Seymour and Van Buren did not unite easily. From the first they were rivals. As an orator, Seymour was the more persuasive, logical, and candid—Van Buren the more witty, sarcastic, and brilliant. Seymour was conciliatory—Van Buren aggressive. Indeed, they had little in common save their rare mental and social gifts, and that personal magnetism which binds followers with hooks of steel. But they stood now at the head of their respective factions. When Van Buren, therefore, finally consented to join Seymour in a division of the spoils, the two wings of the party quickly coalesced in the fall of 1849 for the election of seven state officers. The Free-soil faction professed to retain its principles; and, by placing several Abolitionists upon the ticket, nine-tenths of that party also joined the combination. But the spirit of the Free-soiler was absent. The man whose genius and whose eloquence had been the most potent factor in discrediting the Hunkers now had no anti-slavery speeches to make and no anti-slavery resolutions to present. John Van Buren's identification with the great movement, which he prophesied would stand so strong and work such wonders, was destined, after he had avenged the insult to his father, to vanish like a breath. Nor did the coalition of Hunkers, Barnburners, and Abolitionists prove so numerous or so solid that it could sweep the State. It did, indeed, carry the Assembly by two majority, and with the help of a portion of the Anti-Renters, who refused to support their own ticket, it elected four minor state officers; but the Whigs held the Senate, and, with majorities ranging from fifteen hundred to five thousand, chose the comptroller, the secretary of state, and the treasurer. Washington Hunt, the popular Whig candidate for comptroller, led the ticket by nearly six thousand, a triumph that was soon to bring him higher honours.
The Whigs, however, were to have their day of trouble. The election of Taylor and Fillmore had fired the Southern heart with zeal to defend slavery. More than eighty members of Congress issued an address, drawn by John C. Calhoun, rebuking the agitation of the slavery question, insisting upon their right to take slaves into the territories, and complaining of the difficulty of recovering fugitives. The Virginia Legislature affirmed that the adoption and attempted enforcement of the Wilmot Proviso would be resisted to the last extremity, and that the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia would be a direct attack upon the institution of the Southern States. These resolutions were indorsed by Democratic conventions, approved at public meetings, and amplified by state legislatures. In Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky the feeling quickly reached fever heat; in the cotton States sentiment boldly favoured "A Southern Confederacy." Sectional interest melted party lines. "The Southern Whigs want the great question settled in such a manner as shall not humble and exasperate the South," said the New York Tribune; "the Southern Democrats want it so settled as to conduce to the extension of the power and influence of slavery."
In the midst of this intense southern feeling Henry Clay, from his place in the United States Senate, introduced the historic resolutions which bear his name, proposing an amicable adjustment of all questions growing out of the subject of slavery. This series of compromises was to admit California, establish territorial governments in the regions acquired from Mexico without provision for or against slavery, pay the debt and fix the western boundary of Texas, declare it inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, deny the right of Congress to obstruct the slave trade between States, and to enact a more stringent fugitive slave law. It was in January, 1850, that Clay opened the memorable debate upon these resolutions, which continued eight months and included Webster's great speech of the 7th of March. When the debate ended in September Zachary Taylor was dead, Millard Fillmore was President, a new Cabinet had been appointed, slavery remained undisturbed in the District of Columbia, Mexico and Utah had become territories open to slave-holders, and a new fugitive slave law bore the approval of the new Chief Executive. During these months the whole country had been absorbed in events at Washington. Private letters, newspapers, public meetings, and state legislatures echoed the speeches of the three distinguished Senators who had long been in the public eye, and who, it was asserted at the time, were closing their life work in saving the Union.
