Mr. Seward's remarks were devoted mainly to a review of the presi dent's message, which he characterized as desultory, illogical and confused. He concludes with an eloquent and pertinent vindication of the rights and interests of the individual states of the Union. He desired "not to abate the federal strength and diminish the majesty of the Union, but to invigorate and aggrandize the states, and to enable them to maintain their just equilibrium in one grand but exquisitely contrived political system." The bill failed to pass over the president's veto, and has never since been successfully revived.

Mr. Seward advocated, at different times during the session, a system of postal reform. But this, like other measures of public benefit, was lost amid the general wreck. He was especially desirous of securing greater expedition and safety in the transmission of the mails between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. A proposition to give one hundred thousand dollars to the brave sailors who rescued the survivors of the wreck of the steamer San Francisco, lost. at sea with two hundred and forty lives on the 5th of January, 1854, received his support. His speech in its behalf was characterized by a generous humanity as well as by sound views of public policy.

The project of acquiring Cuba was broached in the senate soon after the passage of the Nebraska bill. Mr. Seward spoke at some length on the Africanization of the island. He opposed the bill to suspend the duties on railroad iron, as contrary to a wise and sound policy.

The homestead bill always found in Mr. Seward a steady supporter. In a speech made on the 12th of July, 1854, in defense of this measure, he took occasion to express his views very freely on what was then called "know nothingism."

In the debate on "appropriations for the improvement of rivers and harbors,” Mr. Seward energetically contended for the interests of commerce and navigation on the great lakes, reviewing severely the president's veto of a previous bill.

During the discussion of the Kansas and Nebraska bill in the house of representatives, a memorial remonstrating against the repeal of the Missouri compromise signed by three thousand and fifty clergymen of New England, was presented to the senate by Edward Everett. Mr. Douglas and other senators attacked this memorial with great violence, severely criticising its language, questioning its propriety and denying the claim of its authors to a hearing in the

senate. Mr. Seward, maintaining the right of petition on its broadest grounds, defended the course of the memorialists, and in a brief speech sustained his positions with his accustomed vigor and acumen. After a spirited debate the petition was received in the usual manner and laid on the table. But the dignified defense of the remonstrants, made by Mr. Seward, was remembered with favor by the lovers of justice and freedom of conscience in all parts of the country.

Two unusually important treaties were ratified by the senate, in executive or secret session, during this meeting of congress. One is known as the "Gadsden treaty" for the settlement of our relations with Mexico, and the other as the "reciprocity treaty" for the regulation of trade between Canada and the United States. Mr. Seward is understood to have opposed the former, while he gave his support to the latter.

Just before the adjournment of congress (on the 26th of July, 1854) Mr. Seward delivered the annual oration before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Yale college, on which occasion he received the honorary degree of doctor of laws. The subject of his discourse was, "the physical, moral and intellectual development of the American people," which he treated with great discrimination and vigorous eloquence, commanding the admiration of a highly intellectual audience and strengthening his well earned title to oratorical fame. After an arduous session of more than eight months, congress adjourned on the 7th of August, 1854. In October, following, Mr. Seward made an elaborate argument in the circuit court of the United States at Albany, in the celebrated McCormick reaper case.

The state elections, in the autumn, in all the free states, resulted in a decided verdict against the extraordinary legislation of congress and the action of the administration. Only seventy-nine members were elected, in all the states, to the next congress who were known as friends of the president's policy,' while one hundred and seventeen were chosen as decided opponents of the repeal of the Missouri compromise. The remaining thirty-seven members, classed as whigs or Americans, were generally supposed to sympathize with the administration in its pro-slavery character, although unwilling to be classed as its friends.

1 See present volume for this oration and the speeches before noticed.

2 At the election for speaker the administration candidate, Mr. Richardson, the father of the Nebraska bill in the house, at the previous session, received on the first ballot 74 votes.

The second and last session of the thirty-third congress met on the first Monday in December, 1854. A manifestly subdued temper on the part of the majority and the absence of any exciting topic for discussion gave hopes of much healthful legislation, only however to be disappointed.

Mr. Seward, with his accustomed assiduity, turned his attention to the task of rescuing from the ruins some of the beneficent measures sacrificed to the interests of slavery at the last session. Among these the Pacific railroad, the improvement of rivers and harbors and the revision of the tariff may be especially mentioned. Mr. Seward was the author of a bill, introduced by him at the previous session, for the construction of a railroad to the Pacific ocean, which seemed more practical in its character than any yet considered.

