is not altogether in unison with that fine admonition of Mr. Burke's, for which he expresses his own warm regard in another one of his public addresses: "We ought to act in political affairs with all the moderation which does not absolutely enervate that vigor, and guard that fervency of spirit without which the best wishes for the public good must evaporate in empty speculation." I will also add here that, ten years subsequent to the delivery of this anti-compromise speech, Mr. Seward, as will be seen hereafter, distinguished himself not a little as a champion of compromise.

It was now evident-that is to say, on the 4th of March, 1849-that a conflict of sectional forces was impending which it would require all the vigilance, wisdom, and energy of the best and ablest men that the whole republic contained to bring to a peaceful termination. Sectionalism, fierce and uncompromising, and which some began to fear might prove irrepressible also, was now rampant alike in the North and in the South, and redoubted chieftains on either side of Mason and Dixon's line were industriously organizing their forces for the coming collision.

General Taylor's administration, then occupying the seats of executive trust in Washington, mainly, as was very soon ascertained, under the influence and counsels of Mr. Seward, whose energy, zeal, and adroitness as a party tactician secured him an ascendency exceedingly difficult to counteract, was not slow in marking out the policy which it would adopt in regard to the vexed territorial question, which, as has been seen, had been purposely left in an unsettled condition, with a view to the

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GENERAL TAYLOR'S NON-ACTION POLICY. attainment of ends which the light of subsequent events has relieved from the obscurity which originally enshrouded them. The highest historic authority which could be cited on this interesting point (Mr. Greeley's American Conflict) contains the following precise and important statement:

"The new administration appears to have promptly resolved on its course. It decided to invite and favor an early organization of both California and New Mexico (including all the vast area recently ceded by Mexico, apart from Texas proper) as incipient states, and to urge their admission as such into the Union at the earliest practicable day. Of course it was understood that, being thus organized, in the absence of both slaveholders and slaves, they would almost necessarily become free states."

It will not be denied that this was the very first occa sion in our annals in which an American president had regarded himself as justified in intermeddling with territories in an incipient and as yet only partially organized condition, for the purpose of swelling the number of sovereign members of the confederacy; and the precedent was justly felt to be one of most alarming import by many who were, upon other and independent grounds, quite willing to see California enter the Union, by reason of the fact that both California and New Mexico were yet under strict military rule, and could be scarcely expected to act in this most important transaction with that independence and exemption from exterior influence which is in all such cases confessedly so eminently desirable. In response to a special congressional call for information on this subject, the frank and outspoken sol

dier then in the executive chair did not hesitate to confess that he had declared to the people of the territories in question his "desire that they should, if prepared to comply with the requisitions of the Constitution of the United States, form a plan of a state Constitution, and submit the same to Congress, with a prayer for admission into the Union as a state." It was not to be expected that the territories thus encouraged to act would long delay the putting on of the wedding garment, preparatory to the political banquet to which they had been thus affectionately invited. General Riley, then military governor of California, under instructions from Washington, issued a proclamation calling into existence a convention of the people of California, the delegates to which body were in a few weeks elected, after which, with all practicable dispatch, they came together, and proceeded to frame their state Constitution. It must be confessed that no one at all acquainted with the general character of the soil in California, and its extraordinary and widely-diffused mineral riches, would at all censure the enterprising and astute population of that fair and teeming region for preferring to exclude slave labor altogether from their newly-organized state, to the introduction of myriads of the dusky sons of Africa, probably under the control and direction of selfish and mercenary owners, into the most attractive and profitable mining districts, thus crowding out the enterprising and hardy pioneers from the old states, and stamping upon their honest industrial labors the inevitable brand of discredit.

It is a curious and not altogether uninstructive fact, that of the two United States senators from the new State

FREMONT AND GWIN, UNITED STATES SENATORS. 101

of California, Messrs. Fremont and Gwin, the latter a L large slaveholder at the time in the State of Mississippi, was the mover and most prominent advocate of the slavery prohibition clause in the new Constitution, while his senatorial colleague, destined to be in a few years the sclected candidate of the Republican party for the presi dency, was by far the most zealous opponent of that clause!!

During the summer of 1849, Colonel Thomas H. Benton, who is well known to have been originally an open opposer of General Taylor's plan providing for the admission of California and New Mexico as states into the Federal Union, was seen to undergo a very sudden and mysterious change, and commenced making in the State of Missouri earnest and laborious speeches in favor of that same policy. Circumstances presently to be narrated had awakened in my mind serious and painful distrust touching the movements and designs of this remarkable personage, whose bitter, but somewhat covert opposition to Mr. Polk's administration (growing mainly out of the fact that this gentleman had declined appointing him lieutenant general during the Mexican war over the head of General Scott, and thus enabling him to monopolize the glory of conquering Mexico), had been for a short time sufficiently manifest to those officially associated with him. His astounding attempt to procure the nullification of the Mexican treaty, and thus deprive the United States of the whole of that valuable domain recently acquired in California and New Mexico, by an extraordinary and unprecedented proceeding, the history of which has not been heