Wendell Phillips followed in a critical examination of the salient points of Mr. Webster's speech. Petitions were presented to the legislature, asking that Mr. Webster be instructed to vote for the Wilmot proviso and against Mr. Mason's Fugitive Slave Bill. The committee to whom they were referred having reported adversely, Mr. Wilson moved to strike out its recommendation, and insert resolutions setting forth that Mr. Webster, having declared in the Senate that the prohibition of slavery in New Mexico would be "useless, senseless, and nugatory," that he would "not vote for it, and that he would support the pending Fugitive Slave Bill with all its provisions to the fullest extent," be requested to vote against the organization of any Territorial governments without an express provision forever excluding slavery, and to use "the first, the last, and every occasion " to defeat the bill for the recapture of fugitive slaves. When they came up for consideration, Mr. Wilson, remarking that they were couched in respectful language, said they simply asked their Senator to vote for the recorded principles of Massachusetts, principles which its legislature had asserted and reasserted with votes approaching unanimity. -- Mr. Schouler said he deemed the resolutions wholly unnecessary. The legislature had almost unanimously declared in favor of the principles embodied in them, and their Senators could not fail to understand its views and the wishes of the people. They were further opposed by Charles Theodore Russell of Boston. He was in favor of applying the Wilmot proviso to the Territories, and against Mason's Fugitive Slave Bill; but he deemed it child's play for the legislature to allude in any way to Mr. Webster. Mr. Earle said, if the legislature meant anything by the resolutions it had adopted after full discussion and with such unanimity, it ought to say to Mr. Webster, who had proved false to the oft-repeated sentiments of Massachusetts, that he should listen to, heed, and obey the voice of the people. The vote was then taken, and the resolutions were rejected by a large majority. Mr. Wilson then moved a reconsideration of the vote. He declared that he had offered the resolutions in good faith, and unbiassed, he trusted, by party feelings. Mr. Webster had abandoned the well-known principles of Massachusetts, and her legislature, if sincere, should say to her Senator: "We, the representatives of the people you represent, request you to vote for freedom in the Territories, and against that cruel and infamous measure now pending in the Senate for the recapture of fugitives fleeing from oppression." He warned the majority that, if they defeated those resolutions, if they shrank from the duty then imposed upon them by imperilled liberty, the betrayed people of Massachusetts would hold them to the strictest accountability. "The people of Massachusetts will never sustain the position taken by Mr. Webster, nor will they uphold those who follow his lead or apologize for him." He said that, if the majority of that legislature did not rebuke the efforts making by Mr. Webster to sacrifice the cause of liberty, they would themselves be discarded by an indignant people. "I will," he said, "go out from this hall, and unite with any party or body of men to drive you from power, rebuke Daniel Webster, and place in his seat a Senator true to the principles and sentiments of the Commonwealth." The vote on reconsideration was then taken, and the motion was rejected by the decisive majority of sixty-two. Thus in that crisis the legislature of Massachusetts shrank from meeting the issue, so defiantly and almost contemptuously presented by their Senator. This failure to instruct, or even to request, Mr. Webster, not only to support the undoubted sentiments of the legislature and of the people, but to adhere to his own pledges, so often and emphatically made, exercised, no doubt, an important influence on the subsequent action of the State. It emboldened the Senator and his supporters in their disregard of what was manifestly the popular sentiment, and prepared the way for, and largely aided in procuring, the defeat of the Whig party in the election of that year. CHAPTER XXII. COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850. Southern demands on President Taylor. He stands firm. Mr. Hamlin.Thurlow Weed. - Taylor's letter to Jefferson Davis. - General debate. Speeches of Walker, Seward, Douglas, Badger, Hunter, Hale, Chase, Benton. - The admissions of the latter AT that time of timidity, wavering, and weakness in both Houses of Congress, President Taylor stood firm, collected, and resolutely determined to maintain the authority of the government. Aggrieved, on the one hand, at what he regarded the ungenerous conduct of Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, and other leading Whigs, he was deeply moved, on the other, by demands he deemed to be both unpatriotic and personally offensive. Mr. Hamlin, then a Democratic Senator from Maine, states that, making a business call upon the President, he met Toombs, Stephens, and Clingman just retiring from an interview. On entering the President's room, he found him walking the floor, greatly excited and indignant. He