A SPECTRE OF THE PAST REAPPEARS.
A. D. 1848 TO 1852.
1. The female seminaries of Salem, Raleigh and Greensboro were
supplemented, in 1843, in the establishment, by the Chowan and
Portsmouth Baptist Associations, of another female school of high
grade, at Murfreesboro. This useful and popular institution soon
gained reputation and attracted patronage from many of the
Southern States. The Edgeworth Seminary at Greensboro was a
similar institution under Presbyterian rule. It was a worthy
rival of its compeers in the education of Southern girls. The
University, Wake Forest and Davidson College were advancing their
standards and growing in prosperity. The University, especially,
under the sagacious administration of ex-Governor Swain, assisted
by an able body of experienced teachers, made great progress.
Several hundred students were in attendance, gathered from all
the Southern and Southwestern States.
2. Governor Morehead had been succeeded in office by William A.
Graham, of Orange. In the United States Senate, Judges Mangum
and Badger were the peers of the best men of the Republic, and
reflected honor on North Carolina.
3. In the House of Representatives, Colonel James I. McKay, of
Bladen, had long been recognized as one of the leading men, and
was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. Messrs. Kenneth
Rayner and Thomas L. Clingman were also men of recognized
ability, the latter bringing varied accomplishments to aid his
discharge of duty.
1849.
4. At the expiration of Governor Graham's term of office Charles
Manly, of Wake, became Governor. The people of the State grew
excited in the contest between Messrs. Manly and Reid over the
Democratic proposition to abolish the freehold qualification of
voters for State Senators. It had been, ever since 1776,
necessary for a man to possess fifty acres of land to be entitled
to this franchise. It was now proposed to allow all white men
the privilege of suffrage.
5. Upon the election of General Taylor as President of the United
States, Mr. Polk retired to private life, and soon died at
Nashville, Tennessee. He was a pure and laborious man, but was
not the equal of Andrew Jackson in those great natural gifts
which immortalized the hero of New Orleans.
6. Upon the cessation of war with Mexico, it had been agreed in
the treaty of peace that upon the payment of a large sum of
money, Upper California should, with other Mexican territory,
belong to the United States. The discovery of immense deposits
of gold on the Pacific coast led to such immigration there that,
in 1850, California was applying for admission as a State into
the Union.
7. Again the spectre of coming strife and bloodshed was seen in
the renewal of the struggle over the question of freedom or
slavery in this new sister in the galaxy of States. Southern men
like Henry Clay thought that the whole subject had been settled
in 1820, when, by the Missouri Compromise, it had been ordained
that involuntary servitude should not obtain north of the
geographical line 36° 30' north latitude.
1850.
8. It was understood that the surrender of the right to own
slaves north of this line was the consideration for the admission
of the right to own them south of it, and that this was what the
"compromise" meant. But they were told that the inhibition alone
was effective, and that no such converse right was intended to be
conveyed as that contended for by the men of the South. The most
logical of these men said that Congress had exceeded its powers
in the enactment mentioned, and that no power could settle the
question but the people of the new State.
9. It was seen that "Wilmot's Proviso," which was an amendment
continually offered by Mr. Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, excluding
slavery from all future States, was the fixed determination of
the Northern people. So, after a protracted and bitter struggle,
Mr. Clay, as the last service of a long and illustrious life,
procured the passage of the compromise of 1850, in which the only
concession by Northern men was the "Fugitive Slave Law."
10. This statute provided that Federal courts and officers should
arrest and return to their owners such slaves as should be found
absconding in the different States of the Union, whether free or
slave-holding. It was greeted by a prodigious outcry from the
Northern press and people. They determined that this national
law should not be executed, and the different legislatures of the
free States began their enactment of personal liberty laws,
which made it penal to aid in carrying out the law of
Congress.
1851.
11. The people of the South were both exasperated and
disheartened at such manifestations, and in view of such palpable
violations of their plain constitutional rights, began seriously
to consider whether in a union with the Northern States the
arbitrary will of the people of those States was not to be the
rule of government rather than the Constitution solemnly agreed
upon between their forefathers. If this were to be so, the dream
of liberty, regulated by law in the Federal Union, was at an end.
QUESTIONS.
1. What educational institutions are mentioned?
2. Who was Governor in 1818? What two men were distinguished in
the United States Senate?
3. Who were the representative men in the House?
4. Who succeeded Governor Graham in 1849? What proposition was
agitating the people?
5. Who succeeded James K. Polk as President of the United States?
What is said of President Polk?
6. What events were occurring in the West?
7. What spectre of the past reappears? Relate circumstances.
8. In what condition was the question now seen?
9. What is said of the "Wilmot Proviso" and "Fugitive Slave Law"?
10. What was the"Fugitive Slave Law"? How did the North
legislate against this law of Congress?
11. How was the South affected by these troubles?