kindle the war spirit of the South and to widen the breach between the sections, until they could offer to the North the ultimatum of abject surrender to the slave power or disunion and civil strife. The representatives of the North at Washington met these early developments of treason in various moods; there was no lack among them of those who were inclined to submit; there were many who disbelieved in the reality of the purpose underlying Southern vaporing and bluster, and this class included earnest and able Republicans; but there were also some who did not doubt that the slave power would try secession before accepting defeat, and who, yielding not one inch of the right to menaces, proposed to treat disunion, whether threatened or attempted, as treason and to denounce and resist it as such.