Читать книгу The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years hence онлайн

14 страница из 28

After that came, in due course, the attempt of the Supreme Court to put an end to the Abolitionist agitation, declaring that Congress could not restrict slavery in the Territories, which meant that the Republican Party had no right to exist. To “cheerfully acquiesce” in the decision of the Supreme Court, was the duty of “all good citizens,” according to President Buchanan; yet the only result of the action of the Supreme Court was to cause the agitation to burst out afresh. In Illinois, Abraham Lincoln ran for senator in flat defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision, and the Republican Party all over the country went on in its revolutionary course, precisely as if no Supreme Court had ever existed. A year or two later an agitator made matters still worse by his attempt to set free the slaves by force. “It is my firm and deliberate conviction,” said Senator Douglas, “that the Harper’s Ferry crime was the natural, logical and inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican Party.” And he was perfectly right.