ready to their hands the evidence of
Southern and Democratic sympathy with a filibustering attempt to conquer
the republic of Nicaragua, where William Walker, an American adventurer,
had recently made himself dictator. Walker had succeeded in having his
minister acknowledged by the Democratic Administration, and in obtaining
the endorsement of a great Democratic meeting which was held in New
York. It looked, therefore, as if the party of political evasion had an
anchor to windward, and that, in the event of their losing in Kansas,
they intended to placate their Southern wing by the annexation of
Nicaragua.

Here, indeed, was a stronger political tempest than Douglas, weatherwise
though he was, had foreseen. How was political evasion to brave it? With
a courage quite equal to the boldness of the Republicans, the Democrats
took another tack and steered for less troubled waters. Their convention
at Cincinnati was temperate and discreet in all its expressions, and for
President it nominated a Northerner, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a
man who was wholly dissociated in the public mind from the struggle over
Kansas.

The Democratic party leaders knew that they already had two strong
groups of supporters. Whatever they did, the South would have to go
along with them, in its reaction against the furious sectionalism of the
Republicans. Besides the Southern support, the Democrats counted upon
the aid of the professional politicians--those men who considered
politics rather as a fascinating game than as serious and difficult work
based upon principle. Upon these the Democrats could confidently rely,
for they already had, in Douglas in the North and Toombs in the South,
two master politicians who knew this type and its impulses intimately,
because they themselves belonged to it. But the Democrats needed the
support of a third group. If they could only win over the Northern
remnant of the Whigs that was still unattached, their position would be
secure. In their efforts to obtain this additional and very necessary
reinforcement, they decided to appear as temperate and restrained as
possible--a well bred party which all mild and conservative men could
trust.

This attitude they formulated in connection with Kansas, which at that
time had two governments: one, a territorial government, set up by
emigrants from the South; the other, a state government, under the
constitution drawn up at Topeka by emigrants from the North. One
a