the Clay compromise, to agree upon a united policy for the South, reassembled with delegates from Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It declared that all the evils anticipated by the South had been realized by the Clay compromise, and therefore it recommended that the South abstain from social, commercial, and political intercourse with the North until Southern rights were rendered safe. It proclaimed that if such a time should not come, and the North, by its violations of the Constitution, endangered the peace and existence of the South, it would have "the right, as States, there being no common arbiter, to secede from the Federal Union."

Governor J. A. Quitman [Miss.] convoked the State legislature for November 18 with the intention of laying before it a proposition for secession. On this date, however, Senator Henry S. Foote [Miss.] addressed a mass meeting at Jackson, the State capital, upholding the compromise so persuasively that the meeting decided in favor of the measure. This was the beginning of a Union party in the State which held in check the "Fire-Eaters," as the secessionists were called. Similar Union parties arose in the other Southern States, and came together in a constitutional Union party, which over-weighed the secessionist sentiment.

In the North efforts were also making to form a Union party on the basis of the compromise. Such an organization in New York came within 258 votes of electing Horatio Seymour governor, Washington Hunt, the Whig candidate, being elected.

On January 22, 1851, Alexander H. Stephens, a Representative from Georgia, drew up a manifesto on the slavery question which was signed by 44 Senators and Representatives, Senator Henry Clay [Ky.] at the head. It inveighed against the renewal at any time of the sectional quarrel, declaring that the subscribers would not support any candidate for a Federal office who did not condemn further agitation of the slavery question.

On February 15, 1851, at Boston a fugitive slave by name Shadrach, while the question of his extradition under the Fugitive Slave law was under discussion be

fore a commissioner, was forcibly taken from custody by a crowd of negroes, set at liberty, and smuggled safely into Canada. Two days later Henry Clay [Ky.] introduced a resolution in the Senate asking the President for information as to what measures he had taken to enforce the act, and whether, in his opinion, additional legislation on the subject was necessary. On February

18 President Fillmore, by the advice of Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, issued a proclamation commanding all military and civil officers, and entreating all citizens, to aid in executing the law. This was followed (February 21) by a special message to Congress in which he pledged himself to use all his constitutional powers to this end. An extended discussion of the message followed in the Senate, participated in by the following supporters of the President: Henry Clay [Ky.], Stephen A. Douglas (Ill.], and John M. Berrien [Ga.]; leading speakers in opposition were John P. Hale [N. H.], Salmon P. Chase [0.], R. Barnwell Rhett

[S. C.], and Jefferson Davis [Miss.]. As a striking illustration of the fact that politics like misery sometimes makes strange bedfellows it will be noted that the two extremes of American statesmen on the slavery question, Southern "Fire-Eaters" such as Rhett and Davis, and Northern anti-slavery men, such as Hale and Chase, here joined in denouncing the Fugitive Slave law as unconstitutional.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS-"FIRE-EATERS" AND ABOLITIONISTS DEBATE ON THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, SENATE, FEBRUARY 21-24, 1851

SENATOR HALE.-I am glad that the document which has been read has been sent to us for one reason, and but one. It satisfies me most conclusively that the President thinks and feels pretty sure that he is rendering his Administration ridiculous, and that his proclamation has done it; and he sent us a long labored essay, as I understand it, to vindicate the propriety of what cannot be vindicated. The idea of the President of the United States issuing a formal proclamation, calling upon all the naval and military force of the Government to hold themselves in readiness, and all officers and good citizens everywhere, to defend this great Republic against a handful of negroes in Boston! I do not know how it strikes others, but to my mind it is ridiculous in the extreme; and I am determined, as far as I am concerned, I will have no part nor lot in it.

SENATOR CLAY.-What is the aim of the Senator? To consider this mob as an isolated affair, as an affair of the two or three hundred negroes only. Is there any other man in the Senate who believes that it originated among these negroes? Do we not all know the ramified means which are employed by the Abolitionists openly, by word and by print everywhere, to stimulate these negroes to acts of violence, recommending them to arm themselves and to slay, murder, and kill anybody in pursuit of them in order to recover and call them back to the duty and service from which they had escaped?

