Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/412



Hart. The Whig ticket was elected. The vote for Commissioner was for McKay, Whig, 24,743; Tisdale, Democrat, 20,006. McKay's majority, 4,737.

This was the last contest between the Democrats and Whigs in Iowa. Before the next election the Whig party was largely absorbed by the new Republican party. The Silver Grey Whigs had United with the Democrats, while the Free Soil Whigs and Antislavery Democrats had together become Republicans. The conflict in Kansas over slavery had been growing in bitterness. Thousands of people from Missouri and other slave States entered the Territory to aid in the attempt to make it a slave State. Immigration from the North poured in and the contest between the advocates of free and slave States became bitter, not only in Kansas but throughout the entire Union. In spite of the Compromise of 1850, the conflict between freedom and slavery was growing more intense year by year, and armed collisions were becoming frequent in Kansas.

During the years of conflict between the defenders of slavery in Congress and the rapidly growing Antislavery sentiment, which grew warm at the close of the Mexican War, our Senators, Jones and Dodge, voted against the “Wilmot Proviso” and later for the Fugitive Slave Law and the whole of the Compromise measures of 1850. In the debates, which extended through many years, no voice was raised in Congress from Iowa Senators or Representatives against the extension of slavery until 1855 when James Harlan and James Thorington took their seats. Elected by a union of the Free Soil Whigs and Abolitionists, they were the first Iowa Congressmen to oppose the growing aggression of the slave power. The sentiment of the people of Iowa on the absorbing topic was undergoing a change.

The Legislature of 1856 passed joint resolutions strongly opposing the extension of slavery. These resolutions were sent to the Iowa members of Congress. No more Democrats were elected to Congress from Iowa until