free-soil ballot cast. By this means the Buchanan electors were beaten
fifteen hundred votes in St. Louis City and County, where, by a union as
Benton proposed, they would have had three thousand majority. But the
'free-soilers' failed to defeat Buchanan in the State.

Nothing discouraged by this result, Blair resumed the work of organizing
for the future. The Fillmore party gave no thanks to the free-soilers
for their aid in the presidential election, nor did the latter ask any.
They had simply taken the choice of evils; and now, renouncing all
alliances, Blair became the champion and leader of a self-existing,
self-reliant State party, that should accomplish emancipation in
Missouri. He again established a newspaper to inculcate free principles
in the State. By untiring effort, he revived and recruited his party. He
gave it platforms, planned its campaigns, contested every election in
St. Louis, whether for municipal officers, for State legislature, or for
Congress; and always fought his battles on the most advanced ground
assumed by the growing free-soil party of the Union. The powerful and
rapidly-increasing German population of St. Louis responded nobly to his
zeal and skillful leadership. Soon a victory was gained; and St. Louis
declared for freedom, amid acclamations that reverberated throughout the
States that extended from the Ohio to the lakes, and from the
Mississippi to the Atlantic. But, having wrenched victory from a people
so intolerant as the pro-slavery population of Missouri, it was not to
be expected that he would retain it easily. He was set upon more
fiercely than ever. The loss of the city of St. Louis was considered a
disgrace to the State; and the most desperate personal malignity was
added to the resentment of pro-slavery wrath in the future election
contests in that city. The corrupting appliances of federal power were
at last invoked, under Buchanan's administration; and Blair was for the
moment overwhelmed by fraud, and thrown out of Congress. But, with a