Review (_continued_).--Contrast between General Taylor and General
Cass.--The Cabinet of President Taylor.--Political Condition of
the Country.--Effect produced by the Discovery of Gold in California.
--Convening of Thirty-first Congress.--Election of Howell Cobb as
Speaker.--President Taylor's Message.--His Recommendations Distasteful
to the South.--Illustrious Membership of the Senate.--Mr. Clay and
the Taylor Administration.--Mr. Calhoun's Last Speech in the Senate.
--His Death.--His Character and Public Services.--Mr. Webster's
7th of March Speech.--Its Effect upon the Public and upon Mr.
Webster.--Mr. Clay's Committee of Thirteen.--The Omnibus Bill.--
Conflict with General Taylor's Administration.--Death of the
President.--Mr. Fillmore reverses Taylor's Policy and supports the
Compromise Measures.--Defeat of Compromise Bill.--Passage of the
Measures separately.--Memorable Session of Congress.--Whig and
Democratic Parties sustain the Compromise Measures.--National
Conventions.--Whigs nominate Winfield Scott over Fillmore.--Mr.
Clay supports Fillmore.--Mr. Webster's Friends.--Democrats nominate
Franklin Pierce.--Character of the Campaign.--Overwhelming Defeat
of Scott.--Destruction of the Whig Party.--Death of Mr. Clay.--
Death of Mr. Webster.--Their Public Characters and Services
compared.
With the election of General Taylor, the various issues of the
slavery question were left undecided and unchanged. Indeed, the
progress of the canvass had presented a political anomaly. General
Cass was born in New England of Puritan stock. All his mature life
had been spent in the free North-West. He was a lawyer, a statesman,
always a civilian, except for a single year in the volunteer service
of 1812. General Taylor was born in Virginia, was reared in
Kentucky, was a soldier by profession from his earliest years of
manhood, had passed all his life in the South, was a resident of
Louisiana, engaged in planting, and was the owner of a large number
of slaves. Yet in the face of these facts General Cass ran as the
distinctively pro-slavery candidate, and General Taylor received
three-fourths of the votes of New England, and was supported
throughout the North by the anti-slavery Whigs, who accepted William
H. Seward as a leader and Horace Greeley as an exponent. But his
contradiction was apparent, not real. It was soon found that the
confidence of the Northern men who voted for Taylor had not been
misplaced.
CABINET OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
As his inauguration approached, the anxiety in regard to his public
policy grew almost painfully intense throughout the country. There
had never been a cabinet organized in which so deep an interest
was felt,--an interest which did not attach so much to the persons
who might compose it as to the side--pro-slavery or anti-slavery--
to which the balance might incline. When the names were announced,
it was found that four were from the south side of Mason and Dixon's
line, and three from the north side. But a review of the political
character of the members showed that the decided weight of influence
was with the North. John M. Clayton of Delaware, Secretary of
State, nominally from the South, had voted for the Wilmot Proviso,
and had defended his action with commanding ability. William M.
Meredith of Pennsylvania was one of the ablest lawyers of the
country, a scholar, a wit, an orator; his training had not, however,
fitted him for the Treasury Department to which he was called.
Thomas Ewing of Ohio, selected to organize the Department of the
Interior, just then authorized by law, was a man of intellectual
power, a lawyer of the first rank, possessing a stainless character,
great moral courage, unbending will, an incisive style, both with
tongue and pen, and a breadth of reading and wealth of information
never surpassed by any public man in America. Jacob Collamer of
Vermont, Postmaster-general, was an able, wise, just, and firm man,
stern in principle, conservative in action. The Attorney-general
was Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, an ardent Whig partisan, distinguished
in his profession, born and living in a slave State, but firmly
devoted to the Union, as in later life he abundantly proved. The
pronounced Southern sentiment, as represented by Toombs and Stephens,
had but two representatives in the cabinet,--George W. Crawford of
Georgia (nephew of the eminent William H. Crawford), Secretary of
War; and William Ballard Preston of Virginia, Secretary of the
Navy,--able and upright men, but less distinguished than their
associates.
The country was in an expectant and restless condition. The pro-
slavery leaders, who had counted upon large political gain to their
section by the acquisition of territory from Mexico, were somewhat
discouraged, and began to fear that the South had sown, and that
the North would reap. They had hoped to establish their right by
positive legislation to enter all the territories with slave
property. If they should fail in this, they believed with all
confidence, and had good reason at the time for their faith, that
they would be able to carry the line of 36 deg. 30' to the Pacific by
an extension of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and that in this
way the political strength of their section would be vastly enhanced.
But not long after the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
an event happened which put to naught the anticipations of Southern
statesmen. Gold was discovered in California late in the autumn
of 1848, and by one of those marvels of emigration which the Anglo-
Saxon race have more than once achieved, the Pacific slope was
immediately filled with a hardy, resolute, intelligent population.
In less than a year they organized a State government, adopted a
constitution in which slavery was forever prohibited, and were
ready by the close of 1849 to apply for admission to the Union.
The inhabitants had no powers of civil government conferred by
Congress; the only authority exercised by the United States being
that of Colonel Bennett Riley of the regular army, who had been
placed in command immediately after the Treaty of Peace by President
Polk, and who was left undisturbed by President Taylor.
Congress convened on the first Monday of December, 1849, amid deep
feeling, rapidly growing into excitement throughout the country.
For three weeks the House was unable to organize by the choice of
a speaker. The Democratic candidate was Howell Cobb; the Whig
candidate, Robert C. Winthrop. The contest was finally settled on
the sixty-third ballot, in accordance with a previous agreement
that a plurality should elect. Mr. Cobb received one hundred and
two votes; Mr. Winthrop ninety-nine, with twenty votes scattering,
principally anti-slavery Whigs and Free-Soilers. It was the first
time that such a step had been taken; and its constitutionality
was so doubtful, that after the ballot, a resolution declaring Mr.
Cobb to be speaker was adopted by general concurrence on a yea and
nay vote.
The message of the President was immediately transmitted, and proved
a tower of strength to the friends of the Union, and a heavy blow
to the secession element, which was rampant in Congress. The
President recommended that California, with her constitution,
already known to be anti-slavery, be promptly admitted to the Union.
