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426 President Pierces policy. [1863-4 least were united and in full possession of power. The Free-Soilers had lost, not gained, in strength. President Pierce made William Marcy his Secretary of State, a man who exercised authority as a member of the " Albany Regency," a group of astute politicians in the State of New York who understood better than any other men in the country the new art of organising conventions, and of turning local majorities not only to local but also to national use. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi had become Secretary of War, and brought to the support of the new Administration the great southern wing of the victorious party. The new heads of the government seemed established in the confidence of both sections of the country, supported alike by perfected party machinery and by a decisive general sentiment, and served and guided by capable, masterful men familiar with the movements of opinion. Both in Congress and at the executive mansion the Democrats took heart to be very bold, and to show their mastery. Before the year of his installation was over, President Pierce had pur- chased still more territory from Mexico, in the region to which it seemed most likely that slavery would ultimately be extended. He had really little choice in the matter. Mexico still claimed a considerable tract of land in the far south-west which the United States deemed included in the cessions of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a tract of more than forty-five thousand square miles lying to the south of the Gila river; and a Mexican army, under the notorious Santa Anna, had actually entered the region, as if to renew the war if Mexico's claim were not admitted. Pierce rightly thought it a prudent act of statesmanship to purchase the disputed territory for ten million dollars. The purchase was effected through Gadsden, of South Carolina, in December, 1853; and the anti-slavery men everywhere noted the transaction with profound chagrin. But worse was to follow. Bad as it seemed to northern men to purchase new lands which must stand open to slavery, under the com- promises of recent legislation, at any rate until the day when States should be erected upon them, it was of course infinitely worse to abandon those compromises altogether, and deliberately open every part of the country not yet formed into States to the spread of the fatal institution. And yet that was what Stephen A. Douglas actually proposed and carried through Congress before the end of May, 1854. He was one of the senators from Illinois, and was but forty-one years of age, full of the rude, straightforward strength and audacity which showed him to have been bred in the free communities of the western country. He had been born in Vermont, but had gone West as a lad to make his way, and had there grown into the short, square, coarse-fibred, thick- limbed, aggressive, vehement, eloquent man who seemed in the Senate a sort of dwarfed giant, compact of the energy and daring of the West. He confidently deemed himself, what many accepted him to be,