442 career. SEWARD ON THE COMPROMISE. cated compromise of some kind throughout their political Of the three statesmen, Calhoun was the most independent and from his stand, the most logical. He cannot truly be described as a compromiser, excepting as he clung to the compromise which the fathers had inserted in the Constitution. Seward realized that the period for compromises was past. His speech on California, the Union and freedom, was the first great utterance of perennial interest in our annals, which pointed the way our civil affairs were going. To the people of the free States his appeal was as persuasive as Calhoun's fourth of March speech was to the people of the South. Tested by time, the idea which Seward advocated proved to be the foundation of a new national policy.. He began by saying that California was already a State, richer and more populous than several of the thirty already in the Union. He answered the objections which had been advanced to its admission, showing that it had followed precedent in assigning its own boundaries, in prescribing electoral qualification, in forming a constitution and in asking for admission without having passed through the probationary territorial period. But there were positive reasons for its admission of which the most important was the movement of population from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The law of migration had made California a State. Premising that the population of the Nation, at the time he spoke, was twenty-two millions,1 he prophesied with wonderful accuracy that in ten years it would be thirty millions,2 in twenty years, thirty-eight millions, in thirty years fifty millions, in forty years sixty-four millions," in fifty years eighty millions and in a 3 1 In 1850, 23, 191, 876. 2 In 1860, 31, 443, 221. 3 In 1870, 38, 555, 371. 4 In 1880, 50, 155, 783. 5 In 1890, 62, 622, 250. SEWARD ON THE COMPROMISE. 443 century two hundred millions. By the middle of the twentieth century the population of the United States would equal one-fourth the population of the globe at the time Seward spoke, and would be double the population of Europe at the time of the discovery of America. The increase of population on the Pacific coast, Seward asserted, would far exceed what it had been on the Atlantic. Immigration was already outstripping all calculations. The silver and gold hidden in the mountains and ravines of California was drawing hither a multitude from all quarters of the earth. The barren hills of New England and New York might delay, but could not prevent the great popular movement. At the time Seward spoke there was scarcely a settlement of whites to be found. between the eastern counties of Iowa and the gold mines of California. But he foresaw the expansion of the vast intervening region and prophesied that it would soon be brought "into social maturity and complete political organization." The great question was whether "this one great people, having a common origin, a common language, common sentiments, interests, sympathies and hopes" should remain "one political State, one Nation, one republic, or be broken into two conflicting and probably hostile nations or republics." The center of political power must rest in the agricultural interests and masses occupying the interior of the continent. If they could not command access to both oceans, they would secure the approaches of the one which afforded the greatest facilities for their commerce. They would not permit the avenues to the markets of the world to be cut off. But the position, power and capabilities of the American people were sufficient to maintain the Union. The United States included regions of varying climates and productions and 444 THE OPPORTUNITY IN 1850. possessed unparalleled natural advantages for transportation and commerce. A democratic federal government preserving local freedom and a common central elective agency for the regulation of common interests, domestic and foreign had been successfully established and organized. The Atlantic States, through their commercial, social and political affinities, were steadily modifying the governments and social institutions of Europe and Africa, and the Pacific States, the States of the future, must necessarily perform the same sublime and beneficent functions in Asia. This was American expansion of the highest order. If the people remained an undivided nation, the civilization which they set up would ultimately bless the whole earth. It was at the threshold of a magnificent opportunity that the American people stood, in 1850. The first aspect of that opportunity was the rise of California, a fully appointed State. Whether she should become a part of the Union would depend on Congress, for she would not abide delay; not that she contemplated independence, but if she was rejected she had ample title to a vast estate and inexhaustible resources, and she could set her own terms for joining the republic. Her isolation was an element of her strength. Armies could not reach her by sea or land, and should our navy succeed in doubling the Cape of Storms, and ultimately catching sight of her great harbor, she had only to open her mines to seduce her enemies and utilize them in her own defense. Oregon undoubtedly allied with her was loosely attached to the Union, and would go with her and the entire Pacific coast would be lost to the United States. "Commerce," said Seward, "is the god of boundaries, and no man now living can tell his ultimate decree." Turning then to Clay's compromise, he pronounced it SEWARD'S REPLY TO CALHOUN. 445 radically wrong and essentially vicious. It involved the surrender of the exercise of judgment and conscience on distinct and separate questions and relinquished the right to reconsider in the future the decisions of the present on questions prematurely anticipated. California was already free soil, why then demand as an equivalent a recognition of the claim to perpetual slavery in the District of Columbia? It must come in as a free State whether slavery should stand or fall in the District of Columbia, in New Mexico or in the slave States. Even if she had come with a pro-slavery constitution, Seward, much as he hated slavery, would vote for her admission; but he explained that he would not vote for her admission as a slave State unless for the purpose of preventing the dismemberment of the Union. Calhoun had said that nothing would satisfy the slave States but a compromise which would convince them they could remain in the Union consistently with their honor and safety. Seward interpreted this as meaning, that though the free States had the larger population and majorities in both Houses of Congress, yet they were to concede to the slave States, which were in the minority in both population and representation, the unequal advantage of an equality. In other words, the government was to be converted from a national democracy into a federal alliance in which the minority should control the majority, which would be nothing less than to return to the original articles of confederation. The free States had long acquiesced in the nearly unbroken ascendency of the slave States, because this result had happened under the Constitution, but they too, had honor and interests to preserve. Political equilibrium, of which Calhoun had said so much, requires, observed Seward, a physical equilibrium as its basis and was valueless without it. A 446 SEWARD'S REPLY TO CALHOUN. physical equilibrium between the free and slave States implied an equality of territory or some near approximate of equality, and this was already lost. But it required more than this, an equality in the number of slaves and freemen, and this relation must be perpetual. The census of 1840 disclosed a slave basis in the country of two and a half millions persons, but a free basis of fourteen and a half millions. The slave population increased twenty-five per cent every decade. But during the same time the free population had increased thirty-eight per cent. The movement of the free population into the territories was every day increasing the difficulty of forcing slavery into the new regions. Moreover, even if slavery could be enforced upon them, the African slave trade was prohibited and the domestic increase was not sufficient to supply reinforcements to the slave States of the future which would be expected to maintain the equilibrium. Calhoun had claimed that the theory of political equilibrium had once been realized but it had been lost in 1787. If restored, said Seward, it would be lost again and more rapidly than before. The increase of the free population was constantly accelerated by new tides from South America, Europe and Asia, while the increase of slaves was retarded by inevitable emancipation. And he quoted Montesquieu's dictum, that nothing reduces a man so low as always to see freemen and not to be free, and that persons in that condition are the natural enemies to the State and dangerous if too numerous. Slavery in America was doomed to extinction. His next objection to the compromise was that it could not prove successful; for instance, one detail proposed changes in the fugitive slave law. Not content with the provision in the Constitution on the subject of fugitive slaves, the slave-holding States had induced legislation |