He also suggested that New Mexico, already better protected in
property, life, liberty, and religion than she had ever been before,
be quietly left under her existing military government until she
should form a State constitution, and apply for admission,--an
event deemed probable in the very near future. That accomplished,
as he added in a special message a few days later, the claims of
Texas to a portion of New Mexico could be judicially determined,
which could not be done while New Mexico remained a territory,
organized or unorganized. These recommendations were intensely
distasteful to the South, and grew to be correspondingly popular
in the North. The sectional feeling rapidly developed and the
agitation in Congress communicated itself to the entire country.
THE UNITED STATES SENATE IN 1850.
The character and eminence of the men who took part in the discussion
gave it an intense, almost dramatic interest. Mr. Clay in his
seventy-third year was again in the Senate by the unanimous vote
of the Kentucky Legislature, in the belief that his patriotic
influence was needed in the impending crisis. Webster and Cass,
natives of the same New-England State, Benton and Calhoun, natives
of the Carolinas, all born the same year and now approaching
threescore and ten, represented in their own persons almost every
phase of the impending contest. Stephen A. Douglas had entered
the preceding Congress at the early age of thirty-four, and the
ardent young Irish soldier, James Shields, was now his colleague.
Jefferson Davis had come from Mississippi with the brilliant record
of his achievements in the Mexican war, already ambitious to succeed
Mr. Calhoun as the leader of the extreme South, but foiled in his
Disunion schemes by his eloquent but erratic colleague, Henry S.
Foote. William H. Seward of New York was for the first time taking
position under the National Government, at the age of forty-nine,
and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, five years younger, was beginning his
political career as the colleague of Thomas Corwin. John Bell was
still honorably serving Tennessee, and John McPherson Berrien was
still honoring Georgia by his service. The amiable and excellent
William R. King, who had entered the Senate when Alabama was admitted
in 1819, and who was Colonel Benton's senior in service by two
years when he resigned in 1844 to accept the French mission, now
returned, and remained until he was chosen Vice-President in 1852.
Hannibal Hamlin had entered the preceding year, and was still
leading a bitter fight on the slavery question against a formidable
element in his own party headed at home by Nathan Clifford and
represented in the Senate by his colleague, James W. Bradbury.
John P. Hale, a New-Hampshire Democrat whom Franklin Pierce had
attempted to discipline because as representative in Congress he
had opposed the annexation of Texas, had beaten Pierce before the
people, defied the Democratic party, and was promoted to the Senate
an outspoken Free-Soiler. Willie P. Mangum and George E. Badger,
able, graceful, experienced statesmen, represented the steadfast
Union sentiment of the "Old North State" Whigs; while Andrew P.
Butler, impulsive and generous, learned and able, embodied all the
heresies of the South-Carolina Nullifiers. James M. Mason, who
seemed to court the hatred of the North, and Robert M. T. Hunter,
who had the cordial respect of all sections, spoke for Virginia.
Pierre Soule came from Louisiana, eloquent even in a language he
could not pronounce, but better fitted by temperament for the
turbulence of a revolutionary assembly in his native land than for
the decorous conservatism of the American Senate. Sam Houston was
present from Texas, with a history full of adventure and singular
fortune, while his colleague, Thomas J. Rusk, was daily increasing
a reputation which had already marked him in the judgment of Mr.
Webster as first among the younger statesmen of the South. Dodge
of Wisconsin and Dodge of Iowa, father and son, represented the
Democracy of the remotest outposts in the North-West, and, most
striking of all, William M. Gwin and John C. Fremont, men of Southern
birth and pro-slavery training, stood at the door of the Senate
with the constitution of California in their hands to demand her
admission to the Union as a free State. At no time before or since
in the history of the Senate has its membership been so illustrious,
its weight of character and ability so great. The period marked
the meeting and dividing line between two generations of statesmen.
The eminent men who had succeeded the leaders of the Revolutionary
era were passing away, but the most brilliant of their number were
still lingering, unabated in natural force, resplendent in personal
fame. Their successors in public responsibility, if not their
equals in public regard and confidence, were already upon the stage
preparing for, and destined to act in, the bloodiest and most
memorable of civil struggles.
Mr. Clay had re-entered the Senate with no cordial feelings toward
President Taylor's administration. The events of the preceding
year were too fresh, the wounds too deep, to be readily forgotten
or quickly healed. But he desired no quarrel and was incapable of
showing petty resentment. His mind was intent on harmonizing the
serious differences between North and South, and he believed the
President's plan would fall short and fail. He desired, in the
same spirit of compromise which had been so distinguishing a mark
of his statesmanship in former crises, to secure "an amicable
arrangement of _all_ questions in controversy between the free and
slave States growing out of the subject of slavery." He was so
accustomed to lead, that the senators involuntarily waited for him
to open the discussion and point the way. He as naturally accepted
the responsibility, and in January (1850) began by submitting a
series of resolutions reciting the measures which were necessary
for the pacification of all strife in the country. These resolutions
embraced the admission of California; governments for the territory
acquired from Mexico without prohibition or permission of slavery;
adjustment of the disputed boundary of Texas and the allowance of
ten millions of dollars to that State for the payment of her debt;
the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; more
effectual provision for the restitution of fugitive slaves.
DEATH OF JOHN C. CALHOUN.
It was on these resolutions that Mr. Calhoun prepared his last
formal speech. He attempted to deliver it in the Senate on the
4th of March, but was so weak that he requested Mr. Mason of Virginia
to read it for him. On two or three subsequent occasions Mr.
Calhoun made brief extempore remarks showing each time a gradual
decay of strength. He died on the last day of March. Most touching
and appreciative eulogies were delivered by Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster,
after his death had been announced by his colleague, Judge Butler.
