1850. COMPROMISE MEASURES SEPARATED. 199 with the purpose, apparently, of taking summary occupation of the disputed country. Force must be repelled by force, he added, unless the general government confronts the State with friendly proposals. Upon this hint Pearce hurriedly offered a bill to aid the new policy of the cabinet which he had declined to enter. It passed the Senate quickly on the 9th of August; the vote standing 30 to 20, with Benton on the negative side. The boundary it proposed cut down New Mexico more than Clay had intended and offered Texas a round $10,000,000 besides, to relinquish her claims upon the rest of the territory.* Two of the great subjects conjoined in the Omnibus Bill being thus disposed of, the bill was taken up for establishing a territorial government in New Mexico. Chase's amendment was lost which proposed to apply the Wilmot Proviso, and on the 15th the bill finally passed, with the slavery option clause which Soulè had presented. The territory might be subdivided any time at the discretion of Congress, and when admitted, any State formed out of the territory should be received into the Union with or without slavery as her constitution should then prescribe. The Utah bill, that last remnant of the Omnibus, had been similarly expressed. Now came the fugitive slave bill, taken up on the 19th and passed on the 26th in a thin chamber by more than two to one. The slaveholding side, in solid phalanx, resisted such amendments as the North most wished to tack to that bill. The arrested negro was denied the benefit of a jury trial; free colored seamen, citizens from the North, imprisoned in Southern ports could have no redress.† These "compromise bills" went one by one to the House, which had meantime moved neither backward nor forward. First in order came the bill which offered indemnity to Texas. At the prospect of millions of the United States money, as an inducement for laying aside civil * Clay had originally intended offering that sum to Texas, but the amount was not mentioned in the Omnibus Bill for fear it would cause stock speculations. 2 Schurz's Clay, 361. † Congressional Globe. September. war, the scrip of that costly State which had risen within a few weeks from 10 per cent to 50, would, in case the bill passed, advance in the market to par. A large lobby. gathered in consequence at the capitol, and Texas securities were said to be held by members of Congress and by government officials, high and low.* The struggle here was desperate; but after two successive defeats the bill was carried September 6th by ten majority, with the territorial bill for New Mexico tacked to it. The Senate concurring in three days, the doubled bill went to the President. This was the beginning of the end. On the 8th of September the California admission bill and the Utah territorial bill passed the House ordeal unchanged. On one and the same day, the 9th, President Fillmore approved these three bills, and the Omnibus was recreated. The fugitive slave bill went through the House in blushing and uneasy acquiescence. Fillmore's hand, on the 18th, was set to that measure also,‡ and signed his death warrant as a statesman. The slaughter of the shambles was completed, and Congress emerged into the light of day. All of the programme was now carried out which Clay's resolutions had proposed seven months and more ago, - all but the reciprocal grace to anti-slavery sentiment which interdicted the slave trade in this District, before the eyes and nostrils of national legislators. So far from approaching the abolition of slavery at the capital by such a concession, the Senate could muster but five votes in favor of buying at a good price the freedom of these slaves, whose aristocratic masters would let them out to work, like stablekeepers, and pocket their wages. Southern extremists would not have conceded Clay's little; but the orator, once more in his seat, carried the point by his eloquent rhetoric, besides magnifying it to much. A bill which deigned to suppress all slave trade in the District, so as to spare Northern compunctions, passed both Houses and became a law ten *2 Schurz's Clay, 363. U. S. Stats. at Large, cs. 49-51. Ib. c. 60. 1850. ADJOURNMENT OF CONGRESS. 201 days before Congress adjourned,* lagging in the rear of those other compromise measures which the President's pen had approved already. Congress adjourned on the 30th of September, after one of the longest and most contentious sessions on record. It was a session of compromise and little else; of death, official succession, and reversed policies, which bore up or bore down the divided feelings of a legislature. Nothing important up to Taylor's death had passed, but the census act; nothing important was laid before his successor for approval but the measures which made up this new sectional compact. Clay, whose public labors now shaped toward a tranquil close, carried home for the recess a deep conviction that he had accomplished a great and lasting work for the reconcilement of his beloved Union. And never had his surpassing skill as pacificator been put