stepped out on the balcony, and, bowing suavely towards the driver and the quarrelsome load, begged Mr. Webster, Mr. Corwin, Mr. Crittenden, and other by-standers, to be good enough to assist in getting the carry-all and the disagreeable objects that kept so many people awake o’ nights, out of Washington. It was not until September, however, before the tightly crammed vehicle was started, carrying California in a State suit, unattended by a colored servant, New Mexico, and Utah as Territorial passengers, with the liberty of having bronzed property or not along with them, slavers taken out of the District of Columbia never to return, a chest containing ten million dollars for the State with a patch on its eye, and messengers to the Northern free States, informing them that hereafter they were to break up all underground railroads, and to send stray Southern baggage, without its owners, back whence it had departed.
Of course everybody was dissatisfied, except Wendell Phillips, J. Davis, and their following,—the ascendentalists and descendentalists,—who, sincere devotees for equality and inequality, found a novel pleasure in having new stand-points, from which they could each look up to or down upon, a grievance large enough for thought, speech, and action.
The political nurses, of course, thought that the paregoric had forever quieted the crying evils; but wiser people foresaw that these attempts to get remedies for wide-awake consciences and interests out of a Congress-water bottle were just as idle as the conjurer’s trick to obtain whiskey, wine cordial, brandy, and milk-punch from the same nozzle.
In 1851 Louis Kossuth, brought over from Turkey, whither he had escaped from Hungary in a national ship, put forth, immediately on his arrival here, a very short catechism, which comprised a single question and answer.
“Q. What is the chief end of Americans?
“A. To fight Austria evermore.”
After spending most eloquent commentaries upon this brief compendium of duty, in which he braided newly spun English words and upbraided American indifference, he abandoned the missionary field, leaving a large Kossuth party, but a very small body of proselytes to Kossuth’s gospel.
In 1852 we obtained an immensely large piece of japanned ware,—a Japanese treaty bargained for by Commodore Perry,—a piece which seems to grow larger the longer we look at it.
The death of Mr. Clay in June, 1852, and of Mr. Webster in October following, left, like the touch of frost in autumn, a dying glory to the troubled and storm-swept season which had just passed over America.