If Douglas fancied that the North would receive the overthrow of the Missouri Compromise in the same temper that it greeted Clay’s settlement, he was rapidly disillusioned.  A blast of rage, terrific in its fury, swept from Maine to Iowa.  Staid old Boston hanged him in effigy with an inscription—­“Stephen A. Douglas, author of the infamous Nebraska bill:  the Benedict Arnold of 1854.”  City after city burned him in effigy until, as he himself said, he could travel from the Atlantic coast to Chicago in the light of the fires.  Thousands of Whigs and Free-soil Democrats deserted their parties which had sanctioned or at least tolerated the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, declaring that the startling measure showed an evident resolve on the part of the planters to rule the whole country.  A gage of defiance was thrown down to the abolitionists.  An issue was set even for the moderate and timid who had been unmoved by the agitation over slavery in the Far South.  That issue was whether slavery was to be confined within its existing boundaries or be allowed to spread without interference, thereby placing the free states in the minority and surrendering the federal government wholly to the slave power.

=The Rise of the Republican Party.=—­Events of terrible significance, swiftly following, drove the country like a ship before a gale straight into civil war.  The Kansas-Nebraska Bill rent the old parties asunder and called into being the Republican party.  While that bill was pending in Congress, many Northern Whigs and Democrats had come to the conclusion that a new party dedicated to freedom in the territories must follow the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  Several places claim to be the original home of the Republican party; but historians generally yield it to Wisconsin.  At Ripon in that state, a mass meeting of Whigs and Democrats assembled in February, 1854, and resolved to form a new party if the Kansas-Nebraska Bill should pass.  At a second meeting a fusion committee representing Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats was formed and the name Republican—­the name of Jefferson’s old party—­was selected.  All over the country similar meetings were held and political committees were organized.

When the presidential campaign of 1856 began the Republicans entered the contest.  After a preliminary conference in Pittsburgh in February, they held a convention in Philadelphia at which was drawn up a platform opposing the extension of slavery to the territories.  John C. Fremont, the distinguished explorer, was named for the presidency.  The results of the election were astounding as compared with the Free-soil failure of the preceding election.  Prominent men like Longfellow, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and George William Curtis went over to the new party and 1,341,264 votes were rolled up for “free labor, free speech, free men, free Kansas, and Fremont.”  Nevertheless the victory of the Democrats was decisive.  Their candidate, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, was elected by a majority of 174 to 114 electoral votes.