Mr. Clay spoke of his "transcendent talents," of his "clear, concise,
compact logic," of his "felicity in generalization surpassed by no
one." He intimated that he would have been glad to see Mr. Calhoun
succeed Mr. Monroe in the Presidency in 1820. Mr. Webster, who
always measured his words, spoke of him as "a man of undoubted
genius and commanding talent, of unspotted integrity, of unimpeached
honor." Mr. Calhoun had been driven by his controversies with
Jackson into a position where he was deprived of popular strength
in the free States. But this very fact enhanced his power with
the South, and increased his hold upon his own people. To the
majority of the people in the slave-holding States he was as an
inspired leader for more than twenty years. He taught the philosophy
and supplied the arguments to the ambitious generation of public
men who came after him, and who were prepared, as he was not, to
force the issue to the arbitrament of arms. Deplorable as was the
end to which his teachings led, he could not have acquired the
influence he wielded over millions of men unless he had been gifted
with acute intellect, distinguished by moral excellence, and inspired
by the sincerest belief in the righteousness of his cause. History
will adjudge him to have been single-hearted and honest in his
political creed. It will equally adjudge him to have been wrong
in his theory of the Federal Government, and dead to the awakened
sentiment of Christendom in his views concerning the enslavement
of man.
Mr. Calhoun's published works show the extent of his participation
in the national councils. They exhibit his zeal, the intensity of
his convictions, and at the same time the clearness and strength
of his logic. His premises once admitted, it is difficult to resist
the force of his conclusions. Mr. Webster assailed his premises,
and in their debate of February 16, 1833, defeated him, as another
senator remarked, "by the acuteness of his definitions,"--thus
meeting Mr. Calhoun on his own ground. The war and its results
have in large degree remanded the theories of Mr. Calhoun to the
past, but no intelligent student of the institutions of the United
States can afford to neglect his elaborate, conscientious, able
discussions. Taken with Mr. Webster's works they exhibit the most
complete examination, the most comprehensive analysis of the often
tortuous and ill-defined line which separates the powers of the
National Government from the functions which properly belong to
the States. Mr. Calhoun's public service may be regarded as
continuous from 1810, when he was elected to Congress at twenty-
eight years of age, till his death,--a period of forty years. He
took his seat in the House in December, 1811, and was placed by
the speaker, Mr. Clay (with whom he was then in accord), on the
Committee of Foreign Affairs. He was earnest and influential in
supporting the war policy of the Madison administration, and gained
so rapidly in public estimation that six years later he was appointed
secretary of War by President Monroe. Thenceforward his career
was illustrious. As Vice-President, as secretary of State, above
all as senator from South Carolina, he gained lasting renown. His
life was eminently pure, his career exceptional, his fame established
beyond the reach of calumny, beyond the power of detraction.
MR. WEBSTER'S 7TH OF MARCH SPEECH.
Continuing the discussion invited by Mr. Clay's resolutions, Mr.
Webster delivered, on the 7th of March, the memorable speech which
cost him the loss of so many of his staunch and lifelong friends.
The anti-slavery Whigs of the North, who, as the discussion went
on, had waited to be vindicated by the commanding argument of Mr.
Webster, were dismayed and cast down by his unexpected utterance.
Instead of arraigning the propagandists of slavery, he arraigned
its opponents. Instead of indicting the Disunionists of the South,
the poured out his wrath upon the Abolitionists of the North. He
maintained that the North had unduly exaggerated the dangers of
slavery extension at this crisis. California was coming in as a
free State. Texas, north of 36 deg. 30', if her boundary should extend
so far, had been declared free in the articles of annexation. In
the mountainous and sterile character of New Mexico and Utah he
found a stronger prohibition of slavery than in any possible
ordinance, enactment, or proviso placed on the statute-book by
Congress. He would not, therefore, "re-enact the Law of God." He
would not force a quarrel with the South when nothing was to be
gained. He would not irritate or causelessly wound the feelings
of those who were just beginning to realize that they had lost in
the issue put at stake in the Mexican war. The speech undoubtedly
had great influence in the North, and caused many anti-slavery men
to turn back. But on the other hand, it embittered thousands who
pressed forward with sturdy principle and with a quickened zeal,
not unmixed with resentment and a sense of betrayal. In many parts
of the country, and especially in the Middle and Southern States,
the speech was received with enthusiastic approval. But in New
England, the loss of whose good opinion could not be compensated
to Mr. Webster by the applause of a world outside, he never regained
his hold upon the popular affection. New friends came to him, but
they did not supply the place of the old friends, who for a lifetime
had stood by him with unswerving principle and with ever-increasing
pride.
Excitement and passion do not, however, always issue decrees and
pronounce judgments of absolute right. In the zeal of that hour,
Northern anti-slavery opinion failed to appreciate the influence
which wrought so powerfully on the mind of Mr. Webster. He belonged
with those who could remember the first President, who personally
knew much of the hardships and sorrows of the Revolutionary period,
who were born to poverty and reared in privation. To these, the
formation of the Federal Government had come as a gift from Heaven,
and they had heard from the lips of the living Washington in his
farewell words, that "the Union is the edifice of our real
independence, the support of our tranquillity at home, our peace
abroad, our prosperity, our safety, and of the very liberty which
we so highly prize, that for this Union we should cherish a cordial,
habitual, immovable attachment, and should discountenance whatever
may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned."
Mr. Webster had in his own lifetime seen the thirteen colonies grow
into thirty powerful States. He had seen three millions of people,
enfeebled and impoverished by a long struggle, increased eightfold
in number, surrounded by all the comforts, charms, and securities
of life. All this spoke to him of the Union and of its priceless
blessings. He now heard its advantages discussed, its perpetuity
doubted, its existence threatened. A convention of slave-holding
States had been called, to meet at Nashville, for the purpose of
considering the possible separation of the sections. Mr. Webster
felt that a generation had been born who were undervaluing their
inheritance, and who might, by temerity, destroy it. Under motives
inspired by these surroundings, he spoke for the preservation of
the Union. He believed it to be seriously endangered. His
apprehensions were ridiculed by many who, ten years after Mr.
Webster was in his grave, saw for the first time how real and how
terrible were the perils upon which those apprehensions were
founded.
When the hour of actual conflict came, every patriot realized that
a great magazine of strength for the Union was stored in the
teachings of Mr. Webster. For thirty years preceding the Nullification
troubles in South Carolina, the government had been administered
on the States'-rights theory, in which the power of the nation was
subordinated, and its capacity to subdue the revolt of seceding
States was dangerously weakened. His speech in reply to Hayne in
1830 was like an amendment to the Constitution. It corrected
traditions, changed convictions, revolutionized conclusions. It
gave to the friends of the Union the abundant logic which established
the right and the power of the government to preserve itself. A
fame so lofty, a work so grand, cannot be marred by one mistake,
if mistake it be conceded. The thoughtful reconsideration of his
severest critics must allow that Mr. Webster saw before him a
divided duty, and that he chose the part which in his patriotic
judgment was demanded by the supreme danger of the hour.
