Last Of The Whigs

( Originally Published 1898 )

AS the time of which we write draws nearer to the present, the difficulty of comprehending the meaning of events increases; we see wrongs, and marvel why they were permitted, and how they shall be made right ;--for we must believe in the good purpose of an almighty God, or else history becomes a meaningless juggle of accidents, which it would be worth no man's while to re- count or disentangle. But the wrong of slavery has now passed away from us, and the steps which led to its passing are known, if not always in their innermost secrets, yet broadly enough to enable us to draw inferences and deductions. We can begin, at least, to understand how events were overruled for our ultimate benefit; though doubtless the great account is not yet fully settled; there are other kinds of slavery than that of the negro, and this country is not yet free. During the struggle between North and South before the outbreak of actual war, many of the greatest minds that America has produced were bent upon the problem of the slave; and some of them lost their bearings entirely; some chose the wrong deliberately in preference to the good; some doubted and hesitated, wishing to do right, but fearing to admit to themselves what the right truly was, until the golden moment, for them, was forever gone; and some few saw the right and clave to it through good and evil report, and will not fail of their meed of honor, when all is done, and men are weighed as to their motives and their acts.

That human slavery was an evil, there are none now to deny; not because those who were moved to support it by the sword were conquered in the battle: for conquest does not prove right : but because, now that the burden has fallen from us, we discover that it was never necessary to our best development, and that though, for a time, it seemed as if much of our material prosperity was to be ascribed to it, we have learned that without it we should have been a better and happier people, and that wealth also would not have been denied us, though it came through other channels. Slave labor was never a necessity to the prosperity of this Union; and that it was a detriment on other grounds is clear. But it had come upon us without our consent, and, once established, there were many practical obstacles to getting rid of it. At first all parties had loyally wished to accomplish emancipation; but gradually, as slavery bred a race of slave-holders, different in training and ideas from the rest of their countrymen, these came to approve the institution for itself ; they defended it, and the moral outcry against it of the rest of civilization only confirmed them in their defiant attitude. They even declared it to be a holy institution; it became almost a point of religion with them, as well as of honor, to uphold it. Southern honor was a local phenomenon; it was, indeed, derived from medieval sources, and was an anachronism in the Nineteenth Century ; but it existed in the South because there men had become used to .holding opinions as they held a wife, and allowing no question thereupon. A Southerner's opinion, his word, his institution, all were sacred; he would not argue about them, or if he did it was with no intention of admitting arguments on the other side. Calhoun argued in behalf of slavery; but he did not the less adhere to his conclusions after they had been shown, as they often were, to be untenable. An argument—a syllogism—is something to fight with, even though it be unsound; and in any argument it will generally happen that nine-tenths of the words spoken are vain words, having no true relevance to the matter in hand, and serving only to make the outward show of resistance. Southerners, then, had deliberately shut the avenues of the mind through which they might be approached on the subject of the abstract right or wrong of slavery; and in Congress, as we have seen, they so far imposed their will that for many years the subject was taboo, and to refer to it was to risk a quarrel.

To this, the North, or a major part of it, submitted; they were resigned to letting slavery continue to exist where it had always been; and with this concession, the only opening for quarrel was when a slave escaped into a free state, and, according to the law of the land relating to property, must be given back to the owner upon demand. Such a law was odious to the North, not because negroes were property, but because they were human beings. But, save in sporadic instances, the odious law was obeyed, because it was the law; and the way to protest against it was not to break it, but to obtain its repeal. The Abolitionists would break the law, and sever the Union; but that was to cure one wrong by another ; and their course was wrong, because other means had not been exhausted. When the time came that a majority of the people wished slavery to cease, it would cease, though the will of the majority were enforced by the sword; but until it was the will of the majority, nothing but agitation within lawful and constitutional limits was justifiable. Let the Abolitionists hold up the torch of truth before the people, and bid them bow to it; but let them not use it to set fire to the foundations of the state.

