the bitterest hatred and disgust. It was a defection from their own ranks; a rebellion among their own slaves. It was a grave matter indeed when a Breckinridge Senator dared break through party lines and strike such a blow at the power which controlled all his friends.

These two men at least did stand up for the Union among the southern Senators, but the northern Democrats did not even rise as far as this. Not one of all that crew of peddling politicians ever took bold and honest ground on the new issue. Their Telamonian Ajax, Mr. Douglas, and all his herd of followers still avoided an honest avowal of a broad, unhesitating acquiescence in the new contest, and still left it doubtful which of the two they were really acting against, the disunionists or the Republicans. A true statesman, or even a high-minded man, would have seized the first opportunity to place himself above party on such a question as this. Mr. Douglas is neither the one nor the other. He, like so many others, failed to rise to the occasion. Of all the members of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, three or four names only can be picked out, of men who grew during this winter. Three or four only, when there was the grandest opportunity for development that ever has occurred under the Government! And, of these few, Mr. Douglas was not one.

Rather through the faults and mistakes of their opponents than through their own skill, the Republicans managed to maintain their ground tolerably well. Their first fear had been that the North would again yield to some compromise by which the old state of things would be brought back and a new struggle become necessary. Probably their fears would have been justified if the southern States had not, by withdrawing, thrown the whole power into the hands of the firmer antislavery men. But when it became evident that the danger did not now lie on this side, but was rather lest all the slave States should be dragged out and thus involve the whole country in a common ruin, a difference of opinion, as to the policy to be pursued, soon showed itself. One wing of the party declared for a strong policy by which the seceding States should be compelled to submit to the laws. Many of these really underrated the danger and difficulty, or, if they saw it, yet could not conscientiously take any steps to avoid it. Others confounded the conspirators with the slave-holders, placing all on

the same footing, which was exactly what the disunionists were straining every nerve to bring about. Thus these practically played into the hands of the traitors by doing all in their power to combine the southern States. Others were perhaps conscientiously not unwilling that all the slave States should secede, believing that to be the shortest and surest way of obtaining the destruction of the slave power, as it was certainly a very sure way of obtaining the destruction of their own, if their policy should lead to civil war and a revulsion of feeling in the North. On the other hand, an influential portion of the party urged temporizing till the height of the fever was over, and were in favor of shaping their policy in such a way as to secure the border States and prevent bloodshed. Mr. Seward declared himself very early in the winter a favorer of conciliation in this way. He felt that something must be done, not only to resist disunion in the South, where it was every day acquiring more strength, but to sustain himself and his party in the North, where they were not strong enough to sustain the odium of a dissolution and civil war. For it is a fact, and it is right that it should be so, that with the people the question of the nation's existence will in the end override all party issues, no matter what they may be, and Mr. Seward foresaw that if the new administration was to prove a success it must shape its course so as to avoid the responsibility of the convulsion, and obtain the confidence of a large majority of the people.

This difference of opinion, as to the policy to be pursued, began first to develop itself in the Committee which the House had appointed to consider the whole question of the national troubles. When that Committee met, there was of course nothing but confusion in their minds. Heaps of different plans were thrown upon them, and for some time nothing was done but listen to what each member had to say on his own account. After all, the great wish was to gain time. Very few persons expected really that the Committee would agree on anything, or would effect any good result, further than that of relieving the House of the whole matter as long as possible. But the more violent of the southern men were determined not to allow this. They went into the Committee in order either to control it or to break it up, and in order to bring matters to a head they pressed on it measures which they knew could not be

!

adopted. Mr. Rust of Arkansas, who, under the pretence of being a Union man, did all he could to help the seceders, and Mr. Reuben Davis of Mississippi, a violent disunionist, took the lead in trying to dragoon the other southern men into retiring from the Committee. They brought forward an ultimatum which they insisted on having considered at once, or else they would withdraw. The Committee refused to leave the regular order of business, whereupon the individuals executed their threat and withdrew in high anger; but, with that methodical madness which seems to be part of the southern character, they withdrew only to the next room, where they sat in solitary dignity and watched the proceedings through the open door till their own measure should come up for discussion.