The proclamation is not aimed solely at the miserable negroes, who are without the knowledge and without a perfect consciousness of what became them or what was their duty. They are urged on and stimulated by speeches, some of which are made on this floor and in the House of Representatives, and by prints which are scattered broadcast throughout the whole country.

The proclamation, then, has higher and greater aims. It aims at the maintenance of the law; it aims at putting down all those who would put down the law and the Constitution, be they black or white.

SENATOR CHASE.-Sir, it seems to me somewhat remarkable that the very Senator [Mr. Clay] who has most vehemently denounced agitation and agitators should himself have furnished the occasion of almost every debate on slavery topics during this session. And yet peace and quiet and harmony were promised us. I have never believed, I do not believe, and, unless the future developments shall convince me of error, I never shall believe that the measures to which the sanction of this body was given at the last session will be productive of quiet and harmony. We have been told here to-day that those measures in the series which the South approved were passed by Southern votes, and those which received the approbation of the North by Northern votes. Well, sir, are quiet and harmony to be expected when the parties who are to form the compromise are neither of them satisfied with its terms? If each party rejects that portion of the compromise which offends its particular section, how can it be considered as a settlement? Sir, it is no settlement. It has none of the attributes of a settlement. This very fugitive slave law, to which the attention of the Senate has now been called, will, of itself, produce more agitation than any other which has ever been adopted by Congress.

Mr. President, here in my place I opposed the passage of this fugitive act. I opposed it for the reason, among others, because I believed that the obligations which the Constitution imposed in respect to fugitives from labor devolved upon the States. I agree with the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason] that the clause relating to fugitives from service creates "a federal obligation." And I concur with the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] in the opinion that it constitutes "a compact between the States." It is a compact to be executed by the States, just as the other compacts in the same article are to be executed in good faith, but each State is to judge of the extent of its own obligations, and of the particular legislation required to fulfill them. Now, sir, let us refer to the state of things some twelve years ago. From the ocean almost to the base of the Rocky Mountains stretched an unbroken chain of State legislation providing for the reclamation of escaping servants. This being the state of affairs, the Supreme Court, in the case of Prigg against Pennsylvania, decided that the States have no constitutional power to legislate upon the subject. That de

cision swept the whole of this legislation from the statute books. Then, of course, it became impossible to reclaim fugitives. The decision of the Supreme Court made it impossible, and I believed then, and I believe now, that that decision practically expunged the fugitive servant clause from the Constitution.

And now, sir, what is the particular transaction to which our attention is invoked by the Senator from Kentucky? What is this nodus Deo vindice dignus? Why, sir, in Massachusetts, in the city of Boston, it so happened the other day that an individual claimed as a fugitive slave was arrested and taken before a commissioner. In the progress of the investigation fifteen or twenty colored people lingered about the door. These persons, it seems, formed and executed, upon the spot and at the moment, the purpose of rescuing the prisoner. They burst open the door, took the man out, and set him at liberty. There was no organized mob-no general concert of action-the whole affair was confined to the few immediate participants.

Well, sir, what is there strange or unusual in a rescue by force from legal custody? Such infractions of law occur not unfrequently, and in every State. Does it not seem ridiculous to fulminate proclamations and legislation against a few negroes upon an occasion like this? Surely something more than this must be designed. The proclamation and the contemplated legislation must be intended to operate upon the public sentiment of the country, to subjugate the people to the execution of the law. There can be no practical legislation except in two directions. We may provide for the erection of jails; to which no person could object, since Massachusetts has denied, as she had an undoubted right to deny, the use of her prisons for the confinement of persons arrested under national laws. Were there not existing provisions in the statute books authorizing marshals, in such circumstances, to hire temporary places of confinement? We may go further and authorize the President to call out the militia. But I ask Senators to consider where that will end. Call out the militia! March troops to Boston! You cannot prevent the occurrence of such cases as that at Boston by all the military force in the world. You cannot suppress the spirit of the people, unless you are prepared to establish, and the people are ready to receive, a military despotism. Governor Gage tried the experiment of a proclamation upon the people of Boston some seventy-five years ago. It resulted, not in the suppression of public sentiment, but in a revolution. The proclamation of President Fillmore will not, indeed, lead to any out"Knot worthy of a Divine adjudication."