The Southerners, however, would not let the matter rest here, where it might have rested indefinitely. And we may note that all evil is like a fire, which must be extinguished, or it will extend its bounds ; it cannot be shut up in a given compass, and there be content. The evil of -slavery could not rest within its historic limits, but must needs come forth and spread over the whole continent. The general pretext given was that unless the equilibrium of free and slave states was preserved, the free would obtain preponderance, and would use it to destroy the institution on its own ground. Slavery must spread, on pain of being altogether extirpated. This was the Southern plea, and it was not without plausibility. Yet it is probable that the North would never have interfered with the slave states; they had their own affairs to attend to, and were willing to let the South attend to hers —if only she would. It would presently have become obvious, too, that the slave states, occupying a limited area, would gradually have declined, and expired of internal disease, if not by the revolt of their human cattle, as in San Domingo. If they would have agreed to keep themselves to themselves, the North need have done nothing more than leave them thus isolated, and the end would have been a question of time only. But to this the South would not agree; and indeed it would have been a practical impossibility, under the geographical and political conditions of the Republic.

The South, then, must extend the area of slavery : and how should it be done? Clay had said, Let it be done by drawing an east and west line, and assigning all south thereof to slavery, the northern division to freedom. This compromise served until the movement of emigration to the far west, and the Mexican war, raised the question whether the east and west line should be continued across the Continent to the Pacific. The Southerners assumed that it should, as a matter of right; but the North demurred. But the South had here the stronger logical position. What right had the North to limit the extension of that east and west line? If they allowed it to rule to the Mississippi, why ought it not to rule to the Pacific? In this was the mischief of the Missouri Compromise, as of any compromise between right and wrong, apparent. The North had forfeited the privilege of logical consistency.

Of course, the true answer was, that consistency itself is sometimes the worst of evils. But many of the North did not declare this; and they were at this disadvantage with the South, that whereas the latter had, in slavery, a positive point to urge and to fight for, the North had only an abstract and practically a negative one—that slavery ought not to extend. It was too late for them to assert that a country originally free ought never to become the seat of slaveholding; they should have made that objection at the time the Compromise was first urged. And the majority of them feared to be inconsistent; and they also feared the Constitution; and they also feared to shoulder the responsibility of severing the Union, which, in case they took the opposite course, the South threatened. For a threat it was, though disguised as an inevitable necessity. In short, the North hesitated and was weak.

The other contention of the South—that any slaveholder had the right to take his slaves with him and settle in any Northern state—though it was not carried out, was not relinquished, but was held in terrorem. It was useful as indicating how moderate, after all, was the Southern attitude—how much more troublesome they might be if they chose; and it lent color to their assertion that it was the North who was the aggressor. Upon the whole, therefore, it seemed, at the end of the Mexican war, as if the whole southwest was dedicated to slavery, and no help for it. Rather than break the Union, let it go at that !

