452

SEWARD'S PHILOSOPHY THE "HIGHER LAW."

races. So long as slavery possesses the cotton fields, the sugar fields and the rice fields of the world, so long would commerce and capital yield it toleration and sympathy. Emancipation would be a Democratic revolution.

Seward's political philosophy is easy to understand. He looked to the recently new States of the West, and to the new States yet to be there, for the guarantees of freedom. The fate of the Union would depend upon the people of the West. Even if the Union were destroyed it would rise again in all its just and magnificent proportions. For the vindication of his beliefs, Seward looked not to the verdict of the passing hour, but to the countless generations who should inhabit the new regions of the American continent. Freedom was national. He had sounded the key-note to the new Democracy. One expression in Seward's speech immediately gave it a name and standing among the people; his appeal to the higher law, that corrective in nature, which not understood is supposed to rule the affairs of this world ultimately for justice. The speech is unquestionably the most important spoken on the compromise, and may be studied with care as containing the program of a new political party, whose interpretation of the Constitution was to utilize the doctrine of the higher law.

On the eighteenth of April, Clay's resolutions and some others which had been introduced during the debate were referred to a Select Committee, chosen on the following day. Clay was made its chairman. On the eighth of May he reported seven resolutions, all of which had received the support of a majority of the committee, but no two of which had received an equal support. During the next six weeks the committee's report, by successive amendments, was almost entirely divested of its original features, and it became evident that the "omnibus bill," as it was somewhat

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850.

453

derisively styled, could not pass. The most important speech in its favor was made by Clay on the twenty-second of July, which he was not unwilling should be considered the most important effort of his life.1 His most important utterance was not so much in defense of the bill as of loyalty to the Union. Expressions of disunion sentiments were becoming familiar, nor were they confined to South Carolina. Clay's position no man could misunderstand. "I owe a paramount allegiance to the whole Union, a subordinate one to my own State. When my State is right, when it has cause for resistance, when tyranny and wrong and oppression insufferable arises, I will then share her fortunes, but if she summons me to the battlefield or to support her in any cause which is unjust against the Union, never, never will I engage with her in such a cause." Between the ninth of August and the twentieth of September, the Compromise was agreed to in five separate bills.3

It continued the Missouri line of 36° 30′ and by admitting California as a free State, and abolishing the slave trade but not slavery in the District of Columbia, and in organizing the territories of New Mexico and Utah without mention of slavery, but leaving its existence to be determined by the people when they might form a State constitution, there was a distinct gain for freedom. The Compromise left the greater part of the national do

1 It will be remembered that this speech was one of those consulted by Mr. Lincoln while preparing his first inaugural; see note, p. 396.

2 Johnston's American Orations, II, 134.

3 The Texas bill; the bill for the territory of New Mexico; the bill for the admission of California; the Utah bill, September 9; the fugitive slave law, September 16; the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, September 20, 1850; Statutes at Large, IX, 446-467,

454

SOUTHERN PROTESTS.

main free soil. Immigration would settle the question of slavery in Utah and New Mexico. It was checked at least at the western boundary of Texas, and was limited in the further West by California. The new States which would be formed in the Missouri and Oregon territories would undoubtedly be free soil, and though four States might be carved out of Texas, their creation seemed an event too remote to constitute an important factor. The discussion on slavery which the Compromise had precipitated exhausted the subject and was never again equaled in Congress. Seward's prophetic words might come true, but the slavery question had passed the phase of discussion, and would soon be settled by another arbiter to whose decision, if the South insisted on the supremacy of Calhoun's principles, the long debate would prove merely a prelude. The Southern Senators promptly protested against the admission of California, and if the South supported the protest, there would follow a dissolution of the Union. Amidst the discussion of the Compromise, President Taylor died; the Nation for a time was stirred by the pathos of his dying words, "I have always done my duty." Webster's seventh of March speech broke the strands which had held him to the hearts of the people. They had long looked upon Clay as the embodiment of eloquence, patriotism and a capacity for compromise. Seward was the new man, though he had already served the public twenty years; he was welcomed as the man who had uttered the sentiments and aspirations of a new age. The country was entering into a corrective period, which was to be controlled by the principles of the higher law.

The majority of the American people at this time believed that the Compromise of 1850 forever settled

1 July 9, 1850.

the great questions which had so long harassed the country. Clay was hailed as a second saviour of his country. The thirty years since the outburst of the Missouri controversy had brought him forward three times, and as was believed, at three crises in our national affairs. By his sagacity the Missouri question had been amicably adjusted in 1820; nullification had been checkmated in 1832, and now, greatest of all, the Union had been preserved. But there were many who were wondering whether the new Compromise would last; that was the great question of the future. Before recording the answer, which the event of the next ten years gave, let us examine the interpretation which the courts had been making of the principles of American government, comprising the law of the Constitution.

CHAPTER III.

THE LAW OF THE CONSTITUTION.

The earliest interpretation of the Constitution is found in the debates of the Convention which framed it. These we have already recorded. While it was before the States it was examined and defended in the Federalist, a classic exposition to which all students of American government must turn for a philosophical examination of all the principles underlying it. But for the authoritative judicial exposition of the law of the Constitution, at once clear, creative, logical and complete, we must turn to the decisions of John Marshall. It was a supreme satisfaction to John Adams, in his old age, that the greatest act of his administration had been the appointment of Marshall, on the last day of January, 1801, as Chief-Justice of the United States. Marshall served thirty-four years, during which time, it is not unjust to say, he established the principles of our national system of government and laid the foundations of American constitutional law. There were perhaps more learned lawyers in America than he, when, at the age of forty-five, he was made Chief-Justice, but there is no evidence that any of his illustrious contemporaries equaled him in the faculty of discriminating principles and comprehending moral and legal rights. William Pinkney, unsurpassed in legal acumen, and his fame is yet undimmed, only anticipated the judgment of posterity, when he declared that John Marshall was born to be Chief-Justice of any country in which he lived. Marshall derived great assistance from the arguments of counsel. The practitioners in the Supreme Court in his day included Webster, Pinkney, Ingersoll and William Wirt.