incendiary. Millson of Virginia said that "one who consciously,
deliberately, and of purpose lends his name and influence to the
propagation of such writings is not only not fit to be speaker,
but he is not-fit to live." It is one of the ironies of the
situation that the passage selected to prove the incendiary
character of the book is almost a literal quotation from the
debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1832.



CHAPTER X. "BLEEDING KANSAS"

Both the leading political parties were, in the campaign of 1852,
fully committed to the acceptance of the so-called Compromise of
1850 as a final settlement of the slavery question; both were
committed to the support of the Fugitive Slave Act. The Free-soil
party, with John P. Hale as its candidate, did make a vigorous
attack upon the Fugitive Slave Act, and opposed all compromises
respecting slavery, but Free-Boilers had been to a large extent
reabsorbed into the Democratic party, their vote of 1852 being
only about half that of 1848. Though the Whig vote was large and
only about two hundred thousand less than that of the Democrats,
yet it was so distributed that the Whigs carried only four
States, Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The
other States gave a Democratic plurality.

Had there been time for readjustment, the Whig party might have
recovered lost ground, but no time was permitted. There was in
progress in Missouri a political conflict which was already
commanding national attention. Thomas H. Benton, for thirty years