But in the midst of these very human squabbles, through which no way appeared to peace with honor, there occurred one of those events which are termed, by way of distinction, Providential; because the hand of God is manifest in them, instead of being hidden, as usual. Far on the west of the continent, its fertile hills and valleys spreading broad between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, and extending far to the north and the south of the Missouri Compromise line, lay the mighty and as yet scarce known domain of California. Under ordinary circumstances it would have taken a generation at least to settle this territory; and in the ordinary course it would have been divided, at best, between slavery and freedom. But at this moment a New Jersey man who was digging the channel of a mill race for a sawmill, happened to notice, in the gravel washed down by the stream, some grains of a yellow substance, heavy and metallic; which he picked up, tested, and found to be pure gold. Those grains had lurked there since the beginning of things, waiting the time to appear, and change the course of human history. One might moralize over the fact that mortal greed should be the means of preventing a great social catastrophe; but such speculations are vain, because the arc we can survey is so small compared with the whole sweep of the Divine round. Men are governed by their passions; a low age by low stimuli, a higher, by lofty ones. In 1849 the passion for gold, and what gold means, was sufficient to cause a shifting of the population, hitherto without parallel for its rapidity and extent. A half-built mill be-came a great city ; a town of two thousand inhabitants became a city of twenty thousand; and all within a year. Loose atoms of humanity from every country of the earth gathered in California during little more than the lapse of a summer vacation, and those vast solitudes suddenly became peopled with the tumultuous and lawless crowd of gold-seekers. Lawless they were, at first, for there was none to enforce law ; and the visions, and the reality, of sudden and great wealth dazzled out of view all other considerations. Here was a splendid wilderness, a nearly perfect climate, no conventions, no traditions, no restraints, no women at the outset, and when women came, they were generally but another lure to disorder. Many of these gold-seekers were men of no education, of no moral perceptions, wholly unused to the idea of riches; and when such men became rich by the stroke of a pick, they knew not what to do with wealth, and in their ignorance they used it only to minister to their physical lusts. At the end of each week, at the end of each day, they were ready to spend what they had found in drunkenness and gambling; if they lost what they had gained, they had but to dig up enough to replace it; if they won, there must be more debauch. The only safeguard, for a while, against a reign of universal confusion and mutual destruction, was the seemingly inexhaustible amount of the treasure; it was believed that the whole extent of California was gold thinly veiled by vegetation. Robbery was rare, and, when discovered, was terribly punished; fights were common, but they were almost always the outcome of drink, and if they did not result fatally, were forgotten the next day. The common causes of enmity between man and man were here absent; there was enough for all so far as gold was concerned; and there were no materials for social or political feuds. Yet such a good-humored and dissolute anarchy could not indefinitely continue ; because, for one thing, the continuous rush of emigration would finally occasion personal collisions; and because a life without law is sooner or later self-destructive. Even savages have their laws, or their superstitions, the organization of which takes law's place. But an aggregation of savages who have be-come so by degradation can only issue in mutual annihilation.

This, however, was not to be the destiny of California; and the reason was that the majority of the gold-seekers were Americans, or men of Anglo-Saxon lineage and instincts. That race cannot exist long without law; the sentiments of justice, equity and order are in their marrow, and must manifest themselves. They do not need kings or prophets to rouse them from anarchy; they rally and marshal themselves by a spontaneous impulse, and therefore they are the inevitable rulers of the earth. Many of the new Californians were men of some education; and the majority were marked by that strength of character and depth of vitality which is essential to the successful pioneer or adventurer. These soon found one another out, and were united to one another by common thoughts and views. They became dominant over the chaotic mass; order cannot help dominating chaos, for it knows what it wants, and it always wants the same thing; whereas chaos knows and aims at nothing. In a surprisingly brief time therefore the Anglo-Saxon minority established laws and regulations in the midst of this roaring, seething, aimless multitude : such things might be done, such might not; this penalty waited upon this crime, that upon that. The Vigilance Committee took the place of Congress and President; the laws were liberal enough, but they were strict within their bounds. Men were hanged, flogged or banished, as the case might be; there was no appeal, and the community perceived that the laws observed a rough impartiality, securing to each man his own, and permitting no infringements. And while the diggers thus protected themselves, the opportunity of profit which trade afforded caused an immense influx of dealers of all sorts; and trade is necessarily orderly. Houses took the place of tents; streets replaced wandering foot paths; fixed property asserted itself on all sides, and was respected. There arose a pure democracy from the whirl-pool of mobocracy; and it was rigid, in spite of its breadth, because mobocracy was its twin sister and might else be mistaken for it. It was an American community, and of course it was free; there could be no foothold for human slavery among such men. There were among them many who had been Southern slaveholders; but they never ventured to air their opinions there, far less to attempt to intro-duce their institutions. There would have been short shrift for them, had they done so. Each man must work for him-self, or go, or starve. The Missouri Compromise line would serve only to hang its advocate with, in California.

This vital result could, so far as we can judge, have been attained in no other way, and at no other time. Had gold been discovered before the Mexican war, and the cession of territory that involved, it is hardly possible that Americans would have gained control; England and other nations would have seized what they could; conflicting claims would have stirred up wars, California would have become a shambles, and would have been lost to freedom even had it not become wedded to slavery. Had gold been discovered later than it was, the Missouri line would probably have been drawn, with all that it implied. But as it was, gold saved California to America and to freedom in 1849; and incidentally it bred a race of men fitted by nature and temper to occupy that outpost of our nation, and make it rich and respected ; for the solid residue of merit which stands after the flotsam and jetsam of weakness and disorder have been dispersed, comprises the very pith of mankind, which nothing can uproot. The Forty-Niners and their descendants came in good season to remind America what she contained of simple strength; and to renew on the Pacific the valiant traditions which had won the Atlantic coast from Europe.

The roads by which California could be reached were three; one across the breadth of the Continent, with peril of wild beasts, wild men, and wild and desolate nature; another by sea to Panama and across and up the coast to San Francisco ; the third, round Cape Horn. All these routes were thronged, and all of them had their varying adventures and vicissitudes; the overland was perhaps the most picturesque and striking, and the strain and suffering were the longest drawn-out. But that story cannot be even outlined here; and it has been painted again and again in unforgettable colors by masters. Indeed, nothing in our history is stranger, more stirring, or better known than this so-called episode of the Argonauts. Bret Harte has told it all, perhaps with too bizarre a mingling of cynicism and optimism; but after making allowances his pictures will stand.

General Taylor, President of the United States, had the eye of a soldier for the significance of the California emigration, and the sagacity of a statesman in dealing with it. He took immediate measures to assist in the formation of a stable government, and recommended that California be admitted as a state at the earliest moment. Though a Virginian and a slaveholder, he had no wish to see California ceded to slavery, and he knew that only violence could effect such a result. Let her come in on her own terms, said he; and he would have New Mexico also determine to which side she would adhere. This liberality offended the South and surprised them; they had not thought that a President of their own section, though a Whig, would thus oppose their policy; but they feared to denounce him, for his position, and the firmness which began to appear through his friendly straight-forwardness, made him formidable. He was the President of the whole nation, not of any part of it only; and he did not fear the South, as many eminent Northerners did. When a delegation of Southern Whigs called on him to ask him to pledge himself to sign no bill with the Wilmot Proviso in it, he replied that any constitutional bill should have his signature. "If you send troops to coerce Texas, Southern officers will not obey your orders," they rejoined. This made the soldier indignant. "Then I will command the army in person," thundered he; "and if any man is taken in treason against the Union, I will hang him as I did the deserters and spies at Monterey." Plainly, this law-abiding, impartial, fearless President was not to be led by the nose by any one.

California had voted itself an anti-slave constitution; and with that constitution she should come in, if Taylor had his way. Nothing did he say about the Wilmot Proviso in his recommendation; there was no need for it, and he would not tread on his Southern fellow countrymen's susceptibilities wantonly. But the mass of the Southerners were against California's admission as a free state ; Quitman, a New Yorker who had become a slaveholder, was especially virulent against it; he wanted both New Mexico and California for slavery; and hinted at designs against Cuba and the country further south—that shadowy southern empire which so many Southerners dreamed of at this time, after the secession which they contemplated should have been accomplished. The two causes began to count up their several champions in Congress, and to listen to what counsels they might give.

