publicists feared, and that presidents and congressmen tried to
hide under the tenuous fabric of their compromises. But
it was an issue that persisted in keeping alive and that would
not down, for it was an issue between right and wrong. Three
times the great Clay maneuvered to outflank his opponents over
the smoldering fires of the slavery issue, but he died before the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave the death-blow to his
loosely gathered coalition. Webster, too, and Calhoun, the other
members of that brilliant trinity which represented the genius of
Constitutional Unionism, of States Rights, and of Conciliation,
passed away before the issue was squarely faced by a new party
organized for the purpose of opposing the further expansion of
slavery.

This new organization, the Republican party, rapidly assumed form
and solidarity. It was composed of Northern Whigs, of
anti-slavery Democrats, and of members of several minor groups,
such as the Know-Nothing or American party, the Liberty party,
and included as well some of the despised Abolitionists. The vote
for Fremont, its first presidential candidate, in 1856, showed it
to be a sectional party, confined to the North. But the definite
recognition of slavery as an issue by an opposition party had a
profound effect upon the Democrats. Their Southern wing now
promptly assumed an uncompromising attitude, which, in 1860,
split the party into factions. The Southern wing named
Breckinridge; the Northern wing named Stephen A. Douglas; while
many Democrats as well as Whigs took refuge in a third party,
calling itself the Constitutional Union, which named John Bell.
This division cost the Democrats the election, for, under the
unique and inspiring leadership of Abraham Lincoln, the