ceived the vote of eleven States, but James Buchanan was elected, and proved to the satisfaction of the world that there is nothing to prevent any unemployed man's applying for the Presidency of the United States; also that if his life has been free from ideas and opinions he may be elected sometimes where one who has been caught in the very act of thinking, and had it proved on him, might be defeated.
Chief-Justice Taney now stated that slaves could be taken into any State of the Union by their owners without forfeiting the rights of ownership. This was called the Dred Scott decision, and did much to irritate Abolitionists like John Brown, whose soul as this book goes to press is said to be marching on. Brown was a Kansas man with a mission and massive whiskers. He would be called now a crank; but his action in seizing a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry and declaring the slaves free was regarded by the South as thoroughly representative of the Northern feeling.
The country now began to be in a state of restlessness. Brown had been captured and hanged as a traitor. Northern men were obliged to leave their work every little while to catch a negro, crate him, and return him to his master or give him a lift towards Canada; and, as the negro was replenishing the earth at an astonishing rate, general alarm broke out.
