and its
instant abolition. But if you put it in course of abatement and final
abolishment through a term of years--I do not care how many--we can
intervene to some purpose. As matters stand we dare not go before a
European congress with such a proposition."

Mr. Slidell passed it up to Richmond. Mr. Davis passed it on to the
generals in the field. The response he received on every hand was the
statement that it would disorganize and disband the Confederate Armies.
Yet we are told, and it is doubtless true, that scarcely one Confederate
soldier in ten actually owned a slave.

Thus do imaginings become theories, and theories resolve themselves
into claims; and interests, however mistaken, rise to the dignity of
prerogatives.

II

The fathers had rather a hazy view of the future. I was witness to the
decline and fall of the old Whig Party and the rise of the Republican
Party. There was a brief lull in sectional excitement after the
Compromise Measures of 1850, but the overwhelming defeat of the Whigs
in 1852 and the dominancy of Mr. Jefferson Davis in the cabinet of Mr.
Pierce brought the agitation back again. Mr. Davis was a follower of Mr.
Calhoun--though it may be doubted whether Mr. Calhoun would ever have
been willing to go to the length of secession--and Mr. Pierce being by
temperament a Southerner as well as in opinions a pro-slavery Democrat,
his Administration fell under the spell of the ultra Southern wing of
the party. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill was originally harmless enough, but
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which on Mr. Davis' insistence
was made a part of it, let slip the dogs of war.

In Stephen A. Douglas was found an able and pliant instrument. Like
Clay, Webster and Calhoun before him, Judge Douglas had the presidential
bee in his bonnet. He thought the South would, as it could, nominate and
elect him President.

Personally he was a most lovable man--rather too convivial--and for a
while in 1852 it looked as though he might be the Democratic nominee.
His candidacy was premature, his backers overconfident and indiscreet.

"I like Douglas and am for him," said Buck Stone, a member of Congress
and delegate to the National Democratic Convention from Kentucky,
"though I consider him a good deal of a damn fool." Pressed for a reason
he continued; "Why, think of a man wanting to be President at forty
years of age, and obliged to behave himself for the rest of his life! I
wouldn't take the