Moreover, in January, 1848, just before the cession by Mexico, gold was discovered in California at Sutter's Fort (now Sacramento). Then followed a vast and varied immigration, which needed imperatively a settled government.

627. The Whigs, who had won their one success with General Harrison, now repeated their tactics of 1840. They adopted no platform whatever, and nominated Zachary Taylor, of Louisiana, a slaveholder, a straightforward soldier, and the hero of the war. The Democratic platform evaded all mention of slavery and of the burning Territorial question; but the presidential candidate was Lewis Cass of Michigan, the originator of the "popular sovereignty" plan for Territories.

The antislavery Democrats had hoped to nominate Van Buren, who for a time had the strongest vote in the Convention.1 An antislavery faction of New York Democrats ("Barnburners " 2) finally seceded from the Convention and did place Van Buren in nomination. A few weeks later, he was nominated also by a new Free Soil party, which had absorbed the Liberty party. The Free Soilers recognized frankly that Congress could not interfere with slavery in the States, but they insisted on its prohibition in the Territories, with the cry, "Free Speech, Free Labor, Free Soil, and Free Men." They cast 300,000 votes (five times as many as the Liberty party four years before). In most of the country, they drew mainly from the Whigs; but in New York their Barnburner allies drew from Cass just enough to give that State (and the election) to the Whigs.

628. Meantime, California, lacking even a Territorial government, grew to the stature of Statehood. Thousands of "Fortyniners," from all quarters of the globe (but mainly from the 1 Democratic National Conventions use a "two-thirds rule," in making nominations. Other parties nominate by a majority vote.

This name, derived from a campaign story of a Dutchman who burned his barn to get rid of the rats, was applied in derision, because the faction avowed a willingness to ruin its party rather than permit slavery in the Territories. The "regular" faction of the Democratic party in New York became known as Old Hunkers. Party epithets were growing bitter. Cass and other Northern men who showed subserviency to the Slave Power were coming to be derided as "Doughfaces."

§ 629]

FOR CALIFORNIA

523

Northern States of the Union), rushed to the rich gold fields some around Cape Horn by ship; some by way of the Isthmus; but more by wagon train across the Plains, defying Indians and the more terrible Desert, along trails marked chiefly by the bleaching skeletons of their forerunners. And on the Pacific coast itself, whenever rumor reported that some prospector had "struck it rich," distant camps and towns were depopulated to swell the new, roaring settlement, - toward which, over mountain paths, streamed multitudes of reckless men, laden with spade, pickax, and camp utensils. In a few months, the mining region contained some eighty thousand adventurers. To maintain rude order and restrain rampant crime, the better spirits among the settlers adopted regulations and organized Vigilance Committees to enforce them, with power of life and death.

On taking office, President Taylor at once advised New Mexico and California to organize their own State governments and apply for admission to the Union. The Californians acted promptly on this suggestion, and (November, 1849) a convention unanimously adopted a "free State" constitution.

Taylor sought to keep faith, and urged Congress to admit the new State. The Slave Power raged at seeing the richest fruits of the Mexican War slipping from its grasp. The country was aflame. Every Northern legislature but one passed resolutions declaring that Congress ought to shut out slavery from all the new territory. In the South, public meetings and legislatures urged secession if such action were taken. Said Toombs of Georgia in Congress, "I . . . avow . . . in the presence of the living God, that if you seek to drive us from California, . . . I am for disunion."

629. Taylor died suddenly in July, 1850, to be succeeded by Fillmore from the vice presidency. This gave a breathing spell, and Clay came forward once more with a compromise, aiming to reconcile the South to the loss of California by giving them their will on other disputed points. Proud of his title of "the Great Pacificator," he pled for "a union of hearts"

between North and South through mutual concession: otherwise, he feared there was little chance for the survival of the political Union which he loved.

Clay's "Omnibus" measures were supported by the new President, and finally passed in separate bills after a strenuous

eight months' debate. They provided for: (1) the admission of the "free" California; (2) Territorial organization of New Mexico and Utah on "squattersovereignty" principles; (3) prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and (4) a new and more effective Fugitive Slave Law, with all the abominations of the old one. This was the "Compromise of 1850,"the last compromise on slavery. Many Southern Representatives voted No, in order that the measure, if passed at all, should be

passed by Northern votes (Map opposite).

630. It was Webster who really secured the passage of the compromise. He had bitterly opposed the annexation of Texas and the war; but now he urged that the North owed concession to the weaker South. Moreover, slave labor, he was sure, could never be profitable in sterile New Mexico. It was not necessary to exclude it by law of Congress: it was already excluded "by the law of nature." He "would not take pains to reenact the will of God."

To-day the historical student is inclined to say that this "Seventh of March" speech was dictated by deep love for the

Union. Webster never had been optimistic in temperament Now an old man, he did not venture to hope that there could ever be a better Union, while he even began to despair of the existing one unless the South was pacified. At the moment, however, the antislavery men of the North felt that he played a traitor's part to the cause of liberty, in order to secure Southern support for the presidency.

The finest expression of this antislavery wrath is in the stern condemnation of Whittier's Ichabod:

"From those great eyes

The soul has fled.

When faith is lost, when honor dies,

The man is dead.

"Then, pay the reverence of old days

To his dead fame.

Walk backward, with averted gaze,

And hide the shame."

Emerson wrote with barbed insight: "Mr. Webster, perhaps, is only following the laws of his blood and constitution. . . . He is a man who lives by his memory: a man of the past; not a man of faith and hope. All the drops of his blood have eyes that look downward." And says Rhodes (History, I, 153) of Webster's advocacy of the Fugitive Slave Law: "Webster could see an ordinance of nature' and 'the will of God' written on the mountains and plateaus of New Mexico; but he failed to see . . . the will of God implanted in the hearts of freemen."

'Calhoun, dying and despairing, opposed the compromise as insufficient. If the North wished to preserve the Union, he urged, it must concede some kind of political equilibrium between itself and the weaker South. His papers show that he meant to propose an amendment to the Constitution providing for two Presidents, one from each section, with a mutual veto. But like his great rivals, Clay and Webster, he passed from political life with this debate.

More significant than the attitude of these statesmen of a passing day was the appearance of a new group of antislavery men, led by William H. Seward of New York. Like Calhoun Seward opposed the compromise, but for opposite reasons. He insisted that peace between the sections could come only with the extinction of slavery. As to the Territories, said he: "The Constitution devotes the Domain to . . . liberty. . . . But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which devotes it to the same noble purpose." This "Higher-Law" speech was to exert more lasting influence in our history than the speech of "the Seventh of March."