This change, beginning with the defeat of Van Buren in 1844, was at first slow; but it had afterwards moved so rapidly and so far, that men in the North, who wished to remain in the ranks of the Democracy, were compelled to trample on the…

The traditions of Jefferson, of Madison, of Jackson, were devoutly treasured; and the splendid achievements of the American Democracy were recounted with the pride which attaches to an honorable family inheritance.

It was remembered that Louisiana had been acquired from France, Florida from Spain, the independent Republic of Texas annexed, and California, with its vast dependencies, and its myriad millions of treasure, ceded by Mexico, all under…

That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro, in a region where his labor was not wanted, was, to many of its members, as incomprehensible as it…

Time might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle subordinated to passion, with…

He had conceived the utterly impracticable scheme of liberating the slaves of the South by calling on them to rise, putting arms in their hands, and aiding them to gain their freedom.

While of sound mind on most subjects, Brown had evidently lost his mental balance on the one topic of slavery.

Mason's committee found no sentiment in the North justifying Brown, but the irritating and offensive course of the Virginia senator called forth a great deal of defiant anti-slavery expression which, in his judgment, was tantamount to…

He would not permit the plea of unsound mind to be made on his behalf, and to the end he behaved with that calm courage which always attracts respect and admiration.

Instead of injuring the Republican party, this very fact increased its strength in the North.

The terror of the South at the bare prospect of a negro insurrection led many who had not before studied the slavery question to give serious heed to this phase of it.

The least reflection led men to see that a domestic institution must be very undesirable which could keep an entire community of brave men in dread of some indefinable tragedy.

Instead, therefore, of arresting the spread of Republican principles, the mad scheme of John Brown tended to develop and strengthen them.

False charges being constantly repeated and plied with incessant zeal, the most radical misconception became fixed in the Southern mind.

It was idle for the Republican party to declare that their aim was only to prevent the extension of slavery to free territory, and that they were pledged not to interfere with its existence in the States.

Their leaders had taught them that the one necessarily involved the other, and that a man who was in favor of the Wilmot Proviso was as bitter an enemy to the South as one who incited a servile insurrection.

If they were, in fact, the friends to the South which they so loudly proclaimed themselves to be, now was the time to show their faith by their works.

But they were fighting for a principle, and would not surrender it or compromise it.

For the first time in the history of national Democratic conventions the Northern delegates refused to submit to the exactions of the South.

But now the Northern men, pressed by the rising tide of Republicanism in every free State, demanded some ground on which they could stand and make a contest at home.

The courage of the Northern Democrats was more conspicuously shown in their resistance to these demands than in the declarations which they desired to substitute.

Had the Democracy presented Douglas and Breckinridge as their National nominees, they would have combined all the elements of strength in their party.

The South was implacable toward Douglas, and deliberately resolved to accept defeat rather than secure a victory under his lead.

Confidence of strength is as potential an element in a political canvass as in a military campaign, and never was a more defiant sense of power exhibited than by the Chicago convention of 1860 and by the vast throng which surrounded its…

Such a feeling is contagious, and it spread from that centre until it enveloped the free States.