law forbidding slavery should be considered revoked, and the motion was lost. On all these motions there was earnest debate. Finally, the bill to admit California, with her Constitution, passed, August 13, and the day following Jefferson Davis, with many other Senators of the slave States filed their protest against the legislation. The bill went to the House and, after protracted and bitter debate, passed that body.

The "compromise" of 1850 consisted of five different acts, passed at long intervals. Neither the resolutions of Mr. Clay or Mr. Bell, or the report of the Committee of Thirteen contained the measure. As approved by the President, the acts stood in the following order:

(1) The act to admit California, a free State more than four times the area of the State of New York, a large part of which lay south of the Missouri" Compromise" line; passed the Senate, August 13.

(2) The act proposing to the slave State of Texas, in consideration of the sum of $10,000,000 to be paid to her by the United States, to relinquish certain territory claimed by her to the north and west, and the incorporation of a part of the same in New Mexico, provided, that provision of the act anuexing Texas which recognized the Missouri "compromise" should not be qualified or impaired, except as to that part of said Texas territory incorporated in New Mexico; together with a provision organizing a territorial government for the Territory of New Mexico, an area almost twice as great as the State of New York, guaranteeing "that said Territory, or any part thereof, shall be received into the Union with or without slavery as their Constitution may prescribe," but ignoring the old Mexican law prohibiting slavery in all the same area, while in a Territorial condition; adopted, September !). (3) The act to establish a Territorial government for Utah, an area nearly three fold as great as the State of New York, on the same conditions as to slavery and the old Mexican law as the New Mexico act; adopted, September 9.

(4) The act to amend the act of 1793, providing for the execution of the provision of the Constitution as to the rendition of fugitive slaves; adopted, September 16.

(5) The act to suppress the trade in slaves in the District of Columbia.

An analysis of the "compromise" shows, that it applied the Wilmot Proviso to California; that, constructively, it retained in authority the old Mexican law prohibiting slavery in the Territories of New Mexico and Utah, in their Territorial condition, by neglecting to repeal it; that, a provision of the federal Constitution, adopted unanimously and without which

the Union could not have been formed, was required to be executed; that the most valuable species of property in half the States of the Union was condemned to cumulative insult by closing the market to it in the common estate of the States, the District of Columbia, the penalty of disobedience of the law being, instantaneous confiscation of the property offered for sale.

Mr. Clay took a very active part in the passage of the several acts that composed the "compromise" and, probably, without his interference the remedy would not have been found for the "five bloody wounds of the Republic" he declared had been so healed.

Speaking to the measure, as a whole, in the Senate, he said: "Sir, really, these little posthumous debates, after one has become exhausted by the main battle of the day are very unpleasant. I ask the Senator what right is sacrificed by the North in this measure? I do not want general, broadcast declamation but specifications. Let us meet them like men, point upon point, argument upon argument. Let him tell me if the North does not get everything and the South nothing but her honor. Show us the power to which the Northern sacrifice is made!" Mr. Webster, speaking, also, on the same measure, in the Senate, said: "As to the territorial acquisitions, I am bound to say, taking Maryland for example, that Maryland will gain what Massachusetts loses, and that is nothing at all." Horace Greeley, through the columns of his paper, the organ of the Abolitionists, proclaimed a "great triumph for freedom" in the passage of the "compromise."

No regular session of the Alabama Legislature was due immediately after the passage of the "compromise," and Governor Collier did not deem it wise to summon an extra session. A meeting was called at the State capital to ratify the measure and was largely attended by Whigs from the rich slave counties of the vicinage. Senator William R. King approved the object of the meeting. Marengo was next, after Montgomery, the most populous slave county, and on the first day of the fall term of the Circuit Court a very large meeting of the planters assembled at the Court House to consider what to do. A hot debate began in the morning and proceeded without intermission until long after nightfall when, on a division of the

house, a resolution, offered by John W. Henley, a Whig, lawyer and planter, to "acquiesce," prevailed. The action at Montgomery and at Linden seemed to deter the Secessionists from any immediate attempts to induce the Governor to act, but, under the lead of Mr. Yancey, Southern Rights Associations were organized. The Whigs met this movement with Union Clubs. The Legislature of South Carolina called a sovereign Convention, with the expectation that it would withdraw the State from the Union. The Legislature of Mississippi submitted to the people, with apparent reluctance, a proposition to call a sovereign Convention for the same purpose.

The Georgia sovereign Convention met in December. The Unionists were in large majority. The Ordinances and Resolutions of the body became the supreme law of the land, and, therefore, were of great importance to all the slave States. The Georgia Platform was ordained by the Convention and published. It was based on the general theory that the slave States were in imminent peril of their liberties from the aggressions of the free States; and cited the following apprehended acts which, if perpetrated by Congress, would justify the secession of the State from the Union:

The integrity of the empire, the United States, would not be weighed against the security of the liberty of the people of Georgia, and, therefore, while the State would accept the compromise in a spirit of concession, if Congress at any future time should-

Abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, without the consent and petition of the slaveholders thereof;

Or abolish slavery on the reservations of the government, such as arsenals, forts, etc., within the limits of the slaveholding States;

Or suppress the slave trade between the slaveholding States;

Or refuse to admit a State into the Union because of its Constitution tolerating slavery;

Or repeal or modify the laws then in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves:

"Then the State of Georgia, in the judgment of this Convention, will and ought to resist, even (as a last resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union."

The parenthetical qualification of the obvious intent of the Platform "(as a last resort) ". was an ingenious negation which had no other effect than to prove the deep purpose of the authors. It was true, however, that when Congress had virtually accomplished all the acts, severally proscribed by the Platform, those who conceived and perpetrated the parenthesis claimed the benefit of it.

South Carolina and Mississippi, in effect, accepted the Georgia Platform.

When Congress re-assembled in December, after a short recess, the Southern promoters of the " compromise," who were yet members, in alarm at the earnestness of the people, organized a new party and called it the Union Party. No declarations of principle were published, save the sanctity of the "compromise." The founders published an address signed by Democrats and Whigs-Howell Cobb, Henry Clay, Henry S. Foote, Henry W. Hilliard, Toombs, Stephens, forty-five in all. The Union Party, yet not under that style and name, carried the next Presidential election, and perished forever. The ill-fated "compromises" had enfeebled political ethics, blinded the public appreciation and practically usurped the prerogative of amendments of the organic law, specially provided for the great exigencies through which the country was destined to pass.

CHAPTER 12.

Secession Defeated. .

1851.

President Taylor died in the midst of the undetermined debate on the "compromise." In his letter to Mr. Allison he had taken the Whig, or consolidation view of the veto power, and the opponents of the measure before Congress had no hope of its ultimate defeat by the Executive interposition in the use of that prerogative. High ran the hopes of the Abolitionists when Mr. Fillmore, whose sympathies had once been pledged to their measures, succeeded to the Chief Executive office. But deep was their chagrin when they discovered that he stood firmly on the committals of the head of his party against the exercise of the veto power upon bills of the class of the compromise." The measures composing it, one by one, received the Executive sanction, and no sooner had the fugitive slave law passed that ordeal, than the Abolitionists of Boston met to denounce the President. Mr. Charles Sumner, their favorite orator, spoke to them at Faneuil Hall. He said : "Into the immortal catalogue of national crimes this has now passed; drawing with it, by an inexorable necessity, its authors also; and chiefly him, who, as President of the United States, set his name to the bill and breathed into it that final breath without which it would have no life. Other Presidents may be forgotten, but the name signed to the fugitive slave bill can never be forgotten. There are depths of infamy as there are heights of fame. I regret to say what I must, but