maintain her obligations to the Constitution, as becomes a sovereign State and an equal member of the Union.

I know, Mr. President, that this doctrine which I entertain of the freedom of the State from coercion by the Federal Government will be by some identified with the doctrine of nullification, to which it bears no resemblance. I deny the power of Massachusetts to nullify the law and remain in the Union. But I concede to her the right, I am willing she should exercise it, if she deliberately desires it, to retire from the Union-to take the "extreme medicine," secession.

When I become convinced that this Union solely depends for its preservation on the measures which politicians may suggest, I shall look upon its days as numbered. The charm which invests and binds it with far greater force than bands of brass and steel must have been dissolved, and the efforts of any puny arm to forge fetters to replace the magic power which had passed away would only provoke contempt if it did not heighten the catastrophe. This Union is held together by historical associations and national pride. It is held together by mutual attachments and common interests. It is held together by social links, from the fact that fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, and boyhood friends, live in extreme ends of the Union. These States are held together by so many unseen, close, and daily increasing points of contact that it can be rent in twain only by something which loosens these rivets, and permits the use of a lever as powerful as that which has been recently introduced. When it depends upon politicians to manufacture bonds to hold the Union together, it is gone-worthless as a rope of sand.

The Southern Rights Association of South Carolina held a convention in Charleston early in May, 1851, and passed resolutions declaring that the State would not submit to injustice from the Federal Government, and would "relieve herself therefrom whether with or without the coöperation of the other Southern States," and calling for a "Secession Congress" of those States, which call was ratified by the State legislature. The other Southern States did not respond, and the Virginia legislature expressly declined to take any steps which should endanger the Union, and strongly warned South Carolina to desist from her course. A reaction took place in South Carolina, and at the October election of

delegates in that State to the Secession Congress the secessionists were completely defeated. During the same month the Union party in Mississippi elected Henry S. Foote governor over the secession candidate, Jefferson Davis, by 999 votes, after a campaign in which the two candidates debated with each other in meetings held throughout the State. Even Davis was only a moderate secessionist, holding that, so long as a State was in the Union, it had no right to nullify a Federal law.

During May and June, 1851, Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, made a speaking tour through New York and Virginia, defending in brilliant oratory the Fugitive Slave law, yet unintentionally giving evidence of its ineffectiveness by his denunciation of its defiance by Massachusetts, Ohio, and other Northern States.

The reply to Webster by Massachusetts and Ohio was the election to the Senate by the former State of Charles Sumner, an even more radical anti-slavery man than his colleague, John Davis, and by the latter State of Benjamin Wade, equally as fervent in the cause as his colleague, Salmon P. Chase.

On August 26 Senator Sumner established his reputation as the leading orator of the anti-slavery cause by a long and brilliant speech in which he declared "Freedom National and Slavery Sectional." It was replied to by George E. Badger [N. C.]. As the argument of the debate is abstract, being only incidentally connected with the Fugitive Act, it has been omitted.

In his annual message at the opening of Congress on December 2, 1851, President Fillmore referred as follows to the Fugitive Slave law:

ENFORCEMENT OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

PRESIDENT FILLMORE

The act of Congress for the return of fugitives from labor is one required and demanded by the express words of the Constitution. This injunction of the Constitution is as peremptory and as binding as any other. Some objections have been urged against the details of the act for the return of fugitives

from labor; but it is worthy of remark that the main opposition is aimed against the Constitution itself, and proceeds from persons and classes of persons, many of whom declare their wish to see that Constitution overturned. They avow their hostility to any law which shall give full and practical effect to this requirement of the Constitution. Fortunately, the number of these persons is comparatively small, and is believed to be daily diminishing, but the issue which they present is one which involves the supremacy and even the existence of the Constitution.

Cases have heretofore arisen in which individuals have denied the binding authority of acts of Congress, and even States have proposed to nullify such acts, upon the ground that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land, and that those acts of Congress were repugnant to that instrument; but nullification is now aimed, not so much against particular laws as being inconsistent with the Constitution as against the Constitution itself; and it is not to be disguised that a spirit exists and has been actively at work to rend asunder this Union, which is our cherished inheritance from our revolutionary fathers.

IV-17

CHAPTER VII

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

President Pierce's Inaugural-His Allusion to the Finality of the Compromise of 1850-The Platte Country-Proposal to Organize It as the Territory of Nebraska-Stephen A. Douglas [Ill.] Introduces Bill in the Senate to This Effect-His Report on the Bill Questions Validity of the Missouri Compromise-Debate on the Bill: in Favor, Douglas, Archibald Dixon [Ky.], George E. Badger [N. C.], Andrew P. Butler [S. C.]; Opposed, Salmon P. Chase [O.], Charles Sumner [Mass.], William H. Seward [N. Y.], Benjamin Wade [O.]-Bill Is PassedDouglas Justifies His Action in Speech at Springfield, Ill.-Abraham Lincoln Replies to Him.

B

Y the overwhelming election of Franklin Pierce to the presidency the Whig party received a mortal blow and its disintegration was only a matter of a few years. During the campaign it had lost its greatest leaders by death, Henry Clay passing away on

GREAT FOOT-RACE FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL PURSE ($100,000 AND PICKINGS) OVER THE UNION COURSE, 1852

From the collection of the New York Historical Society

June 29, 1852, and Daniel Webster on October 23, 1852. There now began the political division on the issue of slavery, which these great compromises had sought to avoid. More than any other it was a woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who made the issue inevitable, her great anti-slavery novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," published in 1851-52, furnishing the chief wedge that was to cleave the country in two during the coming Administrations.

So great was the curiosity to hear what position the new and comparatively unknown President would take on the slavery question, which, though it had been taken out of the campaign, so far as possible, by the Whig and Democratic conventions, still remained the burning issue of the period, that a greater crowd than had ever before assembled in Washington flocked to the capital on March 4, 1853, to hear the inaugural address.

SLAVERY A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT

PRESIDENT PIERCE

To every theory of society or government, whether the offspring of feverish ambition or of morbid enthusiasm, calculated to dissolve the bonds of law and affection which unite us, I shall interpose a ready and stern resistance. I believe that involuntary servitude, as it exists in different States of this confederacy, is recognized by the Constitution. I believe that it stands like any other admitted right, and that the States where it exists are entitled to efficient remedies to enforce the constitutional provisions. I hold that the laws of 1850, commonly called the "compromise measures," are strictly constitutional, and to be unhesitatingly carried into effect. I believe. that the constituted authorities of this Republic are bound to regard the rights of the South in this respect as they would view any other legal and constitutional right, and that the laws to enforce them should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully, and according to the decisions of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs. Such have been and are my convictions, and upon them I shall act. I fervently hope that the question is at rest, and that no sectional, or ambitious, or fanatical excitement may