This alarmed the people of the South who were not pacified until the compromise act of 1850, which act Mr. Seward violently opposed.

One of the prominent measures of this compromise act of 185O, was the Fugitive Slave Act, yet the anti-slavery people kept up such an agitation that several of the Northern States were induced to pass Personal Liberty Bills. in imitation of the example set by Massachusetts.

In 1852, the abolitionists dropped Mr. Berney and selected David Hale the Boston Auctioneer and Sunday-school teacher as their candidate for the presidency. He received 157.000 votes as against their former candidate Mr. Berney of 7,000 in 1840, and in 1856 Jno. C. Freemont the abolition candidate for president received 1.334.553 votes.

These questions were kept alive at the North by discussion as to citizenship of the free blacks i several States had be- stowed upon them suffrage as a practical proof of their right to rank as citizens. This controversy was settled by the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case.

Dred Scott was a Negro who lived in Missouri, his master being a surgeon in the United States Army from the above state, who moved from Missouri to the state of Illinois, then later to Minnesota, taking the Negro with him. While in Minnesota. this Negro man married a Negro woman owned by the same master and had born to them two children.

Dred was afterwards taken to St Louis and sold, he then brought suit for his freedom. This case went through the channel of the courts until it reached the United States Supreme Court, which rendered its decision in December 1857 , which said; "That the Negroes were not citizens of the United States and could not be- come so under our constitution, they could not sue or be sued and therefore this court has no jurisdiction in the case."

A slave was simply personal property that could be taken from state to state, the same as other property without his master losing ownership in him.

This decision of the highest court in the land was rendered by its Chief Justice Taney with six other members of the court, making a total of seven of the nine judges of a full bench, while only two dissented. This almost unanimous opinion ought to have been conclusive, and was entirely in accord with the fundamental principles of our constitution.

This decision was received by the South with its hearty approval, while at the North it created bitter dissatisfaction, and that high tribunal of justice and learning was scathingly denounced.

The abolitionists of the North said that the "Constitution of the United States was a league with death and a covenant with hell."

It did look as if these people had no respect for law, order or God when any of these came in contact with their hatred to the Southern people.

The Dred Scott decision was rendered in 1857, and during the winter of 1857- 58 John Brown, who had been a leader and promoter of the troubles in Kansas, put himself at the head of a party (this he acknowledged) , for the purpose of inflaming the public mind on the subject of slavery, and effected an organization to bring about servile insurrection in the slave States.

To accomplish this, he colleted a number of young. men including two of his own sons, and with the funds and arms that had been furnished for his Kansas lawlessness, after he had been run out of there by the Federal officers, he placed these young men under military discipline at. Springdale, Iowa. In the spring of 1858 he took them to Chatham, Canada, where on May 8, 1858, he called a convention of his followers and adopted a Provisional Constitution for the people of the United States, the preamble of which began by saying: "Whereas, Slavery throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion, Therefore, we citizens of the United States and the oppressed people, who are declared to have no rights, which the white man is bound to respect, do ordain and establish for ourselves the following Provisional Constitution, to better protect our person, property, lives and liberties."

Two days afterwards, after appointing a committee with power to fill all vacancies in their Constitution that the convention had adopted when assembled in a foreign land, they adjourned "sine-die," and Brown then took his party to Ohio and disbanded them subject to his call. However one of them, a Capt. Cook of Connecticut, he sent to Harper's Ferry, Va. to make himself familiar with the surrounding country and its citizens, especially the Negroes, in order that he might inform his leader. John Brown, under the assumed name of Isaac Smith went to the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry about July I, 1858 and spied out the country for future military operations, going as far up the valley as the little city of Staunton.

He led the people to believe that he was a farmer from New York. He had with him two of his sons and a son-in-law, all, under the pretense of renting or buying a farm. He soon rented a small farm four and a half miles from Harper's Ferry on the Maryland side of the Potomac. This was known as the Kennedy farm, where he did some work In the farming line to cover his secret, lawless intentions. He also claimed to be an expert in mineralogy, and expected to find valuable deposits in the mountain regions about Harper's Ferry.