There was not much debating power of a high order in the House; but in the Senate there was more than enough. Besides the great discordant triumvirate of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, now making their last appearances in the arena, there were Seward, who was looming larger and clearer every day, Salmon P. Chase, Sam Houston of Texas, Benton, and Bell. Clay had meant to retire from Congress; he was overpersuaded to return; and though he came, as he thought, merely to look on, he remained to offer one more great compromise. He had his own ideas as to how the impending collision might be averted; it was not the President's idea, for Clay would take suggestions from no one ; and his divergence from Taylor divided the Whigs and prepared their defeat. He brought in his proposal a week or so after the President's suggestions, and showed it previously to Webster, whose attitude was still in doubt. The plan, on the whole, greatly favored the South; but it contained measures intended to sweeten it to the Northern palate. California was to be admitted; but only on condition that she carried New Mexico and Utah on her back, and took her chances with them, which were not states but territories. The buying and selling of slaves in the District of Columbia was to be discontinued ; but the fugitive slave law was to be enforced strictly. Texas, which had made an untenable claim to a large part of the soil of New Mexico, was to be bought off on terms favorable to her. The Wilmot Proviso was ignored, and the option of slavery or freedom was to be given to states applying for admission. It was manifestly unjust that California, which stood alone, should be saddled with territories concerning whose status as regarded slavery nothing definite was promised. The right of Congress to decide such matters was abnegated. Both South and North had objections against the bill; and Jefferson Davis demanded that the slaveholders be permitted to bring their slaves into New Mexico without reference to legislation in that territory. The extension of the Compromise line was not demanded in Clay's bill ; and this opened the whole question.

Three great speeches were made on the question, besides that great one of Clay's in which he introduced his measure. Calhoun's was written out, and was delivered for him by Mason, Calhoun listening to its delivery. He wished California to return to her territorial condition; he supported neither Taylor nor Clay, but hinted at secession as the probable solution of the problem. Unless South and North were given equal rights in the new territory, agitation of the slavery question stopped, and the Constitution amended to favor the South, then the South must leave the Union. The speech was able, but it was not creative, and it determined nothing. It was followed on the 7th of March by the famous speech of Webster, in which he took the course that brought upon him the hostility of the North, while failing to secure for him the full measure of Southern confidence. The true significance of Webster's attitude has been a bone of contention ever since; but it is certain that it destroyed his influence during the short remainder of his life. He never retracted the views he then expressed; and whether in his heart he believed that he had been mistaken cannot be known. He tried to achieve the impossible, and failed.

He professed to speak for the cause of the Union and of the Constitution; and as an American without party, and without reference to sections. He gave Clay's bill his sup-port; he granted all the demands of the South, while denouncing as visionary Calhoun's idea of a peaceable secession. He would give no countenance to free-soil doctrines, and scoffed at the Wilmot Proviso. He left slavery where it was, though with indications that he had no objection to its extension. For him, the Union and the Constitution were paramount; no law of morality or of right and wrong could take precedence of them. In speaking, his eloquence was as great as ever; but the substance of what he said was profoundly disappointing. Upon a review of all the circumstances and conditions it does not appear likely that Webster intended any wrong; rather did he aim at a mark which seemed to be above mortal limitations, only because in truth it did not exist at all. Shooting his arrow in the air, he wounded his own friend. He wished to be an American; he would stand on equal ground between South and North, recognizing only his fellow-countrymen. He thought that by owning no leaning to partisan rancors on either side, he was asserting impartiality and independence. But what he really did was to confound morality with geography. A man's country is not its topographical particulars, but its highest spirit : its approximation to the ideal good and true. If the South were wrong, it made no difference that they were Southerners; if the North were right, it was no narrow partiality that should declare them so to be. If wrong seemed to be buttressed by the Constitution, that only proved that the Constitution was not infallible; if to champion the right imperiled the Union, that could only imply that the terms of our Union should be purified. Webster sought to be national; but he succeeded only in declaring a cynicism profounder even than Calhoun's. The powers of his great brain had been too strong for his moral integrity; for the sake of an outward good, he had refined away the barriers which divide between good and evil in the soul.

This error was not committed by the young Seward, who followed him in the debate, and introduced that consideration for "the higher law" which has made .the phrase famous. Beginning with symptoms of embarrassment, he warmed to his theme and became eloquent, and announced doctrines which one would wish to have heard in Webster's organ tones. They were novel doctrines in that chamber; sublime and seemingly impracticable, though time has shown them to be as practicable as they were true. Seward would have no dealings with unrighteousness; he would not believe that this people needed for their safety to compromise with evil; rather did he have faith that their only real safety lay in doing right and trusting to God for the consequence. There is a higher law, he affirmed, than that of worldly prudence; and to that law he summoned us to be loyal. But he was heard with ears which for the most part were unbelieving. Calhoun, who made his last appearance in the Senate on this occasion, left it anathematizing this new man with his Promethean sword; and died within the month.

