the Governor of the free State; Silas C. Pomeroy, afterward Senator from the new State; and others whose names are gratefully remembered by the early settlers of that dark and troublous time.

When the local elections came on, the border ruffians showed that they were more than a match for the law-abiding and orderly free-State men. These were astounded by the audacity and coolness with which the border men took possession of the polls, voted as often as they pleased, and carried things generally with a high hand. In one instance, for example, the borderers brought with them a directory of the city of St. Louis, and put page after page of names from that book upon the poll-list, with votes for the proslavery candidates for office and for slavery, in precincts where there were but few votes. In another precinct, they formed a lane of their gangs, leading up to the door of the log cabin where the ballot-box was put. When the voter approached, he was obliged to show his ballot; if it was for slavery, he was permitted to deposit it in the box; if not, he was jocularly lifted to the roof of the cabin, where a squad of stalwart men received him, hurried him over the ridge-pole, and slid him down on the other side, when he was permitted to escape, Outrages like these

glad to get away with his life. were committed every day, and in more than one instance, death followed the least resistance to tyranny.

Massacres were frequent, and the soil of the unhappy young Territory was literally wet with blood. The watchword "Bleeding Kansas," which was derided then and afterward by the friends of slavery,

described in a terse phrase the condition of the region where the battle of freedom was being fought. In these disturbances, a son of Ossawattomie Brown was slain, and the father made a vow to avenge on slavery the death of his son. Ruined homesteads were to be seen on every hand, and for a time the borderers, with the National Government at their back and the militia troops of Missouri within assisting distance, carried the day. Slavery was "voted up" by such means as have been described, and a government was established on the basis of the right of any man to own human beings in the new territory of Kansas. The story of these shameful wrongs and outrages was spread abroad and made a profound impression all over the country. But the raiders did not stay on the soil they had apparently conquered for slavery. They went back to their haunts on the Missouri side of the border, and after a while the institution for which they had committed so many crimes grew more and more feeble. The slaves ran away, for there were free States near at hand where they could hide, and pursuit in so unsettled a condition of the country was almost hopeless. President Pierce, and President Buchanan after him, appointed governor after governor. The Territory must be saved to slavery; but this was more than any governor could accomplish. And when the exactions of the proslavery party at Washington became more oppressive, each governor resigned and went home. Kansas was grimly called "the graveyard of territorial governors."

All this time Kansas was merely a Territory, subject to the rule of Congress, and governed by officers appointed by the President-not by men elected by the people. The time would come when the Territory must be admitted into the family of States, and be allowed to choose its own Legislature, governor, and other officers. Slavery must be fixed upon the people before that time arrived. The free-State men, in their desperation, organized a State government, framed a constitution with slavery left out, and elected a Governor, Charles Robinson. They established their State capital at Topeka. The regular territorial Legislature and seat of government were established at Lecompton. To say that Lincoln's heart was stirred by the daily report of outrages committed in Kansas, for the sake of slavery, feebly expresses the indignation with which he was inflamed. Yet, cool and calm, logical and shrewd, as he always was, he made no inflammatory speeches, and showed in public no signs of the excitement that reigned within. About that time, he wrote a letter to his well-beloved friend Joshua Speed, of Kentucky-one who not only lived in a slave State, but was still attached to the interests of slavery. The following extract indicates the position which these two friends then held towards slavery in Kansas:

"You say if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a Christian you will rather rejoice at it. All decent slaveholders talk that way, and I do not doubt their candor. But they never vote that way. Although in a private letter or conversation you will express your preference

that Kansas shall be free, you would vote for no man for Congress who would say the same thing publicly. No such man could be elected, from any district of any slave State. You think Stringfellow & Co. ought to be hung; and yet you will vote for the exact type and representative of Stringfellow. The slave-breeders and slavetraders are a small and detested class among you, and yet in politics they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters as you are the masters of your own negroes."

Up to the time of the setting up of the Kansas infamy, Lincoln was still reckoned as a Whig. That party, to be sure, was in a dying condition. But no new party had been formed to take its place, or to receive those who were to come out from it. The election of Trumbull, as Senator from Illinois, was the only election of a Democrat who was opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. It astonished the friends of Douglas, who had not believed that the opposition could accomplish anything so formidable as this. But, after all, the defeat of Lincoln showed that there was only a split in the Democratic party, as men then regarded the political situation. What did Lincoln propose to do about slavery? Would he abolish it altogether, and so put an end to this everlasting agitation? He was shrewd enough to know that the country could no longer live in peace half slave and half free. There was no doubt that he would do whatever he could to prevent the further extension of slavery into Territories that were hereafter to become States. But he knew that slavery, confined to the States in which it existed,

would swell, and chafe, and threaten continually to break over its bounds. In the speech delivered at Peoria, in October, 1854, Lincoln said:

"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberiato their own native land. But, if they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there is not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. What then?”

This was a question that Lincoln could not answer. But, it must be remembered, this was in 1854.

To those who know what Lincoln did when he became President, and who know how slavery came to an end during his term in the Presidential office, his reluctance to join what was at that time known as the Abolition party may seem difficult of explanation. But Lincoln was a statesman. If he could have had supreme power, as he expressed it, he would have undoubtedly made the slaves free. But, as he did not have that power, it was his mission, clearly, to move in such a way as to bring to pass, as soon as might be, the time when slaves should be freed without violence, if possible, and certainly without war. At once, as we have seen, he took his stand against any further extension of slavery. He knew better, probably, than anybody else did that if slavery were shut out of the Territories it would, in the course of time, die of itself. As he repeatedly expressed it, we could not exist