they took by adoption the Know-Nothing candidates.  The Republican party had been born only in 1854.  Its members, differing on other matters, united upon the one doctrine, which they accepted as a test:  opposition to the extension of slavery.  They nominated John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton, and made a platform whereby they declared it to be “both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery;” by which vehement and abusive language they excited the bitter resentment of the Southern Democracy.  In this convention 110 votes were cast for Lincoln for the second place on the ticket.  Lamon tells the little story that when this was told to Lincoln he replied that he could not have been the person designated, who was, doubtless, “the great Lincoln from Massachusetts."[65] In the Democratic party there were two factions.  The favorite candidate of the South was Franklin Pierce, for reelection, with Stephen A. Douglas as a substitute or second choice; the North more generally preferred James Buchanan, who was understood to be displeased with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  The struggle was sharp, but was won by the friends of Buchanan, with whom John C. Breckenridge was coupled.  The campaign was eager, for the Republicans soon developed a strength beyond what had been expected and which put the Democrats to their best exertions.  The result was

| Popular vote | Electoral vote
-------------------------+--------------+---------------
Democrats.               | 1,838,169    | 174
Republicans.             | 1,341,264    | 114
Know-Nothings and Whigs. |   874,534    |   8

Thus James Buchanan became President of the United States, March 4, 1857,—­stigmatized somewhat too severely as “a Northern man with Southern principles;” in fact an honest man and of good abilities, who, in ordinary times, would have left a fair reputation as a statesman of the second rank; but a man hopelessly unfit alike in character and in mind either to comprehend the present emergency or to rise to its demands.[66] Yet, while the Democrats triumphed, the Republicans enjoyed the presage of the future; they had polled a total number of votes which surprised every one; on the other hand, the Democrats had lost ten States[67] which they had carried in 1852 and had gained only two others,[68] showing a net loss of eight States; and their electoral votes had dwindled from 254 to 174.

On the day following Buchanan’s inauguration that occurred which had been foreshadowed with ill-advised plainness in his inaugural address.  In the famous case of Dred Scott,[69] the Supreme Court of the United States established as law the doctrine lately advanced by the Southern Democrats, that a slave was “property,” and that his owner was entitled to be protected in the possession of him, as such, in the Territories.  This necessarily demolished the rival theory of “popular sovereignty,” which the Douglas Democrats had