And Professor Smith, of Williams College, speaking of the anti-slavery feeling in the North in 1850, says:
"This sentiment of the free States regarding slavery was to a large degree the result of an agitation for its abolition which had been active for a score of years (1831-1850) without any positive results."[41]
But no matter what had produced it, the anti-slavery sentiment that pervaded the North in 1850 boded ill to slavery and to the Constitution, and the South was bitterly complaining. Congress met in December, 1849, and was to sit until October, 1850. Lovers of the Union, North and South, watched its proceedings with the deepest anxiety. The South was much excited. The continual torrent of abuse to which it was subjected, the refusal to allow slavery in States to be created from territory in the South-west that was below the parallel of the Missouri Compromise, and the complete nullification of the fugitive slave law, seemed to many to be no longer tolerable, and from sundry sources in that section came threats of secession.
In 1849-50 the South was demanding a division of California, an efficient fugitive slave law, and that the territories of New Mexico and Arizona should be organized with no restrictions as to slavery. Other minor demands were unimportant.
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, Lewis Cass, and other conservative leaders came forward and, after long and heated debates in Congress, the Compromise of 1850 was agreed on. To satisfy the North, California, as a whole, came in as a free State, and the slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia. To satisfy the South, a new and stringent fugitive slave law was agreed on, and the territories of New Mexico and Arizona were organized with no restrictions as to slavery.
In bringing about this compromise, Daniel Webster was, next to Clay, the most conspicuous figure. He was the favorite son of New England and the greatest statesman in all the North. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr. Webster made one of the greatest speeches of his life on the Compromise measures. Rising above the sectional prejudices of the hour, he spoke for the Constitution and the Union. The manner in which he and his reputation were treated by popular historians in the North, for half a century afterward, on account of this speech, is the most pathetic and, at the same time, the most instructive story in the whole history of the anti-slavery crusade.
Mr. Webster was under the ban of Northern public opinion for all this half a century, not because of inconsistency between that speech and his former avowals, an averment often made and never proven, but because he was consistent. He stood squarely upon his record, and the venom of the assaults that were afterward made upon him was just in proportion to the love and veneration which had been his before he offended. His offence was that he would not move with the anti-slavery movement.[42] He did not stand with his section in a sectional dispute.
Henry Clay, old and feeble, had come back into the Senate to render his last service to his country. He was the author of the Compromise. Daniel Webster was everywhere known as the champion of the Union. Henry Clay was known as the "Old Man Eloquent," and he now spoke with all his old-time fire; but Webster's great speech probably had more influence on the result.
Before taking up Mr. Webster's speech his previous attitude toward slavery must be noted. The purpose of the friends of the Union was, of course, to effect a compromise that would, if possible, put an end to sectional strife. Compromise means concession, and a compromise of political differences, made by statesmen, may involve some concession of view previously held by those who advocate as well as by those who accept it. Webster thought his section of the Union should now make concessions.
Fanaticism, however, concedes nothing; it never compromises, although statesmanship does. One of the most notable utterances of Edmund Burke was: