American Eloquence, Volume II | Page 5

so strong and so determined that compromise of any kind was far more difficult than in 1820; and it was not easy to reconcile or compromise the southern demand that slavery should be permitted, and the northern demand that slavery should be forbidden, to enter the new territories.
In the meantime, the Presidential election of 1848 had come and gone. It had been marked by the appearance of a new party, the Free Soilers, an event which was at first extremely embarrassing to the managers of both the Democratic and Whig parties. On the one hand, the northern and southern sections of the Whig party had always been very loosely joined together, and the slender tie was endangered by the least admission of the slavery issue. On the other hand, while the Democratic national organization had always been more perfect, its northern section had always been much more inclined to active anti-slavery work than the northern Whigs. Its organ, the Democratic Review, habitually spoke of the slaves as "our black brethren"; and a long catalogue could be made of leaders like Chase, Hale, Wilmot, Bryant, and Leggett, whose democracy was broad enough to include the negro. To both parties, therefore, the situation was extremely hazardous. The Whigs had less to fear, but were able to resist less pressure. The Democrats were more united, but were called upon to meet a greater danger. In the end, the Whigs did nothing; their two sections drew further apart; and the Presidential election of 1852 only made it evident that the national Whig party was no longer in existence. The Democratic managers evolved, as a solution of their problem, the new doctrine of "popular sovereignty," which Calhoun re-baptized "squatter sovereignty." They asserted as the true Democratic doctrine, that the question of slavery or freedom was to be left for decision of the people of the territory itself. To the mass of northern Democrats, this doctrine was taking enough to cover over the essential nature of the struggle; the more democratic leaders of the northern Democracy were driven off into the Free-Soil party; and Douglas, the champion of "popular sovereignty," became the leading Democrat of the North.
Clay had re-entered the Senate in 1849, for the purpose of compromising the sectional difficulties as he had compromised those of 1820 and of 1833. His speech, as given, will show something of his motives; his success resulted in the "compromise of 1850." By its terms, California was admitted as a free State; the slave trade, but not slavery, was prohibited in the District of Columbia; a more stringent fugitive slave law was enacted; Texas was paid $10,000,000 for certain claims to the Territory of New Mexico; and the Territories of Utah and New Mexico, covering the Mexican acquisition outside of California, were organized without mentioning slavery. The last-named feature was carefully designed to please all important factions. It could be represented to the Webster Whigs that slavery was excluded from the Territories named by the operation of natural laws; to the Clay Whigs that slavery had already been excluded by Mexican law which survived the cession; to the northern Democrats, that the compromise was a formal endorsement of the great principle of popular sovereignty; and to the southern Democrats that it was a repudiation of the Wilmot proviso. In the end, the essence of the success went to the last-named party, for the legislatures of the two territories established slavery, and no bill to veto their action could pass both Houses of Congress until after 1861.
The Supreme Court had already decided that Congress had exclusive power to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, though the fugitive slave law of 1793 had given a concurrent authority of execution to State officers. The law of 1850, carrying the Supreme Court's decision further, gave the execution of the law to United States officers, and refused the accused a hearing. Its execution at the North was therefore the occasion of a profound excitement and horror. Cases of inhuman cruelty, and of false accusation to which no defence was permitted, were multiplied until a practical nullification of the law, in the form of "personal liberty laws," securing a hearing for the accused before State magistrates, was forced by public opinion upon the legislature of the exposed northern States. Before the excitement had come to a head, the Whig convention of 1852 met and endorsed the compromise of 1850 "in all its parts." Overwhelmed in the election which followed, the Whig party was popularly said to have "died of an attempt to swallow the fugitive-slave law"; it would have been more correct to have said that the southern section of the party had deserted in a body and gone over to the Democratic party. National politics were thus left in an entirely anomalous