incapacitated by injuries to his spine for nearly five years.  Brooks, with a virtuous air, explained in Congress that he had caught Sumner in a helpless attitude because if Sumner had been free to use his superior strength he, Brooks, would have had to shoot him with his revolver.  It seems to be hardly an exaggeration to say that the whole South applauded Brooks and exulted.  Exuberant Southerners took to challenging Northern men, knowing well that their principles compelled them to refuse duels, but that the refusal would still be humiliating to the North.  Brooks himself challenged Burlingame, a distinguished Congressman afterwards sent by Lincoln as Minister to China, who had denounced him.  Burlingame accepted, and his second arranged for a rifle duel at a wild spot across the frontier at Niagara.  Brooks then drew back; he alleged, perhaps sincerely, that he would have been murdered on his way through the Northern States, but Northern people were a little solaced.  The whole disgusting story contains only one pleasant incident.  Preston Brooks, who, after numbers of congratulations, testimonials, and presentations, died within a year of his famous exploit, had first confessed himself tired of being a hero to every vulgar bully in the South!

Now, though this dangerous temper burned steadily in the South, and there were always sturdy Republicans ready to provoke it, and questions arising out of slavery would constantly recur to disturb high political circles, it is not to be imagined that opinion in the North, the growing and bustling portion of the States, would remain for years excited about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  In 1857 men’s minds were agitated by a great commercial depression and collapse of credit, and in 1858 there took place one of the most curious (for it would seem to have deserved this cold description) of evanescent religious revivals.  Meanwhile, by 1857 the actual bloodshed in Kansas had come to an end under the administration of an able Governor; the enormous majority of settlers in Kansas were now known to be against slavery and it was probably assumed that the legalisation of slavery could not be forced upon them.  Prohibition of slavery there by Congress thus began to seem needless, and the Dred Scott judgments raised at least a grave doubt as to whether it was possible.  Thus enthusiasm for the original platform of the Republicans was cooling down, and to the further embarrassment of that party, when towards the end of 1857 the Southern leaders attempted a legislative outrage, the great champion of the Northern protest was not a Republican, but Douglas himself.