This virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which left the new Territories to decide for themselves whether they would admit slavery or not, turned Kansas, as the Territory nearest the settled States, into a battleground for the two parties. The partisans of the North and those of the South kept pouring in fresh immigrants to outnumber the other side. At first the South was successful, and a code of laws was established with many and stringent provisions in behalf of slavery, although this was brought about, not by legitimate immigrants, but chiefly by a mob of Missourians, who passed across the border, took possession of the polling places, and carried the elections. A succession of outrages, amounting to civil war, followed, each faction establishing its own Government and electing its delegate to Congress. President Pierce issued a proclamation (February 11, 1850) calling for obedience to the laws and a cessation of violence and interference. Civil war, however, actually existed in Kansas. The two anti-slavery towns, Lawrence and Osawatomie, were sacked, and the Free-Soil Legislature was twice dispersed. The outrages continued and no solution of the problem was reached during this administration. (See Kansas.) In the meantime, public sentiment was excited to a still greater intensity by the assault upon Senator Charles Sumner (q.v.), of Massachusetts, by Preston S. Brooks (q.v.), of South Carolina (May 22, 1856).
In diplomacy during this administration friction arose between the United States and Austria over the Koszta affair (q.v.), and an important treaty was negotiated by Commodore Perry with Japan, by which intercourse was first opened between that country and the Western world.
In the Presidential election of 1856 the following tickets were in the field: Democratic, James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky; Republican, John C. Frémont, of California, and William A. Dayton, of New Jersey; Know-Nothing, Millard Fillmore, of New York, and A. J. Donelson, of Tennessee. The Democratic ticket received 174 electoral votes, the Republican 114, the Know-Nothing 8.
XVIII. Administration of James Buchanan (1857-61). Cabinet.—Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, Michigan, March 6, 1857; J. S. Black, Pennsylvania, December 17, 1860. Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, Georgia, March 6, 1857; Philip F. Thomas, Maryland, December 12, 1860; John A. Dix, New York, January 11, 1861. Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, Virginia, March 6, 1857; Joseph Holt, Kentucky, January 18, 1861. Secretary of the Navy, Isaac Toucey, Connecticut, March 6, 1857. Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson, Mississippi, March 6, 1857. Attorney-General, J. S. Black, Pennsylvania, March 6, 1857; E. M. Stanton, Pennsylvania, December 20, 1860. Postmaster-General, Aaron V. Brown, Tennessee, March 6, 1857; Joseph Holt, Kentucky, March 14, 1859; Horatio King, Maine, February 12, 1861.
Two days after Buchanan's inauguration, the Supreme Court rendered its decision in the famous Dred Scott Case (q.v.). in which the majority of the justices held that Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in any Territory, and that slaves themselves were mere property whose secure possession in any Territory of the Union was guaranteed by the Constitution.
Events now succeeded one another with exciting rapidity. The sympathizers with the South had made various attempts to extend the area of slavery by the acquisition of Cuba. In 1854 the American ministers to England, France, and Spain met at the Belgian town of Ostend and there issued the so-called Ostend Manifesto (q.v.) to the effect that under certain contingencies the safety of the United States would demand the annexation of Cuba. Another attempt to acquire slave territory was through filibustering expeditions, the most famous of which were that of Lopez to Cuba in 1851 and that of William Walker (q.v.) from 1855 to 1858 to Central America. Even the reopening of the African slave trade began to be discussed.
In December, 1857, the pro-slavery party in Kansas held a convention at Lecompton and proceeded to impose slavery upon the future State by submitting to the voters the alternative of voting for the Constitution with slavery or the Constitution without slavery, the instrument itself, however, affirming the right to the ownership of slaves at the time within the Territory. The anti-slavery party, whose ‘Topeka Constitution’ had previously been disallowed by the Federal Government, generally abstained from voting, with the result that the Constitution with slavery was adopted. (See Lecompton Constitution.) A new Territorial Legislature with an anti-slavery majority ordered a new election, at which the Constitution was to be accepted or rejected. It was rejected (January, 1858). The National Congress passed a bill resubmitting the Lecompton Constitution to the vote of the people, its adoption to be followed by the immediate admission of Kansas as a State. They rejected it, and thus Kansas remained a Territory. In 1859 a new convention adopted another Constitution, known as the Wyandotte Constitution, prohibiting slavery, and this, being submitted to the people, was adopted by them. Kansas, however, was not admitted as a State until 1861. The controversy in Congress over the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution proved an event of momentous importance as leading up to the division of the Democratic Party in the Presidential campaign of 1860. Minnesota was admitted in May, 1858, and Oregon in February, 1859. In 1858 a marked impression was caused by the publication of Helper's Impending Crisis. (See Helper, Hinton Rowan.) In the following year occurred John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry (q.v.). (See Brown, John). The South approached the campaign of 1860 with the conviction that there was no place for the South in an anti-slavery Union, and that the success of the Republicans, even though the Republican Party did not mean to interfere with slavery in the States, would mean an anti-slavery Union.
In the Presidential election of 1860 the situation was more complicated than ever before, and finally there appeared four tickets in the field. The Northern Democrats (see Democratic Party) nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia; the Southern Democrats, who had seceded from the Democratic convention, nominated John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon; a third party, the so-called Constitutional Union Party (q.v.), composed of conservative members of the old Whig and Know-Nothing
