e on the score
of a single worthy act, and forget, if not forgive, his long career
of effective and untiring hostility to the principles they cherished;
and his nomination by the Democrats, on a platform very offensive
to Republicans, fully justified their course. The result was the
nomination of Mr. Lincoln as a candidate for the succession to Mr.
Douglas, and the great joint debate which did so much to educate
the mind of the free States and prepare the way for Mr. Lincoln's
nomination the following year, while revealing the moral unworthiness
of his great rival, and justifying the policy which made necessary
this memorable contest in Illinois.

The steady march of the Republican party toward ascendancy was
shown in the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met in December, 1859.
There were now twenty-four Republican senators, and one hundred
and nine representatives. Early in the first session of this
Congress an interesting debate occurred in the Senate on a proposition
to provide for the education of the colored children of the District
of Columbia. Mr. Mason condemned the proposition, and said it was
wise to prohibit the education of the colored race. Jefferson
Davis declared that the Government was not made for them, and that
"we have no right to tax our people to educate the barbarians of
Africa." These and kindred utterances were very well calculated
to aid the work of anti-slavery progress. John Brown's raid into
Virginia kindled the ire of the slave-holders to a degree as yet
unprecedented, and although his act found few defenders in the
Northern States, the heroism with which he met his fate, the pithy
correspondence between Gov. Wise and Mrs. Child, the language of
Southern senators in dealing with the subject, and the efforts made
to ferret out Brown's associates, all tended to strengthen the
growing hostility to slavery and prepare the way for the final
conflict. The designs of the slaveholders upon Cuba, which were
avowed in this Congress, and their purpose to acquire it for the
extension of slavery, by purchase if they could, but if not by war,
served the same purpose. The growing demand for the revival of
the African slave trade, as shown by the avowals of leading men in
both houses of Congress, and their cold-blooded utterances on the
subject, produced a profound impression on the country, and called
forth the startling fact that the city of New York was then one of
the greatest slave-trading marts i