interference with the domestic institutions of sovereign States of which they were not citizens, in which slavery was recognized and protected by the Constitution and the laws of the country, and for which they were not in the least degree responsible.

The long agitation of this question by the Abolitionists, bitter and disturbing as it was, had accomplished little or nothing thus far but unrest and bad feeling. Politically the movement was very weak. In 1840, when the Abolitionists placed James G. Birney of Ohio in the field as their first candidate for President, he received only 7,059 votes, out of a total vote of nearly two millions and a half. So rapidly, however, did the movement increase, that the same candidate four years later received 62,300 votes. This large increase was due to the fact that Mr. Clay, the Whig candidate for President, did not base his objection to the admission of Texas into the Union upon the ground that it was a slave State.

The fact that slavery was recognized and protected by the highest law of the land, and was a lawfully established social institution which they, as law-abiding citizens, were at least bound to tolerate, made no impression whatever upon the minds or the actions of the Abolitionists. That view of the case never seems to have restrained them. They were influenced by nothing but the conviction that slavery was wrong, and never stopped to inquire what right they had to meddle with it, or what the cost or consequence of their

interference might be. They assailed it everywhere, nor did they have any scruples about the means they made use of for its suppression. They circulated incendiary printed matter through the mails in the South, calculated to incite the slaves to insurrection; they opposed the return of fugitive slaves; they encouraged the slaves to run away from their masters, and they harbored, concealed, and protected those who were able to escape. The revolutionary character of the antislavery movement was further practically disclosed in the violence with which they set up an insurrectionary government in Kansas in defiance of the lawfully constituted authority, and in the encouragement they gave to John Brown's raid into Virginia.

The modern Abolitionist was not called upon to deal with slavery as a domestic institution affecting his own social life or environment. He was a self-appointed crusader, and his mission was purely an impersonal one. He meddled with the affairs of other people because he considered himself under a moral obligation to do so. So strong were his convictions and the enthusiasm with which they inspired him, that he felt himself justified in taking a man's property from him without his consent, though that property was as fully recognized and protected by law as any other form of property, because he believed it was wrong for a man to own his slave. He set up the inalienable right of private judgment above the

law, and that in matters which affected others, and not himself; and he acted upon that judgment in defiance of law.

Though the Abolitionists were at first but a small band of zealous fanatics, they persisted in their agitation until they gradually succeeded in propagating their moral ideas among the masses of the Northern people, and ultimately absorbed within their ranks all the elements of opposition to the Democratic party in the North. They did more: they finally succeeded in getting rid of slavery in the United States, though at a frightful cost of blood and treasure.

The reopening of the slavery question in 1850, which resulted in the Compromise Measures of that year, was caused by the acquisition of the vast territory west of the "Louisiana Purchase" which had been ceded to the United States by Mexico, as the result of the war with that country, in which territory the status of slavery was not defined. The agitation was begun by the introduction of what was known as the "Wilmot Proviso," which provided that slavery should be excluded from the whole of this newly acquired territory. This proviso was finally defeated in the House on the 4th of January, 1850, by the decisive vote of 105 to 75. It was followed by the introduction into the Senate of the five measures known as the "Compromise Measures," which were adopted by Congress in September, 1850, a few weeks before Mr. Jones was elected to Congress for the first time.

At the time the "Missouri Compromise" was adopted, the country north of 36° 30' was a wild district inhabited only by Indian tribes and wild beasts. Thirty years later the white settlements had pushed out into this rich agricultural domain, and it was thought that Kansas, especially, was adapted to the profitable use of slave labor.

The bill for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska had been reported by the committee before Mr. Jones took his seat in the Thirty-third Congress. By its provisions, the people of those Territories were to be permitted to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, and were to be admitted as States, with or without slavery, as their constitutions should provide. It will be observed, therefore, that this act repealed the "Missouri Compromise." It was Stephen A. Douglas, an able and popular Democratic statesman who was a Senator from the State of Illinois, and who was at that time a prominent Democratic candidate for the Presidency, who had incorporated into the bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska the provisions repealing the "Missouri Compromise" and allowing the people of these Territories to settle the question of slavery in their

own way.

It was contended by Mr. Jones and the other friends of this measure that, as the Territories were the property of the United States and under its government, the rights of all citizens of the

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United States were the same there, no matter in what State the citizen might reside; and that as the Territories were open to all alike, every citizen of the United States had an equal right to take with him into any Territory, and hold there, anything recognized as property by the laws of the State of which he was a citizen, whether that property consisted of a slave or any other chattel. This constitutional right was afterwards sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case.

The introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill led to a protracted and bitter debate. It was the commencement of the Kansas-Nebraska agitation, which convulsed the whole country for several years, ultimately dividing the Democratic party, and culminating in the election of Lincoln and the Civil War. Several Democrats in the Senate and House voted against the bill, which was adopted however, by a party vote, with these provisions incorporated in it. Mr. Jones acted throughout with the Democratic party in support of this measure, which passed the House in May, 1854, amid great excitement, by the close vote of 113 to 100. The bill was passed late in the night session, and immediately thereafter guns were fired in the East Capitol grounds, to celebrate the victory.

One of the most exciting incidents of the session which grew out of the debate upon the KansasNebraska Bill was the Cutting-Breckinridge affair. Certain Democratic members of Congress from