at one station, then secretly passed on to the next, until they reached their destination in Canada. These stations were located a day's journey apart, and the chain of stations became known as the Underground Railroad. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, these underground railroads multiplied in number, and through their agency thousands of slaves escaped to Canada, where they became freemen. "The Abolitionists believed that they were justified in opposing and thwarting the Fugitive Slave Law for the sake of an oppressed humanity." Fillmore 452. Minor Events. In this administration began the agitation which in later years led to cheaper postage. The department of the interior was created to. look after public lands, take care of the Indians, and to have charge of the patent office. John M. Clayton, while secretary of state, negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer treaty with Sir Henry Bulwer of England. The treaty related to the establishment of a ship canal across Nicaragua, of which neither country was to have exclusive control. Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, made a tour of the United States and by his eloquence stirred the whole people, who generously responded with supplies and money to aid his countrymen in their struggle against the oppression of Austria and Russia. The government, however, in pursuance of its policy to keep free from foreign entanglements extended no aid. General Narcisso Lopez, an irresponsible adventurer, undertook a filibustering expedition against Cuba with a view to inducing the inhabitants of that island to revolt against Spain and to seek annexation to the United States. The expedition ended in disaster. The ringleader and his followers were captured by the Spaniards and taken to Havana, where Lopez and several of his men were executed. Other filibustering expeditions met a similar fate. Though President Fillmore by proclamation withdrew the protection of the United States from all citizens engaging in such expeditions, and in every way sought to prevent them, still Europe became excited lest the United States would seek to annex Cuba. With a view to preventing such an event, Great Britain and France proposed a treaty with the United States, in which each nation was to declare its intention never to possess Cuba. The proposal was declined by Edward Everett, secretary of state, in an able state paper, in which he called the attention of the European powers to the fact that America proposed to stand by the policy outlined in the Monroe Doctrine. 453. Death of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun.-Amidst the stirring political excitements of this administration three American statesmen, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, had passed from the scene of political action in which they had been the central figures for a period of nearly forty years. Calhoun died in the city of Washington, March 31, 1850, before the compromise measures had passed congress. Clay and Webster lived two years longer and each pronounced eulogies upon the departed southerner. Calhoun, though professing to stand for the constitution. and the maintenance of the union, still, in 1832, preached the doctrine of "nullification," and from that time until the day of his death sowed the seeds of secession and disunion. When he died, it is said that he requested that his only epitaph be the one word "nullification." Clay was a southerner by birth, and, like Calhoun, a slaveholder. And yet he would have been glad to see the emancipation of slavery accomplished. He regretted its further extension, and believed that it should be confined to the states where it already existed. He at all times ardently supported the union, and whenever he felt that the ship of state was in peril, came forth with a compromise measure to calm the storm. Clay died at his post of duty in the nation's capital, June 29, 1852. Webster, like Clay, pleaded for national unity, and begged that there might be emblazoned on the national ensign, the "sentiment, dear to every American heart-Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" as stated so eloquently in his reply to Robert Y. Hayne in 1830. Webster died at Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 24, 1852. Both Clay and Webster were ambitious for advancementboth had been candidates for the presidency and were bitterly disappointed when they failed to reach the goal. No greater oratory has ever been heard in the halls of congress than that which fell from the lips of these three men. So inseparably were their names linked together from about the period of 1812 until the compromise of 1850, that they have been referred to in history as the American triumvirate. Calhoun was unyielding and uncompromising in his defence of the doctrine of "nullification," and in his support of slavery. Clay and Webster, more conciliatory, often yielded to compromise, almost to the point of sacrificing the very principles for which they most contended, as is evidenced in Clay's advocacy of a fugitive slave law in which he did not believe, and in Webster's Seventh of March oration. Calhoun excelled in logic, Clay in flowery eloquence, while Webster was the greatest orator. When they died, a new generation of men was already occupying the stage of action. William H. Seward of New York had sounded the keynote of the future contest in his "higher law" doctrine. Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln had impressed themselves upon the great west. Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens were prominent in the south, while Charles Sumner and Edward Everett were recognized as New England's favorite sons. 454. The Seventh Census-1850.-The seventh census showed a population of 23,191,876, a gain of thirty-six per cent over the census of 1840. Of this population 3,204,313 were slaves, of which two hundred thirty-six were in the state of New Jersey, twenty-six in the territory of Utah, and the remainder south of Mason and Dixon's line. It will thus be seen that the decade from 1840 to 1850 was one of great growth in population. During this period one and three-quarter millions of people came to the shores of America from foreign countries. Fully a million of these were from the British Isles, mostly from Ireland-driven thence on account of the famine. The remainder represented every country of Europe. 455. The Presidential Election of 1852.-As the time for . the presidential election arrived, the excitement over the compromise of 1850 and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law had somewhat abated. Both the Whigs and the Democrats, true to the congressional compromise, endorsed the Omnibus Bill. The Democratic party declared against further agitation of the slavery question; and the Whigs, for national unity and obedience to the constitution. The Freesoil party declared that, "Slavery is a sin against God, and a crime against man, which no human enactment nor usage can make right. Slavery is sectional and freedom is national." It further declared the Fugitive Slave Law to be repugnant to the constitution, denied that it was binding upon the American people, and demanded its "immediate and total repeal." The Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott of New Jersey; the Democrats, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire; and the Free-soil party, John P. Hale, from the same state. Pierce was elected with William R. King of Alabama, receiving two hundred fifty-four of the electoral votes to forty-two cast for Scott, and none for Hale. In the defeat of Scott the Whig party received its death blow. PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION DEMOCRATIC: 1853-1857 456. Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president of the United States, was the son of a New Hampshire farmer who had distinguished himself as an officer of the Revolution. He graduated from Bowdoin College at Brunswick, Maine, where he had as collegemates the poet Longfellow and the novelist Hawthorne. He was soon thereafter admitted to the bar and later served in the legislature of his native state. In 1833 he was elected to represent New Hampshire in the national congress, in which body he continued to serve until 1842-during the last three years as United States senator. He enlisted as a volunteer in the Mexican war, and was soon advanced to a brigadier-generalship. When nominated to the presidency he was looked upon as an obscure man, though devoted to the principles of his party. His administration was disturbed throughout its entire term by the renewal of the slavery struggle. Though a northern man, he joined with the southern leaders in carrying out their wishes on the slavery question. He lost favor at the north, and was discarded by his own party in its national convention of 1856, lest he might lead it to defeat. On his retirement from office in 1857 he spent several years abroad, and on his return erected the Pierce Mansion in Concord, New Hampshire, where he continued to reside until the day of his death. Pierce opposed the issue of civil war in 1860, but when the die was once cast he sided with the union. He was born at Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in 1804, and died at Concord, that state, in 1869. 457. The Gadsden Purchase-1853.-Owing to the imperfect maps used at the time of the making of the treaty at the close of the Mexican War, a second boundary dispute had arisen between the United States and Mexico, which President Pierce was called upon to settle early in his administration. Both countries claimed the Mesilla valley, which includes that portion of the present territory of Arizona lying south of the Gila River, and a section of New Mexico. This valley was reported to be very rich, and the United States desired it as affording the most available route for a railroad to the Pacific, which was proposed at that time. Captain James Gadsden, the minister to Mexico, after whom the purchase was named, negotiated the treaty, by which the United States paid Mexico $10,000,000 for her claim to the valley. The United States also secured the free navigation |