Our Great Benefactors; Short Biographies of the Men and Women Most Eminent in Literature, Science, Philanthropy, Art, Etc (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 Excerpt: ... it north of the since famous geographical limit of 360 30'. Then came the contest over the admission of Texas with a constitution providing for a similar division into slave and free territory; then over California, which indeed came into the Union free, but simultaneously with the enactment by Congress of the iniquitous Fugitive Slave Law, by which slaves escaping into free States could be seized wherever found and sent back into slavery. Ever since the Mexican War 1 See our article on Eli Whitney. had been waged for the extension of slavery (an end accomplished by the admission of Texas), public sentiment at the North had been consolidating upon the dictum " No more slave territory." The Fugitive Slave Act still further solidified this feeling. The rendition of slaves was resisted; and presently the people, whom respect for the Constitution of the nation had so long held back, began to form a political party under the ominous name of " Free Soil." Events then hastened on. When, in 1854, the provisions of the Missouri Compromise were repealed, the end was ominously near. Again the South demanded the admission of Kansas as a slave State. A struggle began within the borders of this territory, which culminated in the admission of Kansas as a free State, and in the election of a " Free Soil," or " Republican," president. The South, seeing its prestige in the nation gone, then determined upon secession. Abraham Lincoln was the president who had been chosen, and who was now confronted by the gravest crisis that had occurred in the nation's history. Fortunate, indeed, was it for the American Republic that, under God, the people had made choice of this man to stand at the helm of State We will now review the career of Linc...