Mr. Clay's resolutions were referred to a special committee of
thirteen, of which he was made chairman. They reported a bill
embracing the principal objects contemplated in his original speech.
The discussion on this composite measure was earnest and prolonged,
and between certain senators became exasperating. The Administration,
through its newspapers, through the declarations of its Cabinet
minsters, through the unreserved expressions of President Taylor
himself, showed persistent hostility to Mr. Clay's Omnibus Bill,
as it was derisively and offensively called. Mr. Clay, in turn,
did not conceal his hostility to the mode of adjustment proposed
in the messages of the President, and defended his own with vigor
and eloquence. Reciting the measures demanded for a fair and
lasting settlement, he said there were five wounds, bleeding and
threatening the body politic, all needing to be healed, while the
President proposed to heal but one. He described the wounds,
numbering them carefully on his fingers as he spoke. Colonel
Benton, who was vindictively opposed to the Omnibus Bill, made
sport of the five gaping wounds, and believed that Mr. Clay would
have found more wounds if he had had more fingers. This strife
naturally grew more and more severe, making for a time a somewhat
serious division among the Democrats, and rending the Whig party
asunder, one section following Mr. Clay with great zeal, the other
adhering with tenacity to the administration.
DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
The quarrel was growing fiercer day by day, and involving all shades
of political opinion, when it was suddenly arrested by the death
of General Taylor on the 9th of July (1850). This sad event gave
the opportunity for the success of the Compromise measures. Had
General Taylor lived, their defeat was assured. As a Southern man,
coming from a Gulf State, personally interested in the institution
of slavery, he had a vantage-ground in the struggle which a Northern
President could never attain. He had, moreover, the courage and
the intelligence to uphold his principles, even in a controversy
with Mr. Clay. His ignorance of political and civil affairs has
been grossly exaggerated. Without taking part in politics, he had
been a close observer of events, and his prolonged services at
frontier posts had afforded the leisure and enforced the taste for
reading. He knew not only the public measures, but the public men
of his time closely and appreciatively. He surprised a member of
his cabinet on a certain occasion, by objecting to a proposed
appointment on the ground that the man designated had voted for
Benton's expunging resolution at the close of Jackson's administration,
--an offense which the President would not condone. The seven
members of his cabinet, actively engaged in politics all their
lives, had forgotten an important fact which the President
instinctively remembered.
Long before General Taylor's death it was known that Mr. Fillmore
did not sympathize with the policy of the administration. He had
been among the most advanced of anti-slavery Whigs during his
service in the House of Representatives, and was placed on the
Taylor ticket as a conciliatory candidate, to hold to their allegiance
that large class of Whigs who resented the nomination of a Louisiana
slave-holder. But from the day he was sworn in as Vice-President
his antipathy to Mr. Seward began to develop. With the conceded
ability of the latter, and with his constant opportunity on the
floor of the Senate, where he won laurels from the day of his
entrance, Mr. Fillmore felt that he would himself be subordinated
and lost in the crowd of followers if he coincided with Seward.
Older in years, long senior to Mr. Seward in the national service,
he apparently could not endure to see himself displaced by a more
brilliant and more capable leader. The two men, therefore, gradually
separated; Mr. Fillmore using what influence he possessed as Vice-
President in favor of Mr. Clay's plan of compromise, while Mr.
Seward became the Northern leader of the Administration Whigs,--a
remarkable if not unprecedented advance for a senator in the first
session of his service.
In succeeding to the Presidency, Mr. Fillmore naturally gave the
full influence of his administration to the Compromise. To signalize
his position, he appointed Mr. Webster secretary of State, and
placed Mr. Corwin of Ohio at the head of the Treasury. Mr. Corwin,
with a strong anti-slavery record, had been recently drifting in
the opposite direction, and his appointment was significant. It
was too late, however, to save the Omnibus Bill as a whole. The
Taylor administration had damaged it too seriously to permit an
effectual revival in its favor. It was finally destroyed the last
week in July by striking out in detail every provision except the
bill for the organization of the Territory of Utah. After the Utah
bill had been enacted, separate bills followed;--for the admission
of California; for the organization of New Mexico, with the same
condition respecting slavery which had been applied to Utah; for
the adjustment of the Texas boundary, and the payment to that State
of ten millions indemnity; for the more effectual recovery of
fugitive slaves; for the abolition of the slave trade in the District
of Columbia. Congress thus enacted separately the bills which it
refused to enact together, and the policy outlined by Mr. Clay at
the beginning of the session had triumphed. Several Southern
senators joined Jefferson Davis in strenuous resistance to the
admission of California with the boundaries prescribed. After
seeking ineffectually to make the line of 36 deg. 30' the southern
limit of the State, they attempted with equal lack of success
to enter a solemn protest on the journal of the Senate against
the wrong done to the slave-holding States in giving the
entire Pacific coast to freedom. It was a last and hopeless movement
of the Southern Hotspurs. The protest, at first discredited, was
speedily forgotten, and California entered the Union after ten
months of angry controversy, with slavery forever excluded from
her imperial domain.
THE FINALITY OF THE COMPROMISE.
The session had been in all respects important and memorable. In
the judgment of many it had been critical, and the dangers attending
its action were increased by the death of General Taylor. The
South would endure from him what they would resent and possibly
resist if imposed by an anti-slavery Whig from the North. This
fact had, doubtless, great influence in shaping the policy of Mr.
Fillmore, both as Vice-President and President. The events of the
session marred and made the reputation of many. Four senators
especially, of the younger class, had laid the foundation of their
prominence in the struggles of after years,--Mr. Seward as an anti-
slavery Whig, Mr. Chase as a Free-Soiler, previously of Democratic
affiliations, Mr. Jefferson Davis as a Southern Democrat, and Mr.
Douglas as a Northern Democrat. Calhoun was dead. Clay and Webster
and Cass and Benton were near the end of their illustrious careers.