told Mr. Hamlin that the men who had just retired had been making demands concerning the policy of his administration, accompanied with intimations that the South would not submit unless they were acceded to. He accompanied this statement with the declaration that, if there were any such treasonable demonstrations on the part of the Southern leaders and people, he would put it down by the whole power of the government, even if he was obliged to put himself at the head of the army to do it. Thurlow Weed, who called at the executive mansion immediately afterward, found the President still in a state of excitement, and he too received the assurance of his purpose to maintain the Union and the government at all hazards. These statements received significance from a letter written by General Taylor to Jefferson Davis, dated Monterey, August 16, 1847. In this letter he says that his "position, feelings, and associations, independent of pecuniary considerations," were with the South; and that, while he would "respect the feelings of the non-slaveholding States," he would be "equally careful that no encroachments were made on the rights of the citizens of the slaveholding States." After expressing his convictions of the gravity of the slavery issue, and his willingness that it should be the subject of free and full discussion, he said: "But the moment they go beyond that point, when resistance becomes right and proper, let the South act promptly, boldly, and decisively, with arms in their hands if necessary, as the Union in that case will be blown to atoms, or will be no longer worth preserving." That the President, so unequivocally committed to Southern interests and holding views so decided, not to say defiant, should have taken, with such determination, his stand for the Union, as indicated by the statements of Mr. Hamlin and Mr. Weed, affords conclusive evidence that there were, in his view, no Northern aggressions; that the cry of Southern danger and alarm was simulated, or, at least, unfounded; and that the real foes to be resisted were at the South, and not in the North. On the 8th of March, Mr. Walker of Wisconsin, who had yielded the floor to Mr. Webster on the previous day, addressed the Senate. He had been chosen an antislavery, Wilmot-proviso Democrat. But he had become alarmed by the wild clamors that filled the land, and was more than half persuaded to allow what he thought were the claims of patriotism to override those of justice and humanity, should they come in conflict. At any rate, he made a most passionate appeal in behalf of the Union, while his imprecations upon those who would lay sacrilegious hands upon this ark of the nation's safety were violent and fearful. "May he," he said, "who takes the first step toward this horrid consummation suffer through life all the tortures of despair and wretchedness! May sight forsake his eyes and hearing his ears! May leprous scales cling to his wretched carcass, while disease, want and hunger, thirst and cold, feed upon his vitals! And in his last hour may he have no kindly hand to smooth his pillow, no kindred smile to light his exit to the grave! Nay, sir, may he have no pillow on which to die, no grave in which to repose! And in the dread tribunal of eternity may he barely merit the mediatorial interposition of Jesus at the throne of God! For such a wretch the Saviour scarcely died. This, sir, is my curse for the would-be destroyer of this Union and Republic. If he be in this chamber, which I cannot believe, the curse is for him; and, if I could add to my tongue the sting of the scorpion, the fire that is never quenched, the gall that is persistent through eternity, I would make that curse more poignant, more burning, more bitter.” Thus passionately and wildly did this Northern Senator and his friends of compromise talk, as, with threats and imprecations and appeals to patriotism and peace, they darkened and encumbered the path of those who sought, by adherence to principle, rather than by bowing the knee to slavery, their country's safety and sure prosperity. This weakness of the Wisconsin Senator was promptly and sternly rebuked by the legislature of his State. On the 11th of March, Mr. Seward made a masterly speech in favor of California, union, and freedom. Referring to California as "more populous than the least and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty States," he asked and answered, with impressive force, the question: "Shall California be received? Yes; every new State is welcome. But California, that comes from the clime where the west dies away into the rising east, California, which bounds at once an empire and a continent, California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in the robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold, - is doubly welcome." Deducing from the calculations of political arithmetic that in our century there would be two hundred millions of people within the limits of the United States, he said the question arose, Shall that great people be one people, or be broken into conflicting nations? "The world contains no seat of empire so magnificent as this; and yet it seems to me the perpetual unity of our empire hangs on |