The peace promised, and apparently inaugurated, by the Compromise of 1850
was rudely broken by the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in
1854. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories of
the United States, the heritage of coming generations, to the invasion of
slavery, suddenly revealed the whole significance of the slavery question
to the people of the free States, and thrust itself into the politics of
the country as the paramount issue. Something like an electric shock
flashed through the North. Men who but a short time before had been
absorbed by their business pursuits, and deprecated all political
agitation, were startled out of their security by a sudden alarm, and
excitedly took sides. That restless trouble of conscience about slavery,
which even in times of apparent repose had secretly disturbed the souls
of Northern people, broke forth in an utterance louder than ever. The
bonds of accustomed party allegiance gave way. Antislavery Democrats and
antislavery Whigs felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering
sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization. The
Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the
hour. Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a
position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was
not owing to his virtues and abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery
question stirred his soul in its profoundest depths; it was, as one of
his intimate friends said, "the only one on which he would become
excited"; it called forth all his faculties and energies. Yet there were
many others who, having long and arduously fought the antislavery battle
in the popular assembly, or in the press, or in the halls of Congress,
far surpassed him in prestige, and compared with whom he was still an
obscure and untried man. His reputation, although highly honorable and
well earned, had so far been essentially local. As a stump-speaker in
Whig canvasses outside of his State he had attracted comparatively little