New men were thenceforth to guide the policy of the Republic, and
among the new men in a Senate of exceptional ability these four
attained the largest fame, secured the strongest constituencies,
and exerted the widest influence.
Both political parties began at once to take ground in favor of
the Compromise measures as a final and complete adjustment of the
slavery question. The Southern Whigs under Mr. Clay's lead eagerly
assumed that conclusion. Mr. Fillmore, having approved all the
bills separately which taken together formed the Compromise, was
of course strongly in favor of regarding these measures as a
finality. Mr. Webster took the same view, though from a bill he
had prepared before he left the Senate for the rendition of fugitive
slaves, guaranteeing jury-trial to the fugitive, it is hardly
conceivable that he would have voted for the harsh measure that
was enacted. Mr. Corwin to the surprise of his friends had passed
over from the most radical to the ultra-conservative side on the
slavery question, and it was his change, in addition to that of
Mr. Webster, which had given so brilliant an opportunity to Mr.
Seward as the leader of the Northern Whigs. Mr. Corwin was
irretrievably injured by a course so flatly in contradiction of
his previous action. He lost the support and largely forfeited
the confidence of the Ohio Whigs, who in 1848 had looked upon him
as a possible if not probable candidate for the Presidency.
But against this surrender to the Compromise measures of 1850, the
Whigs who followed Seward and Wade and Thaddeus Stevens and Fessenden
were earnest and active. Stevens was then a member of the House
and had waged bitter war against the measures. Wade and Fessenden
had not yet entered the Senate, but were powerful leaders in their
respective States. These men had not given up the creed which
demanded an anti-slavery restriction on every inch of soil owned
by the United States. They viewed with abhorrence the legislation
which had placed freedom and slavery on the same plane in the
Territories of Utah and New Mexico. They believed that Texas had
been paid for a baseless claim ten millions of dollars, one-half
of which, as a sharp critic declared, was hush-money, the other
half blood-money. They regarded the cruel law for the return of
fugitive slaves as an abomination in the sight of God and man. In
their judgment it violated every principle of right. It allowed
the personal liberty of a man to be peremptorily decided by a United-
States commissioner, acting with absolute power and without appeal.
For a claim exceeding twenty dollars in value, every citizen has
the right to a trial by jury; but by this law the body, the life,
the very soul of a man, possibly a free-born citizen, might be
consigned to perpetual enslavement on the fallible judgment of a
single official. An apparently slight, yet especially odious
feature of the law which served in large degree to render it
inoperative was that the United-States commissioner, in the event
of his remanding the alleged fugitive to slavery, received a fee
of ten dollars, and, if he adjudged him to be free, received only
five dollars.
It soon became evident that with the Whigs divided and the Democrats
compactly united upon the finality of the Compromise, the latter
would have the advantage in the ensuing Presidential election.
The tendency would naturally be to consolidate the slave-holding
States in support of the Democratic candidates, because that party
had a large, well-organized force throughout the North cherishing
the same principles, co-operating for the same candidates, and
controlling many, if not a majority, of the free States. The
Southern Whigs, equally earnest with the Democrats for the Compromise,
were constantly injured at home by the outspoken anti-slavery
principles of leading Northern Whigs. Just at that point of time
and from the cause indicated began the formation of parties divided
on the geographical line between North and South. But this result
was as yet only foreshadowed, not developed. Both the old parties
held their national conventions as usual, in 1852, with every State
represented in both by full delegations. There were peculiar
troubles in each. In the Democratic convention the dissensions
had been in large part inherited, and had reference more to persons
than to principles, more to the candidate than to the platform.
While something of the same trouble was visible in the Whig ranks,
the chief source of contention and of party weakness was found in
the irreconcilable difference of principle between all the Southern
Whigs and a large number of the Northern Whigs. In the South they
were unanimous in support of the Compromise. In the North they
were divided.
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.
The Democratic National Convention met in Baltimore on the first
day of June, 1852. General Cass, though he had reached his seventieth
year, was again in the field. Mr. Buchanan, then sixty-one years
of age, was the candidate next in strength, and Stephen A. Douglas
was third. Douglas was but thirty-nine years old, the youngest
man ever formally presented for the Presidency by a State delegation
in a National convention. Governor Marcy was fourth in the order
of strength. There were scattering votes for other candidates,
but these four were seriously and hopefully urged by their respective
supporters. Marcy was in many respects the fittest man to be
nominated, but the fear was that the old dissensions of the New-
York Democracy, now seemingly healed, would open afresh if the
chief of one of the clans should be imposed on the other. Douglas
was injured by his partial committal to what was known as the
doctrine of "manifest destiny,"--the indefinite acquisition of
territory southward, especially in the direction of the West Indies.
Cass was too old. Buchanan lacked personal popularity; and, while
he had the Pennsylvania delegation in his favor, a host of enemies
from that State, outside the convention, warred against him most
bitterly. No one of these eminent men could secure two-thirds of
the delegates as required by the iron rule, and on the forty-ninth
ballot Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, who had been among the
"scattering" on several preceding votes, was unanimously nominated.
The suggestion of Pierce's name was not so spontaneous and sudden
as it was made to appear. The precise condition of affairs was
discerned before the convention met, and some sagacious and far-
seeing men, among whom the late Caleb Cushing was one, and General
Benjamin F. Butler another, had canvassed the merits of Pierce
before the convention met. They saw that from his record in Congress
he would be entirely acceptable to the South, and at the opportune
moment their plans were perfected and Pierce was nominated with a
great show of enthusiasm. William R. King of Alabama was selected
to run as Vice-President.
General Pierce had many qualities that rendered him a strong
candidate. He had served with credit if not distinction both in
the House and the Senate. He was elected to the House in 1832,
when he was but twenty-eight years of age, and resigned his seat
in the Senate in 1842. In the ten years which intervened before
his nomination for the Presidency, he had devoted himself to the
law with brilliant success, leaving it only for his short service
in the Mexican war. He was still a young man when he was preferred
to all the prominent statesmen of his party as a Presidential
candidate. He was remarkably attractive in personal appearance,
prepossessing in manner, ready and even eloquent as a public speaker,
fluent and graceful in conversation. He presented thus a rare
combination of the qualities which attach friends and win popular
support.
