Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/333

Rh support of any measures that would secure the cessation of further dangerous agitation.

The Buchanan administration inherited the Kansas trouble and was plagued in the beginning with unexpected developments. The settlers in Kansas had become stimulated into actual war, and there seemed to be no desire among these squatter sovereigns to come to a square and peaceful vote. But even these internal difficulties could have been settled if the partisan pressure from without had been withdrawn. Successful party effort to overthrow the administration plainly required that Kansas should not be quieted on any plan that permitted the toleration of the slave-holding influence. But even these animosities of the settlers, and these partisan maneuvers, would not have destroyed the peace of the Union, if the perilous disagreement had not occurred be tween the two great Northern leaders, one being the President, and the other the eminent Senator from the West, Mr. Douglas. These two statesmen, each possessing commanding influence North and South, combatted alike the sectional position taken by their common adversary, and in this they were sustained by the Fillmore men as well as by their own party. But they chose to differ irreconcilably on the construction of the doctrine of non-intervention by Congress as to the local institutions of a territory. The exact point of their difference at the time was the application of the principle of non-intervention by Congress as to slavery in Kansas and Nebraska. Mr. Douglas held that the voters in the territory had power over that question through their territorial legislature; Mr. Buchanan s view was that the power to exclude slave property by the people of a territory could be exercised constitutionally only through their legally framed State constitution. The Republicans held that Congress could prohibit slavery in the territory with or without the consent of the inhabitants. With this trident of political opinions the South was