they could induce the people of the United States to incorporate those paradoxes into the fundamental law of the nation, dominant over both Congress and the Court!  All their previous “compromises” had been merely legislative compromises, which, as their cause advanced, they had themselves annulled.  They now seized the occasion, when the “people” had risen against them, to compel the people to sanction their most extreme demands.  They determined to convert defeat, sustained at the polls, into a victory which would have far transcended any victory they might have gained by electing their candidate, Breckinridge, as President.

A portion of the Republicans, seeing clearly the force arrayed against them, and disbelieving that the population of the Free States would be willing, en masse, to sustain the cause of free labor by force of arms, tried to avert the blow by proposing a new compromise.  Mr. Seward, the calmest, most moderate, and most obnoxious statesman of the Republican party, offered to divide the existing territories of the United States by the Missouri line, all south of which should be open to slave labor.  As he at the same time stated that by natural laws the South could obtain no material advantage by his seeming concession, the concession only made him enemies among the uncompromising champions of the Wilmot Proviso.  The conspirators demanded that the Missouri line should be the boundary, not only between the territories which the United States then possessed, but between the territories they might hereafter acquire.  As the country north of the Missouri line was held by powerful European States which it would be madness to offend, and as the country south of that line was held by feeble States which it would be easy to conquer, no Northern or Western statesman could vote for such a measure without proving himself a rogue or a simpleton.  Hence all measures of “compromise” necessarily failed during the last days of the administration of James Buchanan.

It is plain, that, when Mr. Lincoln—­after having escaped assassination from the “Chivalry” of Maryland, and after having been subjected to a virulence of invective such as no other President had incurred—­arrived at Washington, his mind was utterly unaffected by the illusions of passion.  His Inaugural Message was eminently moderate.  The Slave Power, having failed to delude or bully Congress, or to intimidate the people,—­having failed to murder the elected President on his way to the capital,—­was at wits’ end.  It thought it could still rely on its Northern supporters, as James II. of England thought he could rely on the Church of England.  While the nation, therefore, was busy in expedients to call back the seceded States to their allegiance, the latter suddenly bombarded Fort Sumter, trampled on the American flag, threatened to wave the rattlesnake rag over Faneuil Hall, and to make the Yankees “smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel.”  All this was done