Great curiosity existed whether the
radical differences between its Northern and Southern wings could by any
possibility be removed or adjusted, whether the adherents of Douglas and
those of Buchanan could be brought to join in a common platform and in
the support of a single candidate. The Democratic leaders in the
Southern States had become more and more out-spoken in their pro-slavery
demands. They had advanced step by step from the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise in 1854, the attempt to capture Kansas by Missouri invasions
in 1855 and 1856, the support of the Dred Scott decision and the
Lecompton fraud in 1857, the repudiation of Douglas's Freeport heresy in
1858, to the demand for a congressional slave code for the Territories
and the recognition of the doctrine of property in slaves. These last
two points they had distinctly formulated in the first session of the
Thirty-sixth Congress. On January 18, 1860, Senator Brown of Mississippi
introduced into the Senate two resolutions, one asserting the
nationality of slavery, the other that, when necessary, Congress should
pass laws for its protection in the Territories. On February 2 Jefferson
Davis introduced another series of resolutions intended to serve as a
basis for the national Democratic platform, the central points of which
were that the right to take and hold slaves in the Territories could
neither be impaired nor annulled, and that it was the duty of Congress
to supply any deficiency of laws for its protection.
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