THE NICHOLSON LETTER.

75

him, informed me that he had just received a letter from Mr. Nicholson, of Tennessee, then an ardent political friend of his, as I certainly was myself, requesting an expression of his views on the question just noticed, and that he had drawn up a reply thereto, which he desired me to read. I read it accordingly, made several comparatively immaterial suggestions in regard to the phraseology, which he kindly consented to modify, when I urged him to give publication to the correspondence at once, being well satisfied that it was eminently important that all proper efforts should be made to get the general mind of the country matured as soon as possible upon the new and difficult question so ably discussed by General Cass in that now far-famed letter. He agreed, in case his political friends generally in Congress should regard the publication of the letter as desirable, to allow it to be inserted in the newspapers without delay. I then drew up a formal letter to General Cass, asking the publication of this letter, to which I took care to obtain the signatures of a considerable number of congressional members alike from the North and from the South, and it was thereupon given to the public.

Much has been said at different times both in censure and in commendation of this letter-far more, perhaps, than was either needful or advantageous. It has been accused of vagueness and ambiguity by some, while others have not hesitated to speak of it as one of the happiest emanations of its distinguished author. For my own part, though I have never for a moment regretted my instrumentality in procuring its publication in the manner described, and though I do yet most fully con

cur in the leading idea embodied in it, that the question of whether slavery should or should not be allowed to exist in the new territories, might safely and properly have been "left to the people of the confederacy in their respective local governments," yet have I never thought that the Nicholson Letter was in all respects so explicit in its phraseology as it might have been, or equal, in point of mere literary finish, to many of the numerous productions of its venerable author's most gifted pen. General Cass certainly owed his nomination for the presidency by the Democratic party in 1848 in some degree to the sound and conservative doctrine which he had dared thus seasonably to avow, and I shall ever feel proud of having zealously sustained him in the presidential contest which soon ensued, as the bold and uncompromising champion of the principle of non-intervention; | which principle was destined, in the perilous crisis of 1850, to become the distinguishing feature of those measures of compromise and adjustment, the introduction and successful advocacy of which were to gild the evening of Mr. Clay's eventful life with a moral effulgence which can never become extinct.

I should gladly close this chapter with the tender of my humble tribute of applause to the venerable octogenarian statesman who has been thus incidentally alluded to. No one admires him more than I do, and no one has more reason to cherish for him a fervent and solid attach-. ment. But what can my humble pen record, either of his rare moral graces or his eminent public services, which is not already familiarly known to his grateful and admiring countrymen or to the world at large? He

has himself written and spoken so often and so ably, he has so long been the honored incumbent of high official positions, and has so little at any time sought to conceal either his conduct or his motives from the view of men, that I might justly despair, were I even sufficiently presumptuous to hazard the effort, to add in the least degree to the fullness and brightness of that fame which already challenges the admiration alike of his own countrymen and of the dwellers in other lands, and before the mild and simple grandeur of which even the living calumniators of party and of faction have been at last completely humbled into silence.

"Serus in cœlum redeas!"

CHAPTER V.

Proceedings upon the Wilmot Proviso during the Congressional Session of 1847, '8.--Mr. Clayton's Compromise Bill, and its unfortunate Defeat in the House of Representatives.-General Cass as the Presidential Candidate of the Democratic Party in 1848. The Contest between himself and General Taylor by no means of a sectional Character.— Election of the latter.—Appearance of William L. Yancey at the Baltimore Convention of 1848, and the prompt Rejection by that Body of his celebrated Protection Proposition. Unfortunate Division of the Strength of the Democratic Party in 1848 between the Hunkers and Barnburners, resulting in the Nomination of Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams by the Buffalo Convention.—Mr. Gott's Resolution. Declaration, as early as 1843, by Messrs. Adams, Slade, Giddings, and others in Favor of dissolving the Federal Union in the Event of the Annexation of Texas.-Inflammatory Address issued by these Gentlemen.-Author's first acquaintance with John Quincy Adams and his accomplished Lady.-Commendatory Notice of his Life and Character.-Parallel between John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun.

EARLY in the congressional session of 1847, '8, a test vote upon the Wilmot Proviso had been taken in the House of Representatives, and the proposition embodying the essential feature of that Proviso had been laid upon the table on the motion of Mr. Broadhead, a member from Pennsylvania. This result was looked upon by the friends of domestic quiet at the time as a most favorable symptom; but it was supposed by some of the most judicious and experienced personages then in Congress that it would be best to guard against future danger by having the vexed territorial question submitted for adju

dication, at as early a period as practicable, to the Supreme Court of the United States; it being then hoped that the decision of that high tribunal, touching the constitutionality of legislative measures of restriction, would command the respect of the great body of the American people, and render the clamors of sectional demagogues, whether in the North or in the South, thenceforward powerless. Accordingly, Mr. John M. Clayton, of Delaware, after advising extensively with senators and representatives of the greatest weight and influence in their respective states, and whom he knew, at the same time, to be solicitous to do what they could to suppress the spirit of discord then visibly manifesting itself in various quarters, as a member of a select committee of the Senate, to whom had been referred the Oregon Bill, reported said bill back to the Senate, with amendments establishing territorial governments for New Mexico and California in addition, and containing a clause, likewise, providing, in a very careful and precise manner, for the judicial arbitrament referred to in relation to all three of said territories. It is obvious that, could this bill have become a law, sectional agitation would have been, at least for a while, suppressed. Faction had not then grown strong enough, either in the North or in the South, successfully to resist the deliberate adjudication of that grave and solemn tribunal where a Marshall and a Story had so recently sat, and where there were still judges to be found worthy of the better and purer days of the republic.

But the Clayton Compromise Bill, after passing the Senate by a vote of 33 yeas to 22 nays, was fated to receive. its quietus in the House from a hand least expected to in