[Sidenote: The "Irrepressible Conflict."]
The events in that part of the Union served to win many converts to the anti-slavery cause in the North. The Republican party was organized on the eve of the Presidential election of 1856. Its chief doctrine was that no more slave States whatever should be admitted to the Union. It put a ticket into the field with Colonel John Charles Fremont as the candidate for President, and William L. Dayton of New Jersey for Vice-President. It could not be expected that so young a party would triumph at its first essay; but when Fremont received 113 electoral votes, while Buchanan had only 177, it was appreciated everywhere that the "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and liberty was fast approaching its crisis.
The self-sacrificing heroism of a fanatic, the most salient incident of the slavery agitation during the Presidency of Buchanan, had a marked influence in hastening the final issue. This was John Brown's raid upon Harper's Ferry, for the purpose of setting free the slaves. The old man's courage, his utter self-devotion to his cause, his noble death, his simple and sincere character, appealed most strongly to the sympathy of the opponents of slavery, and even compelled words of strong praise from the lips of Henry A. Wise, the Virginia Governor, who signed his death-warrant.
[Sidenote: The South Prepares to Secede.]
The cause of free soil at last attained its triumph in the election of 1860. All things foreshadowed the success of Abraham Lincoln. The northern people were ripe for decisive action against the extension, at least, of human bondage. The Democratic party divided into two factions at Charleston, and the factions put each a candidate into the field, mutually to destroy each other. The South so far gave up the contest as to make preparations, while the presidential battle was yet raging, to withdraw from the Union. Then, as the grand, bitter, but necessary result of the long-continued slavery agitation, the war came, and wiped out slavery with the blood of patriots.
The great American Rebellion of 1861-65 is still, perhaps, too near to be judged with the calm and judicial spirit which gives its chief value to history. Thousands of those who took part in it on either side are yet living; millions who witnessed its progress, and watched its course with varying emotions of grief and joy, who mourned its dead, exulted in its victories, and hailed its termination, yet hold it in vivid memory. Moreover, all that could be said of it, from bald narrative to infinite discussion of this and that general, this and that campaign or stratagem, of causes and effects, has already been repeated till the tale has been, not twice, but many times told.