The platform of principles enunciated by the convention was just
what the South desired and demanded. The entire interest centred
in the slavery question. Indeed, the declarations upon other issues
were not listened to by the delegates, and were scarcely read by
the public. Without a dissenting voice the convention resolved
that "all efforts of the Abolitionists or others to induce Congress
to interfere with questions of slavery or to take incipient steps
in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming
and dangerous consequences." The Compromise measures, including
the fugitive-slave law, which was specially named, were most heartily
indorsed, and were regarded as an adjustment of the whole controversy.
By way of indicting how full, complete, and final the settlement
was, the convention with unrestrained enthusiasm declared that "the
Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress
or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever
shape or color the attempts may be made." Among the men who joined
in these declarations were not a few who had supported Van Buren
and Adams in the canvass of 1848. One of the prominent officers
of the convention was the author of many of the most extreme anti-
slavery declarations put forth at Buffalo.
WHIG NATIONAL CONVENTION.
The Whigs met at Baltimore a fortnight after the Democratic convention
had adjourned. The slavery question, upon which the Democrats of
all shades had so cordially coalesced, was to the Whigs a dividing
sword. Mr. Fillmore was a candidate, supported with almost entire
unanimity by the Southern Whigs. Mr. Webster was a candidate, and
though in his fear for the Union he had sacrificed more than any
other man for the South, he could secure no Southern support.
General Scott was a candidate, and though born and reared in
Virginia, he was supported by anti-slavery Whigs of every shade in
the North, against the two men of Northern birth and Northern
associations. On the first ballot, Fillmore received 133 votes,
Scott 131, Webster 23. Fillmore received every Southern vote,
except one from Virginia given to Scott by John Minor Botts. Scott
received every Northern vote except twenty-nine given to Webster,
and sixteen given to Fillmore. The friends of Mr. Webster, and
Mr. Webster himself, were pained and mortified by the result.
Rufus Choate was at the head of the Massachusetts delegation, and
eloquently, even passionately, pleaded with the Southern men to
support Mr. Webster on a single ballot. But the Southern men
stubbornly adhered to Fillmore, and were in turn enraged because
the twenty-nine votes thrown away, as they said, on Mr. Webster,
would at once renominate the President in whose cabinet Mr. Webster
was at that moment serving as Premier. This threefold contest had
been well developed before the convention assembled, and one feature
of special bitterness had been added to it by a letter from Mr.
Clay, who was on his death-bed in Washington. He urged his friends
to support Mr. Fillmore. This was regarded by many as a lack of
generosity on Mr. Clay's part, after the warm support which Mr.
Webster had given him in his contest with Mr. Polk in 1844. But
there had been for years an absence of cordiality between these
Whig leaders, and many who were familiar with both declared that
Mr. Clay had never forgiven Mr. Webster for remaining in Tyler's
cabinet after the resignation of the other Whig members. Mr.
Webster's association with Tyler had undoubtedly given to the
President a measure of protection against the hot wrath of Mr. Clay
in the memorable contest of 1841-2, and by natural reaction had
impaired the force of Mr. Clay's attack. And now ten years after
the event its memory rose to influence the Presidential nomination
of 1852.
Another explanation is more in consonance with Mr. Clay's magnanimity
of character. He was extremely anxious that an outspoken friend
of the Compromise should be nominated. He knew when he wrote his
letter that the Democrats would pledge themselves to the finality
of the Compromise, and he knew the Southern Whigs would be overwhelmed
if there should be halting or hesitation on this issue either in
their candidate or in their platform. He felt, as the responsible
author of the Compromise, that he was himself on trial, and it
would be a peculiar mortification if the party which he had led so
long should fail to sustain him in this final crisis of his public
life. He had been sufficiently humiliated by Taylor's triumph over
him in the convention of 1848. It would be an absolutely intolerable
rebuke if in 1852 Taylor's policy should be preferred to his own
by a Whig national convention. Taylor, indeed, was in his grave,
but his old military compatriot, Scott, was a candidate for the
Presidency, and the anti-Compromise Whigs under Seward's lead were
rallying to his support. Mr. Clay believed that Fillmore, with
the force of the national administration in his hands, could defeat
General Scott, and that Mr. Webster's candidacy was a needless
division of friends. Hence he sustained Fillmore, not from hostility
to Webster, but as the sure and only means of securing an indorsement
of the Compromise measures, and of doing justice to a Northern
President who had risked every thing in support of Mr. Clay's
policy.
The contest was long and earnest. Mr. Webster's friends, offended
by what they considered the ingratitude of Southern Whigs, persistently
refused to go over to Fillmore, though by so doing they could at
any moment secure his nomination. They cared nothing for Fillmore's
lead in votes, obtained as they thought in large degree from the
use of patronage. They scouted it as an argument not fit to be
addressed to the friends of Mr. Webster. Such considerations
belonged only to men of the lower grades, struggling in the dirty
pools of political strife, and were not to be applied to a statesman
of Mr. Webster's rank and character. They felt, moreover, that
all the popularity which Fillmore had secured in the South, and to
a certain degree with the conservative and commercial classes of
the whole country, had come from Mr. Webster's presence and pre-
eminent service in his cabinet. In short, Mr. Webster's supporters
felt that Mr. Fillmore, so far from earning their respect and
deserving their applause, was merely strutting in borrowed plumage,
and deriving all his strength from their own illustrious chief.
This jealousy was of course stimulated with consummate art and tact
by the supporters of Scott. They expressed, as they really
entertained, the highest admiration for Webster, and no less frankly
made known their dislike, if not their contempt, for Fillmore.
Webster, as they pointed out, was supported by the voice of his
own great State. Massachusetts had sent a delegation composed of
her best men, with the most brilliant orator of the nation, to
plead their cause at the bar of the convention. In contrast with
this, Fillmore had no support from New York. The Whigs of that
State had sent a delegation to impeach him before the nation for
faithlessness to principle, and to demand that votes of other States
should not impose on New York a recreant son to confound and destroy
the party.
NOMINATION OF GENERAL SCOTT.
