Perry, the brother of the hero of Lake Erie. Although told to be very friendly with the Japanese, he was sent out with seven war ships, so that he could hold his own if attacked. Perry delivered his letter, and after long delays finally got the Emperor of Japan to make a trade treaty with the United States.

The main trouble at home during Fillmore's rule was the old quarrel between the slavery and antislavery parties. For a time it had slumbered, but the fact that California wished to join the Union as a free state, started it up again with new fury.

Men got excited over it, and speeches of Calhoun, Clay,

the Capitol rang with the Seward, and Webster. The quarrel raged until Clay, the "peacemaker," finally suggested the bills forming what is known as the "Compromise of 1850."

Each party again gave up something to please the other, deciding that California should be a free state, but that Utah and New Mexico should form territories where slavery would be allowed or forbidden, just as the people settling there wished. Besides, to satisfy the Texans, who said that part of New Mexico belonged to them, ten million dollars was given in exchange for it. Clay's bill for settling all these questions was called the " Omnibus Bill.”

The Compromise of 1850 also decided that slaves should no longer be bought and sold in the District of Columbia, although members of Congress and others might still keep their slave servants.

A law had long been in existence which, in accordance with the Constitution, allowed slaveholders to go into free states to claim their runaway slaves. But instead of helping the owners, the Northern people often hid the negroes

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who besought their aid, and helped them to escape. They did this because they believed that slavery was wrong and that it was better to break such a law than to keep it.

To stop this practice, a new fugitive-slave act was included in the Compromise of 1850; but before long it made a great deal of trouble. Slaves who had run away many years before were now seized in the North and brought back by force to their masters. The poor negroes, who had thought themselves safe, naturally made a loud outcry when caught, and so roused the pity of people in the North that they several times rescued them. from their captors.

As slaves were no longer safe in any part of our country, kind-hearted people who thought more of their suffering than of obeying the law, now sent them into Canada. But, not daring to oppose the law openly, they forwarded. them secretly from place to place, hidden under loads of

hay, packed in barrels, or done up in queer-shaped parcels. These were passed on from one person to another, who thus formed what was known as the "underground railroad."

Of course, the sight of slave catchers in the Northern towns made people talk and write more than ever against slavery. All agreed that the trouble had begun in 1619, when the first negroes were sold in Virginia, and that it had steadily grown worse. Many people in the South also thought slavery an evil, but they added that their negroes were so ignorant and helpless that they had to be treated like children, for they would starve if left to themselves.

Still, there were also many others who insisted that it was only right that negroes should serve white men. These people were very angry when Northern papers were sent south, or when their slaves were taught to read, for they said any knowledge the colored people gained would only make them discontented with their lot.

XXXIII. THE FIRST WORLD'S FAIR.

HEN the government was formed, slave property

WHE

was recognized in the Constitution, and each state was left free to do as it chose about keeping slaves. But since then ideas had been changing. The appearance of slave catchers in the North, and the publication of a novel called "Uncle Tom's Cabin "-of which many thousands of copies were sold-created a great sensation.

This novel was written by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, while busy with her house and children. It told a great

deal about slavery, made people laugh, and cry, and think, and showed so plainly what slavery might be under cruel masters that most of those who read it declared the slaves ought to be freed.

Now, no one had a right to force the Southern states to set the slaves free, except-some people said-the President, in time of war. But the Northerners thought it was bad enough to have slaves in the states which already existed. You know that when Missouri was admitted as a slave state, it was decided that all the rest of the Louisiana purchase, north of a line drawn west from the southern. boundary of Missouri, should be free soil. But although people thought this Missouri Compromise would end all trouble about slavery, quarrels broke out again, as we have seen, over the lands acquired from Mexico.

After the Omnibus Bill had been passed (1850), people again thought the slavery question settled forever. But four years later Senator Stephen A. Doug'las proposed that two territories, Kan'sas and Ne-bras'ka, should be carved out of the old Louisiana purchase, and be admitted as states as soon as they had enough inhabitants. He added that these should be allowed to choose for themselves whether they would be free or slave states, although they lay north of the Missouri Compromise line.

This proposal made the antislavery men very angry, and they wrote and talked against it with all their might. Still, in spite of all their efforts, the Missouri Compromise was repealed, in 1854. The only way now left to prevent the new territories from becoming slave states was to send out as many settlers as possible who were against slavery; so the Northern people worked hard to do this.

On their part, the Southerners hastened into these lands with large bands of slaves. Thus it became a race, each party trying to send the most settlers. The two kinds of men-antislavery and proslavery—thus began farming side by side; but when they began to talk politics, they soon quarreled fiercely.

People rushed into the country so fast that before long there were men enough in the present state of Kansas to vote and decide whether it should be free or slave soil. The excitement, therefore, daily grew greater and greater, and as the Missouri people hoped it would be slave soil, there was some cheating about voting. Some Missouri men crossed the frontier to vote for slavery, and this fact helped to make trouble when the elections decided that it should be slave soil. For several years there were quarrels and fights between the two parties in the territory, and this time of violence, bloodshed, and border warfare won for that part of our country the name of "bleeding Kansas."

Fillmore, in the meantime, had been succeeded by Franklin Pierce, fourteenth President of the United States. Pierce had been a poor lad, but he managed to secure a good education. He then became a lawyer, and was so determined to succeed that when some people made fun of him, after a first failure, he firmly said: "I will try nine hundred and ninety-nine cases, if clients continue to trust me; and if I fail just as I have failed to-day, I will try the thousandth. I shall live to argue cases in this courthouse in a manner that will mortify neither myself nor my friends." As the young man proved as good as his word, it will not surprise you to hear that he did succeed.