quarrel as to the mode in which the thing should be done. The Committee on Territories hesitated long and deliberated well whether we should report the measures in separate bills or combine them all in one when we first brought them before the Senate. I prepared the bills for California, Utah, New Mexico, and the Texas boundary separately, and laid them before the Committee in that shape, with the view of taking the judgment of the Committee whether they should be joined together or kept separate. The decision of that point involved no principle; it was purely a matter of policy. We came to the conclusion that it was expedient to pass California separately, and to unite the governments for Utah and New Mexico with the Texas boundary in one bill, and accordingly I reported them from the Committee on Territories in that shape. When the Committee of Thirteen subsequently united these two bills in one and recommended their passage in that form, I gave them my cordial support. I could see no reason why I should oppose my own bills merely because they had been united together. My object was to settle the controversy and to restore peace and quiet to the country, and I was willing to adopt any mode of proceeding and to follow any gentleman's lead which could bring us to that desirable result. When the omnibus bill was defeated, I fell back upon my own separate bills, which, fortunately for the country, received the sanction of the two Houses of Congress and became the laws of the land. California, Utah, New Mexico, the fugitive slave bill, and the bill for the abolition of the slave trade in the District, each passed the Senate as separate measures. In the House, New Mexico was joined to the Texan boundary, and both passed as one bill. Thus it will be seen that neither plan has entirely succeeded. No man and no party has acquired a triumph, except the party friendly to the Union triumphing over Abolitionism and disunion. The measures are right in themselves, and, collectively, constitute one grand scheme of

conciliation and adjustment. They were all nccessary to the attainment of this end. The success of a portion of them only would not have accomplished the object; but all together constitute a fair and honorable adjustment. Neither section has triumphed over the other. The North has not surrendered to the South, nor has the South made any humiliating concession to the North. Each section has maintained its honor and its rights, and both have met on the common ground of justice and compromise. It will always be a source of gratification and just pride to me that I had the opportunity of acting an humble part in the enactment of all these great measures, which have removed all causes of sectional discontent, and again united us together as one people.""

More talk, and the yeas and nays were ordered and the bill passed by 33 to 19:

"Yeas-Messrs. Baldwin, Benton, Bright, Cass, Chase, Clarke, Clay, Cooper, Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Dickinson, Dodge of Wisconsin, Dodge of Iowa, Douglas, Ewing, Felch, Fremont, Greene, Gwin, Hale, Hamlin, Houston, Jones, Norris, Seward, Shields, Spruance, Sturgeon, Underwood, Wales, Walker, Whitcomb, and Winthrop-33.

"Nays-Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Bell, Berrien, Butler, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Downs, Hunter, King, Mangum, Mason, Morton, Pratt, Sebastian, Soule, Turney, and Yulee-19.""

And so was ended for the time this great controversy in the Senate of the United States, which had convulsed the entire country for months, and threatened most strongly to end in civil war.

The House offered some amendments to the Senate bills in which the Senate concurred; and the Compromise measures of 1850, which utterly repudiated the principle of the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820, viz., 1 Cong. Globe, Vol. 22, p. 1830.

the division of the territory by a geographical line, and most emphatically adopted, instead, the principle of absolute non-intervention by Congress with the subject of slavery, became the law of the land.

Congress adjourned from its labors, September 30th, and the country drew a long breath of relief.

25

CHAPTER XV.

1851-52-Division and defeat of the Whig Party in Kentucky in 1851Archibald Dixon elected Senator, December 30th, vice Henry Clay, resigned-Division and disintegration of the National Whig Party in 1852-Death of Henry Clay.

The Compromise of 1850 had been passed by the Congress of the United States and accepted by patriots every-where, but it did not produce that harmony and peace which had been hoped for.

The Abolitionists and Free Soilers loudly demanded the repeal of the fugitive slave law; and Northern press and pulpit were arrayed in ominous unity against its execution. Not only had Mr. Webster been refused the use of Faneuil Hall to speak in, because of his support of this law, but many of the Northern papers denounced him as a renegade to his own party and people. His patriotism, his splendid abilities, his great services to his country, were all lost sight of and overshadowed by the angry prejudice and passion which had taken the place of common sense and justice. Politically dead, he could no longer control the tide of abolitionism which threatened to sweep the North like a tornado.

.

The declarations of Theodore Parker were to a great degree, instead, accepted by Northern Whigs, viz: "That the natural duty to keep the law of God overrides the obligation to observe any human statute. It is the natural duty of citizens to rescue every fugitive slave from the hands of the marshal who essays to return him to bondage-to do it peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must, but by all means do it. The fugitive has the same natural right to defend himself against the slave catcher or his constitutional tool, that he has against a murderer or a wolf.

If I were the

fugitive and could escape in no other way, I would kill him with as little compunction as I would drive a mosquito from my face."

Mr. Julian, of Indiana, Democrat and Free Soiler, elected to Congress from his district, declared he would resist the execution of this law at the peril of his life, and said in a public speech:

"If I believed the people I represent were base enough to become the miserable flunkies of a God-forsaken Southern slave hunter by joining him or his constables in the bloodhound chase of a panting slave, I would scorn to hold a seat on this floor by their suffrage, and I would denounce them as fit subjects for the lash of the slave driver."2

From the great Northern cities, the free negroes (or runaways, perhaps) fled by hundreds to Canada, under the real or pretended fear of being captured as slaves. "The Fugitive Slave!" "The Panting Slave!" "Freemen to be Made Slaves!" were some of the headings of calls for meetings "to resist oppression," etc., etc., libitum.

ad

In the June of 1851 was issued the first number of that famous work of fiction by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which produced an unparalleled sensation, such as was scarcely equaled by Dante's "Inferno" on its first appearance; and which unquestionably did as much, if not more, than any other one thing to precipitate the war between the States. It idealized the negro in the most exaggerated way, and excited the Northern mind intensely against that institution which could render possible such wrongs as were described as being inflicted by the Yankee overseer, "Legree," upon the saintly old darky, "Uncle Tom."

This trend of public sentiment at the North produced a corresponding uneasiness at the South, and South

1 Theodore Parker, Boston, September 22, 1850. 'Louisville Journal, June 11, 1851.