In this discussion, Daniel S. Dickinson favoured compromise; William H. Seward stood firmly for his anti-slavery convictions. The latter spoke on the 11th of March. He opposed the fugitive slave law because "we cannot be true Christians or real freemen if we impose on another a chain that we defy all human power to lay on ourselves;"[115] he declared for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, "and if I shall be asked what I did to embellish the capital of my country, I will point to her freemen and say—these are the monuments of my munificence;" he antagonised the right to take slaves into new territories, affirming that the Constitution devoted the domain to union, to justice, and to liberty. "But there is a higher law than the Constitution," he said, "which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes." In treating of threats of disunion he looked with a prophet's eye fourteen years into the future. That vision revealed border warfare, kindred converted into enemies, onerous taxes, death on the field and in the hospital, and conscription to maintain opposing forces. "It will then appear that the question of dissolving the Union is a complex question; that it embraces the fearful issue whether the Union shall stand and slavery be removed by gradual, voluntary effort, and with compensation, or whether the Union shall be dissolved and civil war ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation. We are now arrived at that stage of our national progress when that crisis can be foreseen—when we must foresee it."[116]
A less fearless and determined nature must have been overwhelmed by the criticism, the censure, and the insulting sneers which this speech provoked. Southern feeling dominated the Senate chamber. Many northern men, sincerely desirous of limiting slavery, preferred giving up the Wilmot Proviso for the sake of peace. Thousands of Whigs regarded dissent from Clay and Webster, their time-honoured leaders, as bold and presumptuous. In reviewing Seward's speech, these people pronounced it pernicious, unpatriotic, and wicked, especially since "the higher law" theory, taken in connection with his criticism of the fugitive slave law, implied that a humane and Christian people could not or would not obey it. But the Auburn statesman resented nothing and retracted nothing. "With the single exception of the argument in poor Freeman's case," he wrote, "it is the only speech I ever made that contains nothing I could afford to strike out or qualify."[117]
But Seward's speech did not influence votes. Clay's compromises passed amidst the wildest outbursts of popular enthusiasm. They appealed to a majority of both the great parties as a final settlement of the slavery question. In New York and other cities throughout the State, flags were hoisted, salutes fired, joy bells rung, illuminations flamed at night, and speakers at mass-meetings congratulated their fellow citizens upon the wisdom of a President and a Congress that had happily averted the great peril of disunion.
These exhibitions of gratitude were engrossing the attention of the people when the Whig state convention met at Utica on the 26th of September, 1850. Immediately, the approval of Seward's course assumed supreme importance. Unusual excitement had attended the selection of delegates. The new administration became aggressive. No secret was made of its purpose to crush Thurlow Weed; and when the convention assembled, Hugh Maxwell, collector of the port of New York, and John Young, sub-treasurer, were there to control it. A test vote for temporary chairman disclosed sixty-eight Radicals and forty-one Conservatives present, but in the interest of harmony Francis Granger became the permanent president.
Granger was a man of honour and a man of intellect, whose qualities of fairness and fitness for public life have already been described. When he entered Harrison's Cabinet in 1841, as postmaster-general, the South classed him as an Abolitionist; when he left Congress in 1843, in the fulness of his intellectual strength, his home at Canandaigua became the centre of an admiring group of Whigs who preferred the lead of Clay and the conservative policy of Webster. He now appeared as an ally of President Fillmore. It was natural, perhaps, that in appointing a committee on resolutions, Granger should give advantage of numbers to his own faction, but the Radicals were amazed at the questionable action of his committee. It delayed its report upon the pretext of not being ready, and then, late in the evening, in the absence of many delegates, presented what purported to be a unanimous expression, in which Seward was left practically without mention. As the delegates listened in profound silence the majority became painfully aware that something was wanting, and, before action upon it could be taken, they forced an adjournment by a vote of fifty-six to fifty-one.
The next morning the Radicals exhibited a desire for less harmony and more justice. By a vote of seventy-three to forty-six the original resolutions were recommitted to an enlarged committee, and after nominating Washington Hunt for governor and George J. Cornwell for lieutenant-governor, substitute resolutions were adopted by a vote of seventy-four to forty-two. One difference between the original and the substitute centred in the organisation of new territories. The majority opposed any surrender or waiver of the exclusion of slavery in any act establishing a regular civil organisation; the minority thought that, since it was impossible to secure the Wilmot Proviso, an insistence upon which would prevent any territorial organisation, it would be better to organise them without it, relying upon nature and the known disposition of the inhabitants to follow the lead of California. This difference, however, could probably have been healed had the Radicals not insisted that "the thanks of the Whig party are especially due to William H. Seward for the signal ability and fidelity with which he sustained those beloved principles of public policy so long cherished by the Whigs of the Empire State, expressed in state and county conventions as well as in the votes and instructions of the state legislature." Upon this resolution the Conservatives demanded a roll call, and when its adoption, by the surprising vote of seventy-five to forty, was announced, the minority, amidst the wildest excitement, left the hall in a body, followed by Francis Granger, whose silver gray hair gave a name to the seceders. Their withdrawal was not a surprise. Like the secession of the Barnburners three years before, loud threats preceded action. Indeed, William A. Duer, the Oswego congressman, admitted travelling from Washington to Syracuse with instructions from Fillmore to bolt the approval of Seward. But the secession seemed to disturb only the Silver-Grays themselves, who now drafted an address to the Whigs of the State and called a new convention to assemble at Utica on October 17.