The immediate upshot of the debate was, that no one except Benton stood by the President; Clay and Webster, standing together against Taylor, divided the Whigs; it seemed an opportunity for the Democrats. A committee was got together to discuss the subject, Clay being chair-man; it consisted of thirteen members, six Northerners and six Southerners besides Clay himself. Webster, though appointed, did not serve. While the committee was discussing, the treaty was signed which Clayton and Sir Henry Bulwer negotiated, regarding a proposed Nicaragua canal ; the terms of which were that neither England nor the United States were to have exclusive control of it, and that no colonizing should take place; but it later transpired that England was secretly holding in reserve her alleged protectorate rights. The Canal, however, still remains in the limbo of projects unachieved.

Clay's committee reported in May; it inspired no enthusiasm, and the President was against it, though not demonstratively so. Congress showed a disposition to disentangle the California matter from the rest, and pass it independently. Southern extremists wished Texas to accomplish her designs on New Mexico by force; but the sturdy President was standing square in the way. The boundary must be settled, he said, not by Texas nor by New Mexico, but by the United States, which was New Mexico's guardian during her minority as a territory. He sent Colonel Monroe with troops to oppose the attempt at invasion of the Texans. When Crawford, the son of the Crawford of Jackson's era, refused to sign the order as Secretary of War, "Then I'll sign it myself," said the old soldier. And events were drawing to an interesting climax, when Taylor, stricken by cholera, suddenly died. Never did an American President, so far as one can humanly judge, die at a moment apparently so inopportune. "I've tried to do my duty," was his last utterance, on that 9th of July which was his last of earth. He had surely done his duty, with a purity and firmness never surpassed. He had done it well, as well as faithfully, and he was daily learning how to do it better. He loved the Union as much as Clay and Webster professed to do, but he would defend it not by compromises, but by putting down treason with the strong hand. He saw things in the large and the mass, and understood the right course to steer. Had he lived another year, either the war of secession would have taken place with him in the saddle for the Union, or it would never have taken place at all. But he died, because his time was come; and so made way for the immortal career of Lincoln.

