feared, and that
presidents and congressmen tried to hide under the tenuous fabric of
their compromises. But it was an issue that persisted in keeping alive
and that would not down, for it was an issue between right and wrong.
Three times the great Clay maneuvered to outflank his opponents over the
smoldering fires of the slavery issue, but he died before the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise gave the death-blow to his loosely gathered
coalition. Webster, too, and Calhoun, the other members of that
brilliant trinity which represented the genius of Constitutional
Unionism, of States Rights, and of Conciliation, passed away before the
issue was squarely faced by a new party organized for the purpose of
opposing the further expansion of slavery.

This new organization, the Republican party, rapidly assumed form
and solidarity. It was composed of Northern Whigs, of anti-slavery
Democrats, and of members of several minor groups, such as the
Know-Nothing or American party, the Liberty party, and included as well
some of the despised Abolitionists. The vote for Fremont, its first
presidential candidate, in 1856, showed it to be a sectional party,
confined to the North. But the definite recognition of slavery as an
issue by an opposition party had a profound effect upon the Democrats.
Their Southern wing now promptly assumed an uncompromising attitude,
which, in 1860, split the party into factions. The Southern wing named
Breckinridge; the Northern wing named Stephen A. Douglas; while many
Democrats as well as Whigs took refuge in a third party, calling itself
the Constitutional Union, which named John Bell. This division cost the
Democrats the election, for, under the unique and inspiring leadership
of Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans rallied the anti-slavery forces of
the North and won.

Slavery not only racked the parties and caused new alignments; it
racked and split the Union. It is one of the remarkable phenomena of
our political history that the Civil War did not destroy the Democratic
party, though the Southern chieftains of that party utterly lost their
cause. The reason is that the party never was as purely a Southern
as the Republican was a Northern party. Moreover, the arrogance and
blunders of the Republican leaders during the days of Reconstruction
helped to keep it alive. A baneful political heritage has been handed
down to us from the Civil War--the solid South. It overturns the
national balance of parties, p