[Footnote 1:  One in each Congressional district except those containing Chicago and Springfield, where both Lincoln and Douglas had already spoken.  For a short account of their debates see the Century Magazine for July, 1887, p. 386.]

[Footnote 2:  Rhodes’s History of the United States, Vol.  II., pp. 308-339.  Nicolay and Hay’s Life of Lincoln, Vol.  II., Chaps. 10-16.  John T. Morse’s Life of Lincoln, Vol.  I., Chap. 6.]

%399.  John Brown’s Raid into Virginia%.—­As slavery had become the great political issue of the day, it is not surprising that it excited a lifelong and bitter enemy of slavery to do a foolish act.  John Brown was a man of intense convictions and a deep-seated hatred of slavery.  When the border ruffianism broke out in Kansas in 1855, he went there with arms and money, and soon became so prominent that he was outlawed and a price set on his head.  In 1858 he left Kansas, and in July, 1859, settled near Harpers Ferry, Va. (p. 360).  His purpose was to stir up a slave insurrection in Virginia, and so secure the liberation of the negroes.  With this in view, one Sunday night in October, 1859, he with less than twenty followers seized the United States armory at Harpers Perry and freed as many slaves and arrested as many whites as possible.  But no insurrection or uprising of slaves followed, and before he could escape to the mountains he was surrounded and captured by Robert E. Lee, then a colonel in the army of the United States.  Brown was tried on the charges of murder and of treason against the state of Virginia, was found guilty, and in December, 1859, was hanged.

[Illustration:  Harpers Ferry]

%400.  Split in the Democratic Party.%—­Thus it was that one event after another prolonged the struggle with slavery till 1860, when the people were once more to elect a President.

The Democratic nominating convention assembled at Charleston, S.C., in April, and at once went to pieces.  A strong majority made up of Northern delegates insisted that the party should declare—­“That all questions in regard to the rights of property in states or territories arising under the Constitution of the United States are judicial in their character, and the Democratic party is pledged to abide by and faithfully carry out such determination of these questions as has been or may be made by the Supreme Court of the United States.”

This meant to carry out the doctrine laid down in the Dred Scott decision, and was in conflict with the “popular sovereignty” doctrine of Douglas, which was that right of the people to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect and complete.  The minority, composed of the extreme Southern men, rejected the former plan and insisted

1.  “That the Democracy of the United States hold these cardinal principles on the subject of slavery in the territories:  First, that Congress has no power to abolish slavery in the territories.  Second, that the territorial legislature has no power to abolish slavery in any territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of slaves therein, nor any power to exclude slavery therefrom, nor any right to destroy or impair the right of property in slaves by any legislation whatever.”