Congress convened on the first Monday of December, 1849, amid deep feeling, rapidly growing into excitement throughout the country. For three weeks the House was unable to organize by the choice of a speaker. The Democratic candidate was Howell Cobb; the Whig candidate, Robert C. Winthrop. The contest was finally settled on the sixty-third ballot, in accordance with a previous agreement that a plurality should elect. Mr. Cobb received one hundred and two votes; Mr. Winthrop ninety-nine, with twenty votes scattering, principally anti-slavery Whigs and Free-Soilers. It was the first time that such a step had been taken; and its constitutionality was so doubtful, that after the ballot, a resolution declaring Mr. Cobb to be speaker was adopted by general concurrence on a yea and nay vote.
The message of the President was immediately transmitted, and proved a tower of strength to the friends of the Union, and a heavy blow to the secession element, which was rampant in Congress. The President recommended that California, with her constitution, already known to be anti-slavery, be promptly admitted to the Union. He also suggested that New Mexico, already better protected in property, life, liberty, and religion than she had ever been before, be quietly left under her existing military government until she should form a State constitution, and apply for admission,—an event deemed probable in the very near future. That accomplished, as he added in a special message a few days later, the claims of Texas to a portion of New Mexico could be judicially determined, which could not be done while New Mexico remained a territory, organized or unorganized. These recommendations were intensely distasteful to the South, and grew to be correspondingly popular in the North. The sectional feeling rapidly developed and the agitation in Congress communicated itself to the entire country.
THE UNITED STATES SENATE IN 1850.
The character and eminence of the men who took part in the discussion gave it an intense, almost dramatic interest. Mr. Clay in his seventy-third year was again in the Senate by the unanimous vote of the Kentucky Legislature, in the belief that his patriotic influence was needed in the impending crisis. Webster and Cass, natives of the same New-England State, Benton and Calhoun, natives of the Carolinas, all born the same year and now approaching threescore and ten, represented in their own persons almost every phase of the impending contest. Stephen A. Douglas had entered the preceding Congress at the early age of thirty-four, and the ardent young Irish soldier, James Shields, was now his colleague. Jefferson Davis had come from Mississippi with the brilliant record of his achievements in the Mexican war, already ambitious to succeed Mr. Calhoun as the leader of the extreme South, but foiled in his Disunion schemes by his eloquent but erratic colleague, Henry S. Foote. William H. Seward of New York was for the first time taking position under the National Government, at the age of forty-nine, and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, five years younger, was beginning his political career as the colleague of Thomas Corwin. John Bell was still honorably serving Tennessee, and John McPherson Berrien was still honoring Georgia by his service. The amiable and excellent William R. King, who had entered the Senate when Alabama was admitted in 1819, and who was Colonel Benton's senior in service by two years when he resigned in 1844 to accept the French mission, now returned, and remained until he was chosen Vice-President in 1852. Hannibal Hamlin had entered the preceding year, and was still leading a bitter fight on the slavery question against a formidable element in his own party headed at home by Nathan Clifford and represented in the Senate by his colleague, James W. Bradbury. John P. Hale, a New-Hampshire Democrat whom Franklin Pierce had attempted to discipline because as representative in Congress he had opposed the annexation of Texas, had beaten Pierce before the people, defied the Democratic party, and was promoted to the Senate an outspoken Free-Soiler. Willie P. Mangum and George E. Badger, able, graceful, experienced statesmen, represented the steadfast Union sentiment of the "Old North State" Whigs; while Andrew P. Butler, impulsive and generous, learned and able, embodied all the heresies of the South-Carolina Nullifiers. James M. Mason, who seemed to court the hatred of the North, and Robert M. T. Hunter, who had the cordial respect of all sections, spoke for Virginia. Pierre Soulé came from Louisiana, eloquent even in a language he could not pronounce, but better fitted by temperament for the turbulence of a revolutionary assembly in his native land than for the decorous conservatism of the American Senate. Sam Houston was present from Texas, with a history full of adventure and singular fortune, while his colleague, Thomas J. Rusk, was daily increasing a reputation which had already marked him in the judgment of Mr. Webster as first among the younger statesmen of the South. Dodge of Wisconsin and Dodge of Iowa, father and son, represented the Democracy of the remotest outposts in the North-West, and, most striking of all, William M. Gwin and John C. Frémont, men of Southern birth and pro-slavery training, stood at the door of the Senate with the constitution of California in their hands to demand her admission to the Union as a free State. At no time before or since in the history of the Senate has its membership been so illustrious, its weight of character and ability so great. The period marked the meeting and dividing line between two generations of statesmen. The eminent men who had succeeded the leaders of the Revolutionary era were passing away, but the most brilliant of their number were still lingering, unabated in natural force, resplendent in personal fame. Their successors in public responsibility, if not their equals in public regard and confidence, were already upon the stage preparing for, and destined to act in, the bloodiest and most memorable of civil struggles.
