rom the slave states, and 2 Democrats and 2 Whigs from
the free states. The cabinet of Buchanan had four members from
the southern states and three from the northern. The south had
full control of all departments of the government, with the President
in hearty sympathy with the policy of that section. The condition
of Kansas alone caused it trouble. The firm and impartial course
of Governor Geary had imparted confidence and strength to the Free
State citizens of that territory, who were now in an unquestioned
majority through the large emigration from the north during the
spring of 1857. The doctrine of popular sovereignty could not,
therefore, be relied upon to establish slavery in Kansas, and it
was abandoned. New theories had to be improvised and new agencies
called into action.

I was present when the oath of office was administered to Mr.
Buchanan, on the 4th of March, 1857. With my strong sympathy for
the Free State people of Kansas, I hoped and believed that he would
give some assurance that the pledges made for him in the canvass
would be carried out, but the statement in his inaugural address,
that the difference of opinion in respect to the power of the people
of a territory to decide the question of slavery for themselves
would be speedily and finally settled, as a judicial question, by
the Supreme Court of the United States, in a case then pending
before it, naturally, excited suspicion and distrust. It was
regarded as a change of position, a new device in the interest of
slavery. In two days after the inauguration, Chief Justice Taney
delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case,
as to the status of negroes in the United States. He said:

"They had, for more than a century before, been regarded as beings
of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the
white race, either in social or political relations; and so far
inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to
respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced
to slavery for his benefit."

He said negroes "were not intended to be included in the word
'citizens' in the constitution, and therefore could claim none of
the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and
secures to the citizens of the United States;" and announced as
the opinion of the court that the Missouri Compromise act was not
warranted by the constitution and was therefore void.

These decla