The First Campaign
the Union rather than to be admitted with slavery fixed upon them. In that year occurred too the abortive insurrection of John Brown at Harper's Ferry, the tragic outcome of which immensely intensified political passions on both sides and caused thousands of former waverers to ally themselves definitely and aggressively with the Republican party.
Highly important, too, was the schism in the Democratic party. Despite the defection from its ranks in the North that organization was still the most numerous and formidable of all. But when the Buchanan administration, not content with the Dred Scott decision under which it could admit slavery into the territories and protect it there, endeavored to impose the Lecompton Constitution upon Kansas there was a numerous revolt led by Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, one of the ablest Democratic statesmen of that day. He professed to be indifferent to the question of slavery in and of itself. He stood squarely for the old Democratic doctrine of the right of selfgovernment and he resented and denounced the attempt to force upon the people of Kansas a government which they did not want. When he openly defied the administration and made himself the leader of the "Anti-Lecompton Democrats" Buchanan warned him to remember how Andrew Jackson had crushed Democratic leaders who had dared to resist his policy. To this Douglas tartly replied that Jackson was dead. "I care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up," he said again and again, "but I do care about the right of Kansas to selfgovernment. If she wants a slave-state constitution she should have it, and if she wants a free-state constitution she should have it—and shall have it."
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