reciprocity. Rights of American fishermen were more clearly defined, and Canadian fish was allowed to come into American ports free of duty. Also the Canadians were given the rights of navigation on Lake Michigan, in return for which the Americans received similar rights on the St. Lawrence and the Canadian canals. This arrangement was to last for twelve years.

CHAPTER XLI

THE SLAVERY DISPUTE REVIVED

With the adoption of the compromise measures and the approval of the "finality" policy, politics in the United States was left with no compelling issue. The leaders were anxiously guarding against any resurgence of the temper of 1849, a negative task that left them in the position so often occupied by politicians, that of sitting on the lid. In the Congressional session of 1851-1852, lasting nine months, little was done beyond passing a "pork-barrel" bill and granting public lands. In their anxiety to avoid touching the disturbing problem of slavery, public officials touched nothing.

That this condition of political drought was far more beneficial than the heated contests which preceded it was generally agreed. It had other advantages. For example, the two parties were able to turn to the presidential campaign of 1852 with nothing to embarrass them. The Democrats were in excellent shape. The Barnburners had returned to their allegiance, and the Free Soil movement was negligible except possibly in Massachusetts. The Whigs had clearly lost ground. Never a strong party, and never entrusted with the presidency on their own merits, owing their victory in 1848 to the factional fight in New York, they seemed unable to make any compelling appeal.

In making their nominations, the Democrats could not agree on any one of their more prominent leaders, such as Cass, Marcy, Buchanan, or Douglas, and, on the forty-ninth ballot, the convention swung to Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire. The new candidate had the sort of noncommittal record which is a valuable asset in politics. He was handsome in person, kindly in his dealings with his associates, with no enemies, eminently safe in all respects.

The Whigs were more under the influence of their southern contingent, and allowed the Georgians to write their platform. For candidates the party had Fillmore, Webster, and the other idol of the Mexican War, General Winfield Scott. It took fifty-three ballots to convince the Whigs that nobody but Scott could get the nomina

tion. In spite of his nomination Scott could not win the support of the southern Whigs, because they doubted his loyalty to the compromise. In the election many "bolted" the candidate, some voting for Webster, while nowhere in the South did Scott make a favorable impression. The Whig party was doomed. Pierce carried every state but five, getting two hundred and fifty-four electoral votes to Scott's forty-two.

THE NEW LEADERS

Although the election and inauguration of Pierce meant no change in national policies, and no political change of any kind, except among the office-holders, his accession happened to coincide with an unusual change among the leaders in Congress. The old leaders, the men who were responsible for the compromise, had largely ended their careers before March 4, 1853. Henry Clay died in June, 1852, and the whole country mourned his loss. With all of his weaknesses, and even with all of his pettiness, he had done enough in behalf of the Union to give him lasting fame. Webster followed Clay in October of the same year. Others either retired or were forced out of politics. Van Buren ceased to be a figure in politics after 1848, Winthrop of Massachusetts retired in 1851, in the same year that Thomas Hart Benton lost his seat in the Senate.

These men had all been unionists, and their loss could not be replaced. They had been trained in politics in the period after 1815, when nationalism flourished almost as a gospel, and as long as they were in Congress neither southern secessionism nor northern abolitionism could go unrebuked. Unionists remained, to be sure, but they were younger men, without the balance and the experience of Webster and Clay. Perhaps the most conspicuous of the group of younger unionists was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the cleverest parliamentarian in Congress. He upheld the compromise, and he never became disturbed over slavery as an institution. No one denied his ability, but observers felt that his courage and determination might sometimes run away with his judgment. With Douglas there were Cass of Michigan, and Marcy of New York, both determined champions of the compromise. Among the southern unionists were to be listed Bell of Tennessee, Crittenden of Kentucky, and Clayton of Delaware. Whether this group would be strong enough to cope with their opponents remained to be seen.

In general the younger members were more concerned with purifying the Union than with preserving it. Trained in the thirties and forties, they could not help being influenced, in one way or another, by the doctrines of radical abolitionism. Those from the North were determined that slavery should not spread into the territories. To be sure they opposed secession, but they did not oppose policies that might exasperate the South into secession. The leaders in this group of northern radicals included Chase and Wade of Ohio, Sumner of Massachusetts, and Seward of New York. Chase was a keen debater and an able politician, but somewhat too selfish to make a first-rate party man. Sumner, like Chase a Free Soiler, was neither a politician nor a legislator, but an idealist. He was a well-educated man, courageous in expressing his own views, utterly intolerant, possessed of that dangerous command over words which enabled him to lash his opponents into mad rage. Some of his southern colleagues were almost convinced that his very presence in Congress was practically enough to justify secession. Wade was a fighting Westerner, who plunged into the slavery dispute with Sumner's zeal, untempered by either political or legal training. Seward was an expert in machine politics, a man of ability, who in less troublous times would have followed a comfortable course.

Set off against these radical "Yankees" were the proslavery champions of the South, who agreed in placing the safety of slavery above the preservation of the Union. Angered by the steady attacks of the abolitionists, they looked upon the whole North with suspicion. They were direct and frank in their threats of secession, in case they could not get what they wanted from the Union. Because they stood together, they dominated federal policies for eight years. Feeling that they had nothing to lose, because they cared little for the Union, they could be as belligerent as they pleased. Among the more extreme of these, Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, Quitman and A. G. Brown of Mississippi, were out-and-out secessionists. After 1854 they were joined by former unionists like Robert Toombs of Georgia and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.

When President Pierce's first session of Congress opened in December, 1853, it seemed that the slavery question was adequately guarded. In all federal territories the status of slavery had been definitely determined by law, and only new legislation could alter the arrangements. Such action seemed impossible. And yet, inside of a month,

Congress was plunged into a new fight over slavery, and the excitement there was immediately reflected throughout the country at large. The calm brought about by the compromise was suddenly destroyed, and the country did not settle down again until after the Civil War.

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL

In December, 1853, Dodge of Iowa introduced a bill to organize the Nebraska territory. This was a part of the Louisiana Purchase, lying west of Iowa and Missouri. It was for the most part given over to Indian tribes and consequently closed to white settlement. For ten years Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the chairman of the Senate committee on territories, had been working for the organization of this region. There were scattered white settlements in it, many of which had been made contrary to law. The squatters wanted to become owners, and for that they had to wait until the territory was organized. The Wyandott Indians were also clamoring for a territorial organization. Moreover many Missourians, for one reason or another anxious to move into Nebraska, were aiming at the same thing. Perhaps the most important force at work was the widespread interest in a transcontinental railroad. The admission of California had created a logical demand for better transportation facilities through the far West, and the very bigness of the project attracted country-wide attention. In an effort to work out a temporary solution, Congress authorized an experiment with camels, and a number of these beasts were imported. Their skeletons are now preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, as an interesting memorial of the zeal, if not of the sound judgment of the experimenters. More famous was Ben Holladay's coach line, from Missouri, through the Platte River valley, to California, which is described vividly in Mark Twain's Roughing It. But this was a makeshift at best; the country wanted a railroad.

It was far easier to get an agreement on the principle of the project than on a specific route. Douglas and his friends in Illinois wanted a line from Lake Michigan to Oregon. Benton of Missouri, working desperately to get back into Congress, demanded a line from St. Louis, over the Platte trail. Jefferson Davis, the guiding director of the Pierce administration, was quietly planning one from New Orleans, through El Paso. This proposed southern line could go all