organization, and all resistance to the Territorial government established by Congress, have been finally abandoned. As a natural consequence, that fine Territory now appears to be tranquil and prosperous, and is attracting increasing thousands of immigrants to make it their happy home. The past unfortunate experience of Kansas has enforced the lesson, so often already taught, that resistance to lawful authority, under our form of government, cannot fail in the end to prove disastrous to its authors. The people of Kansas, from this time forward, "left to manage their own affairs in their own way, without the presence of external influence," found that they could decide this question of slavery by their own votes, and that the stimulus and the materials for fighting, which had been supplied to them from the Northern or the Southern States, were poor means in comparison with the ballot-box. The anti-slavery party were numerically the strongest; and having now given up all factious resistance to the Territorial government, they were able, under its auspices, to establish a free constitution, under which the State was admitted into the Union on the 29th of January, 1861. But the effect of this struggle, precipitated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and carried on for a period of seven years, was most disastrous to the peace and harmony of the Union. It fixed the attention of both sections of the Union upon a subject of the most inflammatory nature. On the one hand, the Democratic party, which extended throughout all the States, slaveholding and non-slaveholding, and which had elected Mr. Buchanan by the votes of both free and slave States, no longer had a common bond of party union in a common principle of action on the question of slavery in Territories. A portion of the party, under the lead of Mr. Douglas, and known as "the Northern Democracy," rejected the doctrine enunciated by the Judges of the Supreme Court, and still adhered to their principle of "popular sovereignty." The residue of the party, calling themselves "the Old Democracy," adhered to what they regarded as the decision of the court, maintained that the time for the people of a Territory to act on the subject of slavery was when forming and adopting a State constitution, and that in the previous period, the equal right of all the States in the common property of the Union could be respected only by confining the power of the people of a Territory to the time of adopting a constitution. On the other hand, the new party, to which these events had given birth, and into which were now consolidating all the elements of the antislavery feeling of the free States, rejected entirely the principle enunciated by a majority of the Supreme Court, maintained that the Southern slave-holder could have no right to hold as property in a Territory that which was property at all only under the local law of a slave-holding State, and proclaimed that Congress must, by positive statute, annul any such supposed right in regard to all existing and all future Territories. If these conflicting sectional feelings and interests could have been confined to the practical question of what was to be done in the Territories before they should become States, there might have been less danger resulting from their agitation. In the nature of things, however, they could not be so confined. They brought into renewed discussion the whole subject of slavery everywhere, until the North and the South became involved in a struggle for the Presidency that was made to turn almost exclusively upon this one topic. But how this came about, and how it resulted in an attempted disruption of the Union, must be related hereafter. CHAPTER X. FOREIGN RELATIONS DURING MR. BUCHANAN'S ADMINISTRATION. THE internal affairs of the country during the administration of Mr. Buchanan occupied so much of the public attention at the time, and have since been a subject of so much interest, that his management of our foreign relations has been quite obscured. Before I approach the troubled period which witnessed the beginning of the Southern revolt, I shall describe, with as much brevity as I can use, whatever is most important in the relations of the United States with other countries, that transpired during his Presidency. It will be seen, hereafter, from what he recorded in his private papers at the time of the resignation of General Cass from the State Department, in the latter part of the year 1860, that Mr. Buchanan had to be virtually his own Secretary of State, until Judge Black succeeded to that office. This was less irksome to him than it might have been to other Presidents, because of his great familiarity with the diplomatic history of the country, and his experience in the diplomatic service. His strong personal regard for General Cass, whose high character, as well as his political standing in the party of which they were both members, and the demand of the Western States, had been the reasons for offering to him the Department of State, made Mr. Buchanan patient and kind towards one who did not render him much aid in the business of that office. Mr. Buchanan, too, was a man who never shrank from labor. His industry was incessant and untiring; it did not flag with his advancing years; and it was an industry applied, in foreign affairs, to matters of which he had a fuller and more intimate knowledge than any American statesman of his time who was living when he became President of the United States. His private papers bear ample testimony to the minute and constant attention which he gave to the foreign relations of the country, and to the extent of his employment of his own pen. He wrote with great facility, precision and clearness, from a mind stored with historical information and the principles of public law. There was no topic and no question in the foreign relations of the United States on which his knowledge did not come readily and promptly to his hand. In this respect, with the exception of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. John Quincy Adams, we have as yet had no President who was his superior, or his equal. Like them, he had passed through the office of Secretary of State, as well as through very important foreign missions; an advantage which always tells in the office of President, when it is combined with the qualifications that are peculiar to American statesmanship. First in importance, if not in dignity, the relations of the United States with England, at any period of our history, and the mode in which they were handled, are topics of permanent interest. How often these two kindred nations have been on the verge of war, and how that peril has been encountered and averted cannot cease to be instructive. Nor is it of less consequence to note the course of a President, who, during an administration fraught with the most serious hazards to the internal relations of the United States with each other, kept steadily in view the preservation of peace and good will between the United States and Great Britain, while he abated nothing from our just claims or our national dignity. Mr. Buchanan left to his successor no unsettled question between these two nations, that was of any immediate importance, and he left the feeling between them and their respective governments in a far better condition than he found it on his accession to the Presidency, and in a totally different state from that which ensued after the beginning of our civil war. But when he became President, two irritating and dangerous questions were pending, inherited from former administrations. The first of these related, as we have seen, to the British claim of a protectorate over the Mosquito coast, and to the establishment of colonial government over the Bay Islands; territories that belonged respectively to the feeble republics of Nicaragua and Honduras. It has been seen in a former chapter how the ambiguity of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty had led the British government to adopt a construction of it which would support these claims, and which would justify the pretension that by that treaty the United States had receded from what was called the "Monroe Doctrine." This treaty, concluded in 1850 by the administration of General Taylor, was supposed in this country to have settled these questions in favor of the United States, and that Great Britain would withdraw from the territories of Nicaragua and Honduras. But she did not withdraw. Her ministers continued to claim that the treaty only restrained her from making future acquisitions in Central America, and that the true inference from this was that she could hold her existing possessions. It was, as has been seen, in the hope of settling this question, that Mr. Buchanan accepted the mission to England in 1853. Why it was not settled at that time, has been already stated in detail. It remained to be amicably and honorably settled, under his advice and approbation, after he became President, by treaties between Great Britain and the two Central American States, in accordance with the American construction of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. The long standing question in regard to the right of search came into the hands of President Buchanan at a moment and under circumstances that required the most vigorous action. The belligerent right of search, exercised by Great Britain in the maritime wars of 1812, had been a cause of constant irritation to the people of this country. In progress of time, England undertook to assert a right to detain and search merchantmen on the high seas, in time of peace, suspected of being engaged in the slave trade. There was no analogy, even, in this to the belligerent right of visitation and search, whatever the latter might comprehend. An accommodation, rather than a settlement, of this claim was made in the treaty of 1842, negotiated between Lord Ashburton and Mr. Webster, by which each nation agreed to keep a squadron of its own on the coast of Africa, for the suppression of the slave trade when carried on under their respective flags, or under any claim or use of their flags, or by their subjects or citizens respectively. Although this stipulation was accompanied by a very forcible declaration made by Mr. Webster, under the direction of President Tyler, that the American Government admitted of no right of visitation and search of merchant vessels in time of peace, England did not wholly abandon or re |