From this attrition and conflict the natural result was Scott's
triumph. It was not reached, however, until the fifty-third ballot
and until the fifth day of the convention. It was brought about
by the votes of some Fillmore delegates, both in the North and the
South, who felt that the long contest should be ended. The gossip
of the day--with perhaps a shadow of foundation--was, that in the
councils of an inner and governing circle of delegates it was
finally agreed that the North might have the candidate, and the
South should have the platform, and that thus a bold fight could
be made in both sections. William A. Graham of North Carolina,
formerly a senator in Congress from that State, subsequently its
governor, and at the time secretary of the Navy in Mr. Fillmore's
cabinet, was nominated for Vice-President, as a wise concession to
the defeated party. The platform adopted was strongly Southern,
and this fact served to confirm in the minds of many the existence
of the suspected agreement for the division of honors between North
and South. The convention resolved that the Compromise measures,
including the fugitive-slave law (specially designated after the
example of the Democratic convention), "are received and acquiesced
in by the Whig party of the United States as a settlement in
principle and in substance of the dangerous and exciting questions
which they embrace." They further declared that this position was
"essential to the nationality of the Whig party and the integrity
of the Union." Alexander H. Stephens has stated that this resolution
was shown to him by Mr. Webster before the convention assembled,
and while Mr. Choate was his guest. The inference apparently
intended was that Mr. Choate carried it to the convention as the
expression of the Northern Whigs, who believed in the Compromise
measures. The agreement--if one existed--that this resolution
should be adopted, did not involve all the Northern Whigs. Sturdy
resistance was made by many, and the final vote disclosed a powerful
minority opposed to the resolution.
For the first few weeks of the canvass the Whigs had strong hope
of success. The name of General Scott evoked much enthusiasm, and
his splendid military reputation, acquired in two wars, was favorably
contrasted with that of General Pierce, who was one of President
Polk's political brigadiers. But these indications were the bubbles
and froth that floated on the surface. The personal characteristics
of the candidates were lost sight of in the face of the great issues
involved. The people soon perceived that if there was indeed merit
in the Compromise measures, it would be wise to intrust them to
the keeping of the party that was unreservedly--North and South--
in favor of upholding and enforcing them. On this point there was
absolutely no division in the Democratic ranks. In New York the
friends of Marcy and the political heirs of Wright cordially
harmonized in favor of the Compromise. Mr. Van Buren returned to
Tammany Hall as fresh and buoyant as if his allegiance had never
been broken; and in a great convocation of the Democracy, the
prodigal was welcomed, Pierce's nomination applauded, the platform
cheered, the anti-slavery creed forsworn, the Whig party roundly
abused, and word sent forth to the uttermost parts of the Union
that the Empire State had resumed her place at the head of the
Democratic line.
The Whigs soon found to their dismay that the platform and the
candidate were inseparable. They could not make a canvass upon
the one in the South and upon the other in the North. General
Scott had indeed heartily assented to all the principles proclaimed
at the convention, but so long as Horace Greeley was eulogizing
him in the "Tribune," and Seward supporting him on the stump, it
was idle to present him as an acceptable candidate to slave-holding
Whigs in the South. Supporting the candidate and spitting on the
platform became the expressive if inelegant watchword of many
Northern Whigs, but for every Whig vote which this phrase kept to
his party allegiance in the free States, it drove two over to the
Democracy in the slave States. Moreover, spitting on the platform,
however effective as an indication of contempt, would not satisfy
the conscience or the prejudices of large numbers of Whigs who
voted directly for the candidates of the Free-soil party, John P.
Hale of New Hampshire for President, and George W. Julian of Indiana
for Vice-President.
DEFEAT OF THE WHIG PARTY.
Weakened by personal strife, hopelessly divided on questions of
principle, the Whig party was led to the slaughter. Carrying in
1840 every State but seven for Harrison, failing to elect Mr. Clay
in 1844 only by the loss of New York, triumphantly installing Taylor
in 1848, the Whigs were astounded to find that their candidate had
been successful in but four States of the Union, and that twenty-
seven States had by large majorities pronounced for General Pierce.
Massachusetts and Vermont in the North, Kentucky and Tennessee in
the South, had alone remained true to the Whig standard. All the
other Whig States that had stood staunch and strong in the fierce
contests of the past now gave way. Connecticut and Rhode Island,
which never but once failed either Federalist or Whig from the
foundation of the government, now voted for a pro-slavery States'-
rights Democrat. Delaware, which never in a single instance voted
for the Democratic candidate except when Monroe had no opposition
in 1820; which had fought against Jefferson and Madison; which had
stood firmly against Jackson and Van Buren and Polk and Cass when
the Bayards were Whigs and co-operated with the Claytons, now
swelled the general acclaim for Pierce. Of 296 electors Pierce
received 254 and General Scott only 42. The wide sweep of the
Democratic victory was a surprise to both sides, though for several
weeks before the election the defeat of Scott was anticipated. He
received no support from Mr. Fillmore's administration, was indeed
secretly betrayed by it everywhere, and quite openly by its officials
in the Southern States. He did not receive the strength of his
party, and the strength of his party would have been insufficient
to elect him. But overwhelming as was the defeat, it did not
necessarily involve destruction. The Whigs had been beaten almost
as badly when Clay ran against Jackson in 1832, and yet the party
had rallied to four earnest contests and to two signal victories.
The Democracy, now so triumphant, had been disastrously beaten in
the contest of 1840, but in the next election had regained strength
enough to defeat Mr. Clay. The precedents, therefore, permitted
the Whigs to be of good cheer and bade them wait the issues of the
future. They were not, however, consoled by the philosophy of
defeat, and were disposed to gloomy anticipations.
MR. CLAY AND MR. WEBSTER COMPARED.
As if to emphasize the disaster to the Whigs, Mr. Clay and Mr.
Webster both died during the canvass; Mr. Clay in June, a few days
after Scott's nomination, Mr. Webster in October, a few days before
his defeat. They had both lived long enough to see the work of
their political life imperiled if not destroyed. They had held
the same relation to the Whigs that the elder Adams and Hamilton
had held to the Federalists, that Jefferson and Madison had held
to the Republicans. Comparison between them could not be fairly
made, their inherent qualities and personal characteristics differed
so widely. Each was superior to the other in certain traits, and
in our public annals thus far each stands unequaled in his sphere.