A bill to increase the compensation of members of congress and to raise the salaries of the judges of the supreme court was introduced early in the session. Mr. Seward opposed both propositions. In a speech on the "extension of the bounty land law" he paid an eloquent tribute to the volunteers and militia who had served in the wars of the United States, and advocated an amendment providing that they should be included in the benefits of the law the same as officers and soldiers of the regular army. On presenting a memorial from the unemployed workmen of the city of New York in favor of a homestead law, Mr. Seward feelingly portrayed the distress he had himself recently witnessed among the industrial classes in the large cities, and urged the passage of the homestead bill as a wise and inexpensive measure of relief.

His remarks on internal improvements, during the debate on the bill making appropriations for the improvement of rivers and harbors, and his speeches in favor of the Pacific railroad all abound with the most liberal and statesmanlike ideas; while those in opposition to reducing the tariff on American products and manufactures are consistent with the principles he has always maintained.

Mr. Seward insisted on the payment of the Texas debts as an obligation entered into by our government which could not now be honorably repudiated, however unwise that obligation may have been when it was assumed.

He was the early and steadfast friend of mail steamers on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. His speech on the 27th of February,

1855, although brief, clearly presents the reasons why our government should continue to employ first class steamships in its mail service. Mr. Seward opposed the bill granting three years' credit on duties on railroad iron. He maintained that it was impolitic and wrong to stimulate an enterprise already unduly expanded. The wisdom of his words has been verified by the remarkable depreciation of railroad shares.

A misunderstanding having arisen among the merchants of New York in regard to a bill introduced at the last session, by Senator Fish, relating to immigrant passenger ships, Mr. Seward in a graceful speech defended his colleague from any negligence in the matter, Mr. Fish being then absent from the country seeking the restoration of his health.

Near the close of the session, Senator Toucey introduced a bill designed to strengthen the already rigid features of the fugitive slave act of 1850. It provided that all suits growing out of the enforcement of that act might be removed from any state court, in which they had been commenced, to the federal courts. On the 26th of May, 1854, the day on which the Nebraska bill passed, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, had been arrested in Boston by the officers of the federal government. In an unsuccessful attempt by the people to rescue him from the hands of the marshal and his deputies, one of the latter was killed. The fugitive, having been declared by the commissioner to be a slave, was conducted from the court house to a revenue cutter in the harbor by a company of marines and United States soldiers, assisted by the volunteer militia of the city of Boston. Cannon loaded with grape shot were planted in commanding positions to preserve order, and the court house, surrounded by chains, was guarded by an armed police. During this extraordinary scene many acts of tyranny were practiced by the federal officers on the people occupying or passing through the streets. The civil and criminal prosecutions growing out of such acts were commenced in the courts of Massachusetts. One of the objects of Mr. Toucey's bill was to change the jurisdiction from these tribunals to the courts of the United States.

Mr. Seward aroused the attention of the senate and of the country to the enormous usurpation which the bill proposed, in a speech of stirring eloquence; reviewing the recent startling encroachments of

despotism and characterising the present one as more bold and alarming than any that had preceded it.' Other senators from the free states followed him in denouncing it, in terms no less severe and decided.

Mr. Sumner, at the close of an eloquent speech against the bill, moved, as an amendment, a substitute for the whole bill, repealing the fugitive slave act of 1850. Mr. Seward gladly availed himself of the opportunity to record his vote in favor of the repeal of that odious act; but the proposition could then command only nine affirmative votes, Messrs. Brainerd of Vermont, Chase of Ohio, Cooper of Pennsylvania, Fessenden of Maine, Gillette of Connecticut, Seward of New York, Sumner of Massachusetts, Wade of Ohio, and Wilson of Massachusetts.

Mr. Toucey's bill, after a most animated discussion, passed the senate at midnight by a vote of 29 to 9. Owing to the lateness of the session its consideration in the house was never reached; nor has it since been revived. The days of the thirty-third congress were now numbered, and on the 3d of March, 1855, both houses adjourned sine die.

This congress, the first under Mr. Pierce's administration, will long be memorable not only for its entire failure to accomplish any great and beneficent acts of legislation, but also for having deliberately re-opened a discussion of the slavery question whose ultimate consequences and collateral results no prophet can foresee.

With this congress, Mr. Seward's first senatorial term expired. His individual interests and personal feelings led him to prefer a return to private life. But higher considerations prevailed, and he consented to be a candidate for reëlection. His views on this subject were well expressed in a letter to John Quincy Adams in 1841, and substantially repeated to those who now felt, as he thought, an undue anxiety that he should be reëlected. He says in his letter to his venerable friend: "As for the future, I await its developments without concern, conscious that if my services are needed, they will be demanded, if not needed that it would be neither patriotic nor conducive to my own happiness to be in public life;" sentiments whose unaffected modesty of utterance, yet epigrammatic beauty, would, if found in Roman history, attract the admiration of the world.

1 Mr. Seward's speeches on this, and other bills before noticed, will be found in succeeding pages of the present volume. VOL. IV

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