Millard Fillmore, a good Whig, took the oath as President the same day that Taylor died. He was under the Webster-Clay influence, and Seward found his weight with the administration correspondingly decreased. The entire Cabinet resigned, and were replaced by Clay men. They were good men, and Webster was Secretary of State; but they made a cipher of the President. They favored compromise and conciliation; and the fate of Clay's bill, which had lately seemed so precarious, now bloomed with promise. But an unlooked-for spasm of virility in the Senate upset the "Ominbus" and from the disjected members framed new bills. It was found easier to pass the several parts when thus separated, than the whole in a lump; but of course the separation also modified the effect of the parts. To the outside mind, the difference might seem like that historic one 'twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee; but the Congressional mind is on the inside always. The Clay Omnibus was set up, and patched together, and set a-going on its appointed course, looking quite the same as before the accident. Texas was bought off with a good slice of New Mexico and ten million dollars (of which Congress got its share); New Mexico and Utah were admitted territories, with option as to slavery; Califorina was admitted on her own basis; and so on. Fillmore signed the bills as fast as they came in, the fugitive slave bill along with the rest. Clay retired, satisfied that he had saved the Union. Fillmore countermanded Taylor's military orders regarding the Texan revolt; and Webster was busy arguing down plain morality. But all his cringing under the Southern whip seemed to leave the South still unsatisfied; a convention of slave states to agree upon secession was called for; but either because they had no obvious leader to unite under, or because they began to think that they could get all they wanted without secession, no overt act of disloyalty was carried out. Give us back our runaway slaves, and never mention the word slavery in our hearing, and we may condescend to live with you—was the gist of the Southern dictum to the North. Still if a Northerner but ventured to look hard at a Southern gentleman, the threat of secession rang in his ears. Clay alone was superior to this petulance; "Never," he declared before the Kentucky legislature,. "would I consent to a dissolution of the Union. If Congress ever usurps the power to abolish slavery in the states where it exists—but I am sure it will never do so—I will yield." This was manly on Clay's part, and all very well; but the fugitive slave act could not fail to breed serious trouble at once; and the law giving new states the option of slavery or freedom would do so later on. By the fugitive slave law, federal officers became slave hunters throughout the free states; they could arrest any negro without recourse or need of identification, and under any circumstances. That their action was legal, and that the South could get back its fugitives in no other way, were facts which had no effect in reconciling the North to the edict; there were many cases of resistance and rescue in Boston and elsewhere; and Webster was sedulous in prosecuting them, while the Attorney-General, Crittenden, declared the act to be constitutional. There is no question that the South and the administration were in the right in enforcing the law, since it existed ; and if it ought not to have existed, why did not the North prevent it in Congress? If slavery were to be tolerated at all, then fugitive slaves were like runaway cattle, and honest folk were bound to return them to their owners. One of the plainest lessons of the situation was, that the people were no longer represented by Congress. But that was the people's fault. Webster arraigned Seward for venturing to set private conscience above law; a New York Whig convention split, some adhering to Fillmore and Webster, with the title of "silver-grays," the others to Seward. Fusions with Democrats began. Bout-well was elected governor of Massachusetts by a coalition of Democrats and Free-soilers. Hamilton Fish, a Seward Whig, was elected to the House in New York. In Ohio, a free-soil state, Ben Wade, strongly anti-slavery, took the place of the veteran Ewing. Charles Sumner beat Winthrop for the Senate. Sumner was a big, good-looking, voluble Boston Brahmin, with high pretensions to culture, and hyperion hair; but he was a good offset to the arrogance of the Southern slaveholders in the Senate, being able, so far as words went, to give them quite as good as they brought. No one could exasperate them as he could; no one heeded their sensibilities so little as he; until the memorable time when they succeeded in getting rid of him, for a while, by other arguments than those of reason. But in fact, reason's rule was over in America for the present. There were party fighting and tranformation scenes all over the country. At this juncture, Fillmore's message cried "Peace—Peace!" when there was no peace; and Congress did nothing, nor was anything intelligible heard, except the tones of Clay's voice, preaching mutual forbearance.

But the people were tired of contention on the one monotonous point of slavery, and were also bewildered by the spectacle of men in whose integrity they could hardly help confiding, exhorting them to submission to the law, whether or not it conformed to what had vulgarly been considered morality. They needed a rest; and if persons more intellectual and better informed than they assured them that rest was not only compatible with honor, but essential to the preservation thereof, why should they not believe it? Secessionists at the South and Abolitionists at the North were alike reproved, not too violently; and the government sought to interest the nation in matters of commonplace business. The irreconcilables in the South amused themselves with plans of Central American and Cuban acquisitions, which took form in numerous filibustering expeditions, which met with uniform disaster; the final attempt on the part of the adventurer Lopez to stampede Cuba being extinguished by the killing or shooting of the entire band of five hundred men, and the "garotting" of the leader. Meanwhile the work of the country went on; railways were vigorously developed; the Collins Line of American steamers rivaled the Cunarders as an Atlantic ferry; the telegraph was ex-tended, and the hum of industry was everywhere heard. Webster toured about the land making "compromise" speeches, and extolling the sanctity of the Constitution and the Union; meeting with applause everywhere save in stern Massachusetts, where the Boston aldermen voted to close Faneuil Hall against him. Jenny Lind came to add her matchless voice to the chorus of harmony; and Louis Kossuth, picturesque and heroic, and charmingly eloquent even in the English tongue, tried to woo us to come across the ocean and fight for Hungarian independence against Austria. We cheered him, caressed him, passed resolutions and made speeches supporting his plea; but in the end, of course, were fain to let him depart with his mission unaccomplished. The gift that he lacked was the sense of humor which should have prevented him from expecting aid to freedom from a country which had just given its indorsement to slavery. But we could console ourselves, if not him, by celebrating the victory of our yacht "America" over the Queen's fleet at Cowes Regatta--the race in which there "was no second." We could build fast ships, at any rate!

