Back in Politics Again

When Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act opening slavery in previously free territories, Lincoln was back in politics.  Speaking for westerners he said, "We want the territories for home of free white people.  This they can not be to any considerable extent if slavery shall be planted within them."  In 1856, Lincoln left the Whig Party and joined the new Republican Party, campaigning for its candidate, John C. Fremont.

In 1858 Lincoln received the Illinois Republican nomination to oppose Stephen Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, for a seat in the U.S. Senate.  It was in his acceptance speech that he said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free."

Douglas accepted Lincoln's challenge to debate seven times in Illinois.  Douglas was five feet tall to Lincoln's six feet four inches.  Although Douglas won the Senate seat, Lincoln gained a national following.  He became a much-sought-after speaker and won the Republican presidential nomination in 1860.

Lincoln got less that 40% of the popular vote in 1860, but he won 17 states and his total electoral vote of 180 was more than all the other candidates:  Douglas and John Breckinridge for the Democrats, and John Bell for the Constitutional Union Party.  Secessionists had warned that the election of a "Black Republican" would destroy the Union, and before Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded to the form the Confederacy.

His was not to be an easy job to do...

Next time:  President Abraham Lincoln
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On October 19, 1869,  On this day in 1869, the famous Prussian-born mining engineer, Adolph Sutro, begins work on one of the most ambitious western engineering projects of the day: a four-mile-long tunnel through the solid rock of the Comstock Lode mining district, one of the richest silver deposits in the world.

Kansas Pre Civil War

On a hot August day in 1854 across a stretch of prairie in Kansas on the banks of the Kaw, two pioneers faced off.  On one side, Missourians, who had come west to claim newly opened land for the cause of slavery.  On the other side, northerners, financed by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, had traveled all the way west to claim land for free soil, free labor and free men.  Both were prepared to shed blood for their convictions. Although the day ended anti-climatically, the two groups exchanged threats but not gunfire.  Over the next six years, Kansas would know little peace with pro-slavery and free state fighting it out for control.

Before 1854 most of Kansas had been unorganized territory.  Then Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and divided the region into two territories.  Kansas in the south and Nebraska in the north.  The compromise was over the extension of slavery.  The act specifically repealed the old Missouri Compromise which had opened Missouri to slavery.

Under the new act, residents of the two created territories were to decide for themselves whether to admit or forbid slavery.  In the south, the Kansas--Nebraska Act was met with great satisfaction - more open territory for slavery.  In the north, the reaction was widespread anger and renewed determination that slavery would not extend across the prairie. 

The Act sparked the formation of the Republication Party made up mainly of the Free-Soil and Free Conscience people.  They were determined to reverse the new act and bar slavery forever from the area.  At the same time, clergyman, teachers, lecturers, and writers from anti-slavery New England raised money to finance emigrants to support their cause.

Next time..The first battle between the North and South
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Today in Pioneer History: "On September 5, 1813, During the War of 1812, a combined British and Indian force is defeated by General William Harrison’s American army at the Battle of the Thames near Ontario, Canada. The leader of the Indian forces was Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief who organized inter-tribal resistance to the encroachment of white settlers on Indian lands. He was killed in the fighting.