forth with success so signal, or when passions surged so heavily. He had pacified as a Southern man; but upon Northern citizens now rested the chief burden of carrying the plan into practical execution. The responsible weight of fulfilling the bargain, with its thankless components, fell upon a fortuitous administration, and, in particular, upon those two men of anti-slavery antecedents, President Fillmore and Daniel Webster. The one had the odium of executing, the other of defending a league which, in imagination only, was a final and irrevocable compact. Webster, with his grand gifts of thought and oratory, had henceforth to harness down his intellect to crushing out the moral resistance in his State and section that he had once heartily shared. The plea for the new conservative reaction, which for the rest of his life he had to sustain, was the safety of the Union; its folly, nevertheless, in supposing that modern civilization could overspread this vast continent and yet remain pent up, not so much by *U. S. Stats. at Large, c. 63; Sept 20, 1850. a constitution immutable, as by that lesser and weaker barrier of statutes immutable. August. First in order was to buy off Texas from despoiling our possessions in New Mexico. Governor Bell's overbearing, threatening letter to President Taylor was unanswered at the latter's death. The new President hastened to countermand all military orders of his predecessor, while Webster, in a politic strain, softened down to humility, assured the governor that the Executive disavowed all purpose to interfere while the compromise measures were pending in Congress. Quitman, the governor of Mississippi, had pledged himself to join Texas in any emergency of arms. "Hold out in claiming New Mexico," was the purport of his advice while Pearce's bill occupied Congress. "I regard it as worse than Fillmore's bayonets, because it is no better than a bribe." September. At this juncture, the governors of Mississippi and South Carolina were concerting measures for summoning a new convention of the slave States which should proclaim secession. Mississippi was to be put forward, with Georgia, if possible, to aid her, while South Carolina, whose rebellious leadership might preju dice the cause, was to bring up the rear. There was no remedy, they agreed, but secession; the slaveholding States already occupied a position of "degradation and inequality." Quitman accordingly convened the Mississippi legislature in extra session to consider the subject, and in a fiery message proclaimed that unless Congress halved California for the benefit of slavery and gave new guarantees, "prompt and peaceable secession" should be the recourse. The legislature refused, however, to hasten conclusions beyond calling a convention of the people to meet some ten months hence. Governor Seabrook, in December, met the Pal November December. metto legislature with a message in Quitman's vein, muskets, rifles, foundries, and brass field-pieces, * 2 Claiborne's Quitman, 36 et seq. 1850. SOUTHERN DISUNION SUBSIDES. 203 made the swelling theme. The time, he says, has arrived "to resume the exercise of the powers of self-protection which, in the hour of unsuspecting confidence, we surren dered to foreign hands." But here once more the legislature hesitated, and, pending action, Seabrook's term of office expired.* Other Southern Executives were loud-mouthed, and quite a strong current was visible which tended to disunion. "Nothing but the hope of having now settled forever all agitation of the slavery question," said Governor Floyd of Virginia, "can reconcile the South to the compromise measures; should this hope fail, the South must unite for self-preservation." It was the failure to unite, in fact, which, more than anything else, caused the present panic movement to subside. South Carolina honored the shade of her departed Calhoun; a statue ordered from Powers, our American sculptor, suffered shipwreck on its way from Italy, was rescued and then set up. In the town of Greenville a public meeting was held at which Memminger, a rising politician, urged a confederacy of the Southern States; "and if this cannot be had," he added, excitedly, "then let South Carolina secede and stand on her own rights, trusting the issue to Almighty God." His audience applauded to the echo, and so did the Palmetto press, but the cooler sentiment of the South pronounced co-operation indispensable. And it soon appeared that co-operation under present conditions was impossible. Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida, among December. the Gulf States, took no precipitate step; the border States remained strongly loyal; and even Georgia, whose State convention in December gave the resistants some hope, soon back recoiled. In that keystone State of the pro-slavery arch, Howell Cobb, Toombs, and Stephens, all fully won over by Harry Clay, led the Unionists presently to victory; not, however, upon the issue of unconditional, but of conditional loyalty. If the North would adhere to the terms of the new compact, execute * 2 Claiborne's Quitman, 36 et seq. |