All this while, the Democrats, in one way or another, had been pushing to the front, or toward it; and the apparent disposition at the South to let a Northern man have the Presidency gave them a better outlook than the Whigs. It was this campaign which first identified the Democratic party with the South; although the Whigs were the party of wealth and aristocracy, the South trusted more in the loyalty of the Democrats to those principles which they deemed vital. The Whigs omitted no act or profession of subservience which might ingratiate them with the South in the premises, and men like Cass and Buchanan tried to out-Herod Herod in their protestations; but that sort of thing may be overdone. The conventions of the two parties met in June, 1852, the fatal last year of Whigism. They had had the greatest statesmen in their ranks that America had produced ; they had every opportunity to leave a record commensurate with their ability; but they had been timid and time-serving, and full of misfortunes. Now they were to suffer a crushing defeat, and their two chief champions were to die within five months of each other. Such were the contents of the immediate future; but the party went on hoping and scheming, if not rejoicing; and the coming event did not cast its shadow before. They had three chief candidates—Fillmore, Webster, and Winfield Scott. It was Webster's final effort, and as such he recognized it; and he would certainly not have entered the race had he not hoped to win. He could not but believe that the invaluable support he had given the South would earn their gratitude ; and he had omitted no means of persuading the North that the Compromise was their salvation as well. If he was not the representative American, who was?—and should not the representative American be the Americans' leader? Certainly Webster had one of the greatest brains of his century; and we may believe that he had at heart almost solely the welfare of his country, vitiated in a degree though that may have been with a deep-seated, life-long, passionate desire for his own personal triumph. But nothing is better established than that brains do not win the suffrages for the highest office of the brainiest people in the world—if we indeed are that. What exactly is sure to win their suffrages is another and far more abstruse question, into the intricacies of which we will not enter; but a predominating brain is not trusted; its possessor is too clever for common people to be sure what he may do. Had Lincoln's great brain not been balanced by a heart even greater, he would never have led this country through the Civil War; nor, of course, would he have been Lincoln.

The Democratic convention met first, on the 1st of June, and after five days' warm work, gave up the attempt to win with either Cass, Buchanan, Douglas or Marcy, and under the Jacksonian two-thirds rule, unexpectedly united upon the comparatively unknown Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire and of the Mexican War. He was a man who, without having committed himself one way or the other, had made no enemies, but was liked by all. A fortnight later the Whigs came together. Their platform was substantially the same as the Democrats' —support of the Compromise of 1850; but with the delicate modification, which they tried to refine to its least substantiality, that should time and experience demand further legislation-why, it might be effected. Gentle though the hint was, the South caught it up at once, and grew savagely suspicious. Nevertheless, their array of candidates was so imposing, that one could hardly believe that they could all fail. The first votes showed Fillmore leading with 133 votes, Scott second with 131, and Webster almost out of sight in the rear with 29 only. But Webster believed that Fillmore would retire in his favor; he had also hoped that Clay, whose word was still potent in the party, would have declared for him; but in both expectations he was disappointed. Fillmore would not retire, and Clay had given his preference for Scott; and in the end, the vote stood, Scott 159, Fillmore 112, and Webster 21. That vote broke Webster's heart. Yet he survived Clay, who died soon after the Whig convention adjourned. There is deep pathos, if not tragedy, in the story of these two great men, who lost the crown for which they strove for the very reason that they strove for it so hard. Theirs was a noble ambition, but it sometimes stooped to means that were not noble to win. Of the two, Clay, perhaps, has the purer fame; but when we look for the benefits which Clay and Webster actually accomplished, we cannot but be amazed to find them so small. They concentrated the gaze of their contemporaries; they reached the topmost heights of oratory; they advocated and opposed many measures; but after all, we cannot deny that the country might have been better off politically if neither of them had entered public life.