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CHAPTER XIII.

HISTORY UNDER PRESIDENT

PIERCE, 1853-1857.

HE administration of Franklin Pierce began under a

THE

delusive calm. In the Thirty-third Congress, which met on the 5th day of December, 1853, the Democrats had fourteen clear majority in the Senate, and more than two-thirds of the members of the House. The President pledged himself to carry out the compromise of 1850, congratulated the country that the slavery question was settled, and declared that any attempt to revive the agitation would be unpatriotic. As long, however, as there were Territories to organize there could be no lasting adjustment of this burning question between the two sections, and the bill passed at the first session of Congress to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas reopened the agitation with an intensity which it had not heretofore reached. This bill provided for the admission of these two Territories, with or without slavery, as their constitutions might prescribe, at the time of admission, and repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1850, by declaring it "inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called The Compromise Measures,

it being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

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Both of these Territories, erected chiefly within the limits of the original Louisiana purchase, were north of the line of 36° 30′, and according to the Missouri Compromise slavery could not be established within their limits. The declaration, therefore, in the Kansas-Nebraska bill that this compromise was inoperative and void, being inconsistent with the principle of the non-intervention with slavery in the States and Territories by Congress as recognized by the compromise measures of 1850, was very repugnant to the Free Soil Democrats and Anti-slavery Whigs of the North. The latter generally dropped the name of Whigs and called themselves Anti-Nebraska men. But we must pause here to chronicle the appearance of a new party, which spread so rapidly in both sections of the country that its leaders fondly supposed it was to have a more permanent place in American politics than the spasmodic and vigorous life which it manifested.

We have seen that the old Federalist party was opposed to the speedy naturalization of foreigners, and that the alien laws extended the period preliminary to citizenship from five to fourteen years. Different organizations had arisen, from time to time, calling themselves "Native American" parties, but had made no figure in political contests. The party which appeared in 1852 called itself American, but

being an oath-bound and secret organization, with subordinate, State and national councils, and a system of initiation through successive degrees, was by its opponents given the name of Know-Nothings, because of the refusal or inability of its members to give information as to its secrets. Its rallying cry was, "Americans only shall govern America." It advocated a change in the naturalization laws making a continued residence of twenty-one years indispensable to citizenship, the election of native-born Americans for all federal and municipal offices or government employment, and opposed to what it declared to be the “aggressive policy and corrupting tendencies of the Roman Catholic Church in our country."

When the Thirty-fourth Congress, elected in the middle of Pierce's administration, met it was found that the Democrats were in the minority in the House, and more than two months were consumed in the effort to elect a speaker, when Mr. N. P. Banks, of Massachusetts, an Anti-Nebraska man, was chosen. The Anti-Nebraska men, however, in the meantime had adopted the name Republican, first formally agreed upon, it is said, at a meeting of thirty members of Congress on the day after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, May 23, 1854, although it had been suggested in other quarters before. The closing of Pierce's administration was vexed by the contest between the free and slave State men for the control of Kansas; a contest which led to a state of war in that Territory, and which was bequeathed as its most troublesome question to the next administration. Many new and unknown elements. appeared as the next Presidential contest drew near.

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