Mr. Grow mistakes the relative positions of the slavery question in 1850 and 1861. When Mr. Webster was willing to waive the anti-slavery clause in the bill organizing the Territories of New Mexico and Utah, all the Territories to the North were already protected from slavery by the general prohibition of the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and by the specific prohibition in the Oregon bill of 1848. To Mr. Webster's view, in 1850 Kansas was as secure against the introduction of slavery as it was to Mr. Grow's view in 1861 after Mr. Lincoln was chosen President and the Free State men had won their victory on the soil of the Territory. Mr. Webster saw before him therefore a long procession of States in the North-West whose free institutions were assured by the absolute inhibition of Slavery. He was in the midst of a heated and hated controversy over two Territories adapted only to mining and grazing and never likely to attract slave labor. Neither he nor any other person at that time imagined the possibility of repealing the Missouri Compromise; and therefore when all the territory north of 36° 30' was secured by a prohibition as absolute as Congress could make it, Mr. Webster did not consider it necessary to wage a bitter contest and possibly endanger the Union of the States merely to secure a prohibition of slavery in two Territories where he believed the institution could not go. Precisely in the same way Mr. Grow did not believe that slavery would go into Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada, and he was therefore willing to waive the anti-slavery clause rather than add to the danger of disunion by insisting on it.
The same motives that inspired Mr. Webster in 1850, inspired Mr. Seward, Mr. Wade, and Mr. Grow in 1861. It is seldom that history so exactly repeats itself; but the mention of the coincidence was not designed as a criticism, much less a condemnation of the course of the statesmen who wisely and bravely met their responsibilities in 1861. It was simply a protest against the injustice that had been visited upon Mr. Webster for a like patriotic course in 1850.
If the Southern agitators had resorted to secession and brought on civil war in 1850 the efforts of Mr. Webster to avert the calamity would have received unstinted praise from all classes in the North. If no secession had been attempted and no civil war had followed in 1861, and the South remaining in the Union had resumed the old course for the rights of Slavery in the Territories, Mr. Seward, Mr. Grow and their associates would have received unlimited censure as "dough faces" who had yielded to Southern threats and consented to organize three Territories without an anti-slavery proviso. In each instance the subsequent course of events determined the popularity of unpopularity of similar acts performed with similar motives,—acts altogether honorable, motives altogether patriotic in both cases.
OMISSION.
The names of the distinguished counsel on both sides who appeared before the International Tribunal at Geneva in 1871, were accidentally omitted from the foot-note on page 408, Volume II. Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Chancellor (known as Lord Selborne), was sole counsel for the British cause, but was assisted throughout the hearing by Professor Montague Bernard and by Mr. Cohen. The American counsel, as eminent as could be selected from the American bar, were William M. Evarts, Caleb Cushing, and Morrison R. Waite.
NOTE.—An error of statement occurs on page 72, Volume I., in regard to the action of the Whig caucus for Speaker in December, 1847. Mr. Winthrop was chosen after Mr. Vinton had declined, and was warmly supported by Mr. Vinton. The error came from an incorrect account of the caucus in a newspaper of that time.
The translation of the cipher telegrams sent and received by Democratic committees in the Presidential campaign of 1876, is credited on page 500, Volume II., to Mr. William M. Grosvenor. Equal credit should be given to Mr. J. R. G. Hassard. Both gentlemen belonged to the editorial staff of the New-York Tribune. Their joint work cannot be too highly praised.
ERRATA.
[Omitted: all from Vol. I]