measures, while a majority of the whigs of the north were opposed to the fugitive slave law, though not offering resistance to its execution, and were still desirous of preventing the extension of slavery by national legislation. The democratic national convention met at Baltimore, June 1, 1852, and nominated for president Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, who was known to hold opinions satisfactory to the south on the subject of slavery. William E. King of Alabama was nominated for vice president. The platform declared resistance to “all attempts at renewing in congress or out of it the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made;” and also a determination to “abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the compromise measures settled by the last congress, the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor included.” The whig national convention met at Baltimore, June 16, and nominated for president Gen. Winfield Scott and for vice president William A. Graham of North Carolina. The platform declared that “the series of acts of the 31st congress, commonly known as the compromise or adjustment, the act for the recovery of fugitives from labor included, are received and acquiesced in by the whigs of the United States as a final settlement in principle and substance of the subjects to which they relate; . . . . and we deprecate all further agitation of the questions thus settled, as dangerous to our peace, and will discountenance all efforts to continue or renew such agitation, whenever, wherever, or however made.” The national convention of the free-soil party was held at Pittsburgh, Aug. 11, all the free states being represented, together with Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. John P. Hale was nominated for president, and George W. Julian for vice president. A platform was adopted declaring “that the acts of congress known as the compromise measures of 1850, by making the admission of a sovereign state contingent upon the adoption of other measures demanded by the special interest of slavery, by their omission to guarantee freedom in the free territories, by their attempt to impose unconstitutional limitations on the power of congress and the people to admit new states, and by their invasion of the sovereignty of the states and the liberties of the people through the enactment of an unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional fugitive slave law, are proved to be inconsistent with all the principles and maxims of democracy, and wholly inadequate to the settlement of the questions of which they are claimed to be an adjustment. That no permanent settlement of the slavery question can be looked for except in the practical recognition of the truth that slavery is sectional and freedom national; by the total separation of the general government from slavery, and the exercise of its legitimate and constitutional influence on the side of freedom; and by leaving to the states the whole subject of slavery and the extradition of fugitives from justice.” At the election, Nov. 2, 1852, the democratic candidates, Pierce and King, received 254 electoral votes from 27 states. Scott and Graham received the 42 votes of Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The popular vote for Pierce and King was 1,601,474, for Scott and Graham 1,386,578, and for Hale and Julian 155,825. President Pierce was inaugurated March 4, 1853, and appointed as his cabinet William L. Marcy, secretary of state; James Guthrie, of the treasury; Jefferson Davis, of war; James C. Dobbin, of the navy; Robert McClelland, of the interior; James Campbell, postmaster general; and Caleb Cushing, attorney general. One of the first questions that occupied the administration was a boundary dispute with Mexico concerning a tract of land bordering on New Mexico and comprising 45,535 sq. m., which finally by negotiation and purchase became a part of the United States. It is known as the Gadsden purchase, from the American minister who negotiated the treaty, and forms part of Arizona and New Mexico. In 1853 various expeditions were sent out to explore the routes proposed for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific. In January, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, chairman of the senate committee on territories, reported a bill for the organization of two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, in the region west of Missouri and north of lat. 36° 30′. By this bill the Missouri compromise act of 1820 was repealed, and slavery allowed to enter where it had been formally and for ever excluded. The measure was warmly supported by the administration and by the leaders of the democratic party, and was strenuously opposed in debates of extraordinary length and interest by Chase and Wade of Ohio, Everett and Sumner of Massachusetts, Seward of New York, Fessenden of Maine, Houston of Texas, and Bell of Tennessee, in the senate, where it finally passed by a vote of 37 to 14. In the house it was opposed by Thomas H. Benton of Missouri and others; but it passed by a vote of 113 to 100, and the bill became a law on the last day of May. This bill roused great excitement and indignation in the free states, where it was denounced as a flagrant breach of faith, and its enactment greatly increased the strength of the antislavery party. Much dissatisfaction also was caused in those states by a conference at Ostend between the United States ministers to England, France, and Spain (Buchanan, Mason, and Soulé), in the circular issued by whom it was proposed to buy Cuba from Spain, or, if necessary to prevent emancipation in the island, to take it by force. The attempt to obtain Cuba was regarded at the north as prompted, like the repeal of the Missouri compromise, chiefly by a desire to extend and strengthen the slaveholding influence in the United States. So also were the filibuster expeditions against
