THE BEGINNING OF STRIFE; OR, THE TAYLOR AND FILLMORE WEBBING.
1849–1853.
The Young Polka Dancer becomes Floor Manager.—The large Apples of
Discord emptied on the Floor of Congress.—What they were; and the
Pacific Trees from which they fell.—Of California, New Mexico, and
Deseret.—General Taylor’s Death, and Mr. Fillmore’s suave Manners and
smooth Appeals.—Wendell Phillips and J. Davis.—Political Nurses and
Anodynes.—Kossuth and his Short Catechism.—How it did not take, and
how he did.—A large Piece of Japanned Ware.—Deaths of Clay and
Webster.—The Autumn Glory which they shed on a Stormy Season.
The young man who, in Texas and Mexico, had got through the polka to the
delight of the spectators, and the discontent of the floor committee,
became himself the general manager for the coming season; Millard
Fillmore being first assistant.
Already, however, the apple of discord, or rather a whole barrelful of
very red-faced Spitzenbergs, mixed with meal-colored russets, had been
emptied into the Union, and rolled over the floor of Congress. The
acquisitions, gained from Mexico by arms and the treaty of 1848,
including the new gold weights handed up by California, disturbed the
adjustments of Mr. Calhoun’s patent balances, which only worked well
when a colored State was put on one side at the same moment that an
uncolored one was put upon the other,—an operation about as difficult
and just as natural, as that which regulates the number of children in a
family to the number of bushels of wheat grown in any season, or to the
number of windy days in the year. In 1850, three Territories pressed for
admission as States, each carrying some of the fatal apples; California,
with a Constitution excluding slavery; New Mexico, formed out of Texas,
but disputing with her a boundary line; and Utah, then called Deseret,
taking in all the women which could be drawn thither, and, by the aid of
its dry air, absorbing them into the Smith and Young families. Texas
herself, admitted into the Union in December, 1847, always swaggering
with a rapier in her belt and a patch over her eye, bullied New Mexico
lustily on one side, so as to make lustier claims upon the United States
on the other,—a cock-eyed way of shooting that made one barrel with two
diverging eyes over the sight do the work of a double-shooter. Petitions
from the North for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
and from the South for a more stringent fugitive-slave act, rolled very
large Spitzenbergs and russets on the floor of Congress.
Looking from the legislative galleries upon the newly arrived heap, a
Western stroller might have asked of his comrade, as the freshly landed
Irishman demanded of his countrymen, at his first sight of a tortoise
walking about, “Be these live snuff-boxes common in these America; be
they or _be_ they?” and might have received a like answer, “Be asy, and
look on I tell ye, for I dunno’s they be, and I dunno _as_ they be.”
Suddenly, however, Mr. Clay’s old established omnibus, belonging to the
compromise line,—which generally took up all the passengers, rejoicing
at their good luck, although apt to set them down very discontented at
the end of the way,—drove in to carry off in one load all of these
fretting, complaining subjects.
Just at this time, July 9, 1850, the large-hearted but short-headed
President died, and the polite and urbane Fillmore,
“Washing his hands with invisible soap,
In imperceptible water,”
stepped out on the balcony, and, bowing suavely towards the driver and
the quarrelsome load, begged Mr. Webster, Mr. Corwin, Mr. Crittenden,
and other by-standers, to be good enough to assist in getting the
carry-all and the disagreeable objects that kept so many people awake o’
nights, out of Washington. It was not until September, however, before
the tightly crammed vehicle was started, carrying California in a State
suit, unattended by a colored servant, New Mexico, and Utah as
Territorial passengers, with the liberty of having bronzed property or
not along with them, slavers taken out of the District of Columbia never
to return, a chest containing ten million dollars for the State with a
patch on its eye, and messengers to the Northern free States, informing
them that hereafter they were to break up all underground railroads, and
to send stray Southern baggage, without its owners, back whence it had
departed.
Of course everybody was dissatisfied, except Wendell Phillips, J. Davis,
and their following,—the ascendentalists and descendentalists,—who,
sincere devotees for equality and inequality, found a novel pleasure in
having new stand-points, from which they could each look up to or down
upon, a grievance large enough for thought, speech, and action.
The political nurses, of course, thought that the paregoric had forever
quieted the crying evils; but wiser people foresaw that these attempts
to get remedies for wide-awake consciences and interests out of a
Congress-water bottle were just as idle as the conjurer’s trick to
obtain whiskey, wine cordial, brandy, and milk-punch from the same
nozzle.
In 1851 Louis Kossuth, brought over from Turkey, whither he had escaped
from Hungary in a national ship, put forth, immediately on his arrival
here, a very short catechism, which comprised a single question and
answer.
“_Q._ What is the chief end of Americans?
“_A._ To fight Austria evermore.”
After spending most eloquent commentaries upon this brief compendium of
duty, in which he braided newly spun English words and upbraided
American indifference, he abandoned the missionary field, leaving a
large Kossuth party, but a very small body of proselytes to Kossuth’s
gospel.
In 1852 we obtained an immensely large piece of japanned ware,—a
Japanese treaty bargained for by Commodore Perry,—a piece which seems to
grow larger the longer we look at it.
The death of Mr. Clay in June, 1852, and of Mr. Webster in October
following, left, like the touch of frost in autumn, a dying glory to the
troubled and storm-swept season which had just passed over America.