Their points of contrast were salient and numerous. Mr. Clay was
born in Virginia. Mr. Webster was born in New England. Mr. Clay
was a devoted follower of Jefferson. Mr. Webster was bred in the
school of Hamilton. Mr. Clay was an earnest advocate of the second
war with Great Britain. Mr. Webster was its steady opponent. Mr.
Clay supported Madison in 1812 with great energy. Mr. Webster
threw all his strength for De Witt Clinton. Mr. Clay was from the
first deeply imbued with the doctrine of protection. Mr. Webster
entered public life as a pronounced free-trader. They were not
members of the same political organization until after the destruction
of the old Federal party to which Mr. Webster belonged, and the
hopeless divisions of the old Republican party to which Mr. Clay
belonged. They gradually harmonized towards the close of Monroe's
second term, and became firmly united under the administration of
John Quincy Adams. Modern political designations had their origin
in the Presidential election of 1824. The candidates all belonged
to the party of Jefferson, which had been called Democratic-
Republican. In the new divisions, the followers of Jackson took
the name of Democrats: the supporters of Adams called themselves
National Republicans. They had thus divided the old name, each
claiming the inheritance. The unpopularity of Mr. Adams's
administration had destroyed the prospects of the National-Republican
party, and the name was soon displaced by the new and more acceptable
title of Whig. To the joint efforts of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster
more than to all others the formation of the Whig party was due.
It was not, however, in Mr. Webster's nature to become a partisan
chief. Mr. Clay on the other hand was naturally and inevitably a
leader. In all the discussions of the Senate in which constitutional
questions were involved, Mr. Clay instinctively deferred to Mr.
Webster. In the parliamentary debates which concerned the position
of parties and the fate of measures, which enchained the Senate
and led captive the people, Mr. Clay was _facile princeps_. Mr.
Webster argued the principle. Mr. Clay embodied it in a statute.
Mr. Webster's speeches are still read with interest and studied
with profit. Mr. Clay's speeches swayed listening senates and
moved multitudes, but reading them is a disappointment. Between
the two the difference is much the same as that between Burke and
Charles James Fox. Fox was the parliamentary debater of England,
the consummate leader of his party. His speeches, always listened
to and cheered by a crowded House of Commons, perished with their
delivery. Burke could never command a body of followers, but his
parliamentary orations form brilliant and permanent chapters in
the political literature of two continents.
While Mr. Webster's name is so honorably perpetuated by his elaborate
and masterly discussion of great principles in the Senate, he did
not connect himself with a single historic measure. While Mr.
Clay's speeches remain unread, his memory is lastingly identified
with issues that are still vital and powerful. He advanced the
doctrine of protection to the stately dignity of the American
system. Discarding theories and overthrowing the dogma of strict
construction, he committed the General Government irrevocably to
internal improvements. Condemning the worthless system of paper
money imposed upon the people by irresponsible State banks, he
stood firmly for a national currency, and he foreshadowed if he
did not reach the paper money which is based to-day on the credit
and the strength of the government.
Mr. Clay possessed extraordinary sagacity in public affairs, seeing
and foreseeing where others were blinded by ignorance or prejudice.
He was a statesman by intuition, finding a remedy before others
could discover the disease. His contemporaries appreciated his
rare endowments. On the day of his first entrance into the House
of Representatives he was chosen Speaker, though but thirty-four
years of age. This was all the more remarkable because the House
was filled with men of recognized ability, who had been long in
the public service. It was rendered still more striking by the
fact that Mr. Clay was from the far West, from one of the only two
States whose frontiers reached the Mississippi. In the entire
House there were only fifteen members from the Western side of the
Alleghanies. He was re-elected Speaker in every Congress so long
as he served as representative. He entered the Senate at thirty,
and died a member of it in his seventy-sixth year. He began his
career in that body during the Presidency of Jefferson in 1806,
and closed it under the Presidency of Fillmore in 1852. Other
senators have served a longer time than Mr. Clay, but he alone at
periods so widely separated. Other men have excelled him in specific
powers, but in the rare combination of qualities which constitute
at once the matchless leader of party and the statesman of consummate
ability and inexhaustible resource, he has never been surpassed by
any man speaking the English tongue.
[NOTE.--The Committee of Thirteen, to which reference is made on
p. 94, and which attained such extraordinary importance at the
time, was originally suggested by Senator Foote of Mississippi.
His first proposition was somewhat novel from its distinct recognition
of the sectional character of the issues involved. He proposed
that the committee be chosen by ballot, that six members of it
should be taken from the free States and six members from the slave
States, and that the twelve thus chosen should select a thirteenth
member who should be chairman of the committee. All propositions
touching any of the questions at issue between the North and the
South were to be referred to this committee with the view of securing
a general and comprehensive compromise. The subject was debated
for several weeks. Mr. Foote submitted his proposition on the 25th
of February, 1850, and it was not adopted until the 18th of April.
The committee was chosen on the 19th. Mr. Clay had objected to
the open avowal of a division of the committee on the line of North
and South, and the proposition was so modified as to simply provide
for a committee of thirteen to be chosen by ballot,--the chairman
to be first selected, and the other twelve members on a second
ballot. The change of the resolution was one of form only; for,
when the Senate came to select the members, they adhered to the
plan originally suggested by Mr. Foote. Mr. Clay was made chairman,
which had been the design from the first, and then six senators
were taken from the free States and six from the slave States,--
the first, if not the only, time this mode of appointment was
adopted. The membership of the committee was highly distinguished.
From the free States the Senate selected Mr. Webster, General Cass,
Mr. Dickinson of New York, Mr. Bright of Indiana, Mr. Phelps of
Vermont, and Mr. Cooper of Pennsylvania. From the slave States,
Mr. King of Alabama, Mr. Mason of Virginia, Mr. Downs of Louisiana,
Mr. Mangum of North Carolina, Mr. Bell of Tennessee, and Mr. Berrien
of Georgia. The twelve were equally divided between the Whigs and
the Democrats, so that, with Mr. Clay as chairman, the Whigs had
the majority in numbers as they had the overwhelming superiority
in weight and ability. The composition of the committee was
remarkable when it is remembered that the Democrats had a majority
of ten in the Senate.]