upon me, regardless of any personal sacrifices. The Democratic party is now organized, with certainty of success-its principles have triumphed in every issue, until they are settled. Democratic Governors now rule, by the choice of a free people, in twenty-five out of thirty-one States of this glorious Union. In both Houses of Congress the Democratic party is largely in the ascendant; and there remains but one more act for the united Democracy of this great nation to achieve, namely, the election of Pierce and King, to make all safe. The country thus once united, secure, happy, prosperous, and free, with safe men in power, upon a platform of principles clear and unequivocal, settled by the voice of the masses after a hard struggle, our citizens may look forward with full confidence for the development of the resources of this great country. To accomplish this last object, the election of Pierce and King, I shall endeavor to do my part, with the fullest confidence in their success, and with the desire and wish that as they enter upon the duties of the highest offices in the world, on the 4th of March next, I may retire to private life, in order to give my whole time to my professional and private affairs, which have been suffering for some time for want of it. I have come to this conclusion with the less reluctance because Berks, I am proud to say, has many sons more able to serve her in the councils of the nation than I am.

Yours truly,

J. GLANCY JONES.

J. LAWRENCE GETZ, ESQ.

Mr. Jones' successor was only present on the opening day of the first session of the Thirty-third Congress, when he was taken ill, and died in Washington, January 9, 1854. At the County Convention held January 28, 1854, to fill the vacancy, Mr. Jones was offered the nomination with great unanimity, without any solicitation upon his part. In commenting upon the action of the Convention, a local newspaper said: "The nomination ought to be in the highest degree gratifying to Mr. Jones, because it is literally the work of the people. There has been no electioneering, no caucusing, no manoeuvring of cliques, and no pledges offered or exacted to secure this nomination, but it is made in answer to the spontaneous expression of public opinion, and the voice of the people, when permitted to find honest utterance, is rarely wrong.'

Mr. Jones did not want this nomination. Only a short time before, he wrote to a friend: “I am now solicited by my party almost with unanimity to go back to Congress. This I do not incline to." But coming as it did, without any solicitation upon his part and in opposition to his known wishes, he regarded it as a command which he felt bound to obey. In his letter of June 10, 1852, declining a reëlection to Congress, he had said: “I shall ever hold it to be my duty to serve the Democracy of Berks whenever and wherever they may call upon me, regardless of personal sacrifices.' He felt this to be a call to which it was his duty to respond. In writing to a friend, from the House

of Representatives, after he had taken his seat, he began his letter by saying: "Here I am, notwithstanding all my plans and arrangements, destined to be a member of Congress."

Mr. Jones took his seat in the Thirty-third Congress on Monday, February 13, 1854. His continuous service in Congress was only broken by his absence from its sessions for two months, occasioned by his having declined a reëlection. He occupied with his family a furnished house, the property of Duff Green of South Carolina, opposite the southeast corner of the East Capitol grounds, where the Congressional Library now stands.

The slavery question was reopened in Congress at this session by the introduction of a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was supposed, as we have seen, that the agitation of this question had been set at rest, for the time being at least, by the adoption of what were known as the "Compromise Measures of 1850." But it seems that the issue raised by the Abolitionists of the North was not to be so easily disposed of. Little more than three years had elapsed since the country was congratulating itself upon the settlement of this question, when it was reopened with greater violence than ever.

The opposition to slavery in America began with the existence of that institution there. There never was a time in the history of the country when there could not be found those who were shocked at the thought of property in human souls, and who

made it a matter of principle to denounce it. Before the Revolution the Quakers in Pennsylvania turned "out of meeting" all slaveholders who would not liberate their slaves and acknowledge their error. In New England there had always existed the most violent feeling against slavery, both before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States and afterwards. The Abolitionists had secured the exclusion of slavery from the Northwestern Territory by the adoption of the Ordinance of 1787. When Missouri asked for admission into the Union as a slave State in 1820, these same Abolitionists violently opposed its admission unless slavery was abolished within its borders. Slavery then existed in the whole territory which had been ceded to the United States by France, known as the "Louisiana Purchase," of which Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska formed part. After a bitter controversy a compromise was reached, known as the "Missouri Compromise," by which Missouri was admitted into the Union as a slave State, with the proviso that slavery should never thereafter be permitted in any part of the "Louisiana Purchase" north of the parallel of 36° 30' north latitude. The proposed Territories of Kansas and Nebraska were north of that line.

Violent as the opposition to slavery had been, it was not until 1832 that it assumed a formidable organized form. Prior to that time the agitation had been carried on only by earnest individual

effort. There had been small, unimportant societies for the abolition of slavery prior to 1800, in Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, Virginia, and New Jersey. Benjamin Franklin had been at the head of the Pennsylvania society, and John Jay at the head of the one in New York. But none of these societies were aggressive, and soon, through their inertness and the lack of sympathy, ceased to exist. New and more serious opposition to the existence of slavery appeared, however, with the organization of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, January 30, 1832. In October, 1833, a similar society was organized in New York, and other societies of like character were afterwards organized throughout the country. In December, 1833, the first national society was organized in New York, under the name of "The American AntiSlavery Society." A year or two later petitions began to pour into Congress praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in all arsenals, forts, and other places in the slave States where the United States exercised jurisdiction. Though unsuccessful in these efforts, the Abolitionists were not discouraged, but became more and more aggressive as time went on.

As these acts of hostility to slavery increased, the feeling of resentment on the part of the citizens of the Southern States naturally became more bitter and intense. They hotly denounced the Abolitionists of the North for their meddlesome