A few experiments like this soon showed that the disunion element in the Committee was not strong enough to break it up. The only hope of the disunionists became, then, to place the Republicans in such a position as to make reconciliation impossible. Their cry was that the Republicans showed no wish to conciliate; that they intended the forcible emancipation of the slaves, and so on; all which was denied by the Republicans, to be sure, but which still placed the members from the border States in a very hard position. They were honestly Union men. They were, too, in several cases at least, uncondi tional Union men, but their States were then very doubtful, and the clamor of the seceders might destroy their influence in case the Committee failed to do anything. They urged earnestly and honestly on the Republicans, a retreat from the positions of the campaign, and when that was refused they entreated only some sign of good-will; something, no matter what, with which they could go home and deny the charges of the disunionists. They offered their own measures of conciliation, and when these were refused they asked the Republicans whether they could do nothing in return; whether they were fixed in their determination to drive away the border States and let the spirit of disunion take its course whatever might be the result,

The Republicans hesitated. On one side they felt the weight of these prayers, for prayers they really were; and wished to do what they could for their allies. But that was not all. One by one the meshes of that vast conspiracy were becoming

1 Albert Rust.

manifest, in which they were entangled. It was every day clearer that the danger was not imagined; that the flood of disunion feeling was advancing at fearful speed towards Washington, and threatened to overwhelm Virginia and even Maryland. And as State after State set up the standard of rebellion, and treason proclaimed itself in the Capitol and White House itself; when crowded galleries broke into violent applause over disunion speeches, and the whole city was expecting an outbreak from day to day; as it became more and more evident that the credit of the Government was tottering; its army and navy useless or nearly so; its whole frame and action hampered, weakened, broken wherever practicable, and the traitors still at its head; as all this gradually forced itself upon the minds of the leading Republicans, and they began to see the danger they ran, and to feel the tangling knots of that great net in which they were snared, they opened their eyes to their hazardous position and began to stretch their hands about them for some firm support.

While the Committee was still in doubt and the chance of a good result was becoming more and more dim, a blow was delivered by one man at the secessionists, which changed the whole face of the battle. Mr. Winter Davis in the House struck out fiercely at disunion like Andrew Johnson in the Senate, and with the same success. But to understand Mr. Davis's position fairly it is necessary to know something of his history, and he is remarkable enough as a politician to make such a parenthesis interesting.

As for the last eight or ten years the opposition to the slave power developed itself, and it became more and more evident that its ultimate success was only a question of time, it was naturally to be expected that men would appear here and there in the southern States who, either out of ambition or from other motives, would ally themselves with the North, and as the Democratic party had become identified with the slave power, it was evident that these men, if they appeared at all, would be found among the southern Whigs. But there is very little boldness in American politicians, and though it was no rare thing for the southern Whigs to act secretly in concert with the Republicans, only one of them ventured in Congress to

1 Davis delivered his speech on February 7. It will be found in the Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2d Session, Appendix, 181.

place himself openly on the record. His course was that of one man in a hundred thousand.

Mr. Henry Winter Davis of Maryland first rose to any prominence in public life by his connection with the KnowNothing party in 1854, or thereabouts. When the old Whigs lost their power in the North, the southern Whig States began to fall one after another into Democratic hands. But even the riveting influence of slavery and the growing strength of the Republicans were not enough to unite Whigs and Democrats in the southern border States. They were divided by many years of bitter strife and hatred. To an old Whig in Tennessee, or Kentucky, or Maryland, who had grown up to despise a Democrat as the meanest and most despicable of creatures; who had been taught in the semi-barbarous school of southern barbecues and stump harangues, gouging and pistol shooting, to hate and abhor the very word Democrat with a bitterness unknown to the quieter and more law-abiding northerners, the idea of submitting finally and hopelessly to the Democratic rule, was not to be endured. Accordingly, when the Native American party made its appearance, these men rushed into it, in a mass, as a means of bolstering up their waning power, and under the prestige of its extraordinary successes and underhand organization, managed for a time to sweep everything before them. Among the States which they ruled most completely was Maryland, and among the first to avail himself of this new ladder was Mr. Henry Winter Davis of Baltimore.

But the new movement was not without its drawbacks. One great feature of the Know-Nothings was their enmity to Catholics and the Catholic religion; but in Maryland where the old families still retain their Catholicism and rule the tone of society, no gentleman could become with impunity a leader in a party so obnoxious to them. This alone was cause enough for their hating Davis with a bitter hatred. But this was not all. The secret organization of the Native American attracted large numbers of the worst class of rowdies and bullies into the party, and in Baltimore they made use of their power in the wildest and most disgraceful way, electing a Mayor who sympathized with them, and, on the day of election, surrounding the polls in armed bands. With a sort of fantastic humor, they provided themselves with awls, and punched their political opponents with them, when they came