tive to the powers and authority of the
Government, such as had previously divided the people. The facility with
which old political opponents came together in the compromise measures
of 1850, and abandoned principles and doctrines for which they had
battled through their whole lives, begot popular distrust. Confidence in
the sincerity of the men who so readily made sacrifices of principles
was forfeited or greatly impaired. The Whig party dwindled under it, and
as an organization shortly went out of existence. A large portion of its
members, disgusted with what they considered the insincerity if not
faithlessness of their leaders, yet unwilling to attach themselves to
the Democratic party, which had coalesced in the movement, gathered
together in a secret organization, styling themselves "Know Nothings."
Democrats in some quarters, scarcely less dissatisfied with the
compromises, joined the Know Nothing order, and in one or two annual
elections this strange combination, without avowed principles or
purpose, save that of the defeat and overthrow of politicians, who were
once their trusted favorites, was successful. In this demoralized
condition of affairs, the Democrats by the accession of Whigs in the
Southern States obtained possession of the Government and maintained
their ascendancy through the Pierce administration; and, in a contest
quite as much sectional as political, elected Buchanan in 1856.

But these were the expiring days of the old Democratic organization,
which, under the amalgamating process of the compromise measures, became
shattered and mixed, especially in the Southern States, with former
Whigs, and was to a great extent thereafter sectionalized. The different
opposing political elements united against it and organized and
established the Republican party, which triumphed in the election of
Lincoln in 1860. The administration which followed and was inaugurated
in 1861 differed in essential particulars from either of the preceding
political organizations. Men of opposing principles--Centralists, who
like Hamilton and patriots of that class were for a strong imperial
national government, with supervising and controlling authority over the
States, on one hand, and Statists on the other, who, like Jefferson,
adhered to State individuality and favored a league or federation of
States, a national republic of limited and clearly defined powers, with
a strict observance of all the reserved right of the local