Mr. Clay had re-entered the Senate with no cordial feelings toward President Taylor's administration. The events of the preceding year were too fresh, the wounds too deep, to be readily forgotten or quickly healed. But he desired no quarrel and was incapable of showing petty resentment. His mind was intent on harmonizing the serious differences between North and South, and he believed the President's plan would fall short and fail. He desired, in the same spirit of compromise which had been so distinguishing a mark of his statesmanship in former crises, to secure "an amicable arrangement of all questions in controversy between the free and slave States growing out of the subject of slavery." He was so accustomed to lead, that the senators involuntarily waited for him to open the discussion and point the way. He as naturally accepted the responsibility, and in January (1850) began by submitting a series of resolutions reciting the measures which were necessary for the pacification of all strife in the country. These resolutions embraced the admission of California; governments for the territory acquired from Mexico without prohibition or permission of slavery; adjustment of the disputed boundary of Texas and the allowance of ten millions of dollars to that State for the payment of her debt; the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; more effectual provision for the restitution of fugitive slaves.
DEATH OF JOHN C. CALHOUN.
It was on these resolutions that Mr. Calhoun prepared his last formal speech. He attempted to deliver it in the Senate on the 4th of March, but was so weak that he requested Mr. Mason of Virginia to read it for him. On two or three subsequent occasions Mr. Calhoun made brief extempore remarks showing each time a gradual decay of strength. He died on the last day of March. Most touching and appreciative eulogies were delivered by Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, after his death had been announced by his colleague, Judge Butler. Mr. Clay spoke of his "transcendent talents," of his "clear, concise, compact logic," of his "felicity in generalization surpassed by no one." He intimated that he would have been glad to see Mr. Calhoun succeed Mr. Monroe in the Presidency in 1820. Mr. Webster, who always measured his words, spoke of him as "a man of undoubted genius and commanding talent, of unspotted integrity, of unimpeached honor." Mr. Calhoun had been driven by his controversies with Jackson into a position where he was deprived of popular strength in the free States. But this very fact enhanced his power with the South, and increased his hold upon his own people. To the majority of the people in the slave-holding States he was as an inspired leader for more than twenty years. He taught the philosophy and supplied the arguments to the ambitious generation of public men who came after him, and who were prepared, as he was not, to force the issue to the arbitrament of arms. Deplorable as was the end to which his teachings led, he could not have acquired the influence he wielded over millions of men unless he had been gifted with acute intellect, distinguished by moral excellence, and inspired by the sincerest belief in the righteousness of his cause. History will adjudge him to have been single-hearted and honest in his political creed. It will equally adjudge him to have been wrong in his theory of the Federal Government, and dead to the awakened sentiment of Christendom in his views concerning the enslavement of man.
Mr. Calhoun's published works show the extent of his participation in the national councils. They exhibit his zeal, the intensity of his convictions, and at the same time the clearness and strength of his logic. His premises once admitted, it is difficult to resist the force of his conclusions. Mr. Webster assailed his premises, and in their debate of February 16, 1833, defeated him, as another senator remarked, "by the acuteness of his definitions,"—thus meeting Mr. Calhoun on his own ground. The war and its results have in large degree remanded the theories of Mr. Calhoun to the past, but no intelligent student of the institutions of the United States can afford to neglect his elaborate, conscientious, able discussions. Taken with Mr. Webster's works they exhibit the most complete examination, the most comprehensive analysis of the often tortuous and ill-defined line which separates the powers of the National Government from the functions which properly belong to the States. Mr. Calhoun's public service may be regarded as continuous from 1810, when he was elected to Congress at twenty- eight years of age, till his death,—a period of forty years. He took his seat in the House in December, 1811, and was placed by the speaker, Mr. Clay (with whom he was then in accord), on the Committee of Foreign Affairs. He was earnest and influential in supporting the war policy of the Madison administration, and gained so rapidly in public estimation that six years later he was appointed secretary of War by President Monroe. Thenceforward his career was illustrious. As Vice-President, as secretary of State, above all as senator from South Carolina, he gained lasting renown. His life was eminently pure, his career exceptional, his fame established beyond the reach of calumny, beyond the power of detraction.
MR. WEBSTER'S 7TH OF MARCH SPEECH.
Continuing the discussion invited by Mr. Clay's resolutions, Mr. Webster delivered, on the 7th of March, the memorable speech which cost him the loss of so many of his staunch and lifelong friends. The anti-slavery Whigs of the North, who, as the discussion went on, had waited to be vindicated by the commanding argument of Mr. Webster, were dismayed and cast down by his unexpected utterance. Instead of arraigning the propagandists of slavery, he arraigned its opponents. Instead of indicting the Disunionists of the South, the poured out his wrath upon the Abolitionists of the North. He maintained that the North had unduly exaggerated the dangers of slavery extension at this crisis. California was coming in as a free State. Texas, north of 36° 30´, if her boundary should extend so far, had been declared free in the articles of annexation. In the mountainous and sterile character of New Mexico and Utah he found a stronger prohibition of slavery than in any possible ordinance, enactment, or proviso placed on the statute-book by Congress. He would not, therefore, "re-enact the Law of God." He would not force a quarrel with the South when nothing was to be gained. He would not irritate or causelessly wound the feelings of those who were just beginning to realize that they had lost in the issue put at stake in the Mexican war. The speech undoubtedly had great influence in the North, and caused many anti-slavery men to turn back. But on the other hand, it embittered thousands who pressed forward with sturdy principle and with a quickened zeal, not unmixed with resentment and a sense of betrayal. In many parts of the country, and especially in the Middle and Southern States, the speech was received with enthusiastic approval. But in New England, the loss of whose good opinion could not be compensated to Mr. Webster by the applause of a world outside, he never regained his hold upon the popular affection. New friends came to him, but they did not supply the place of the old friends, who for a lifetime had stood by him with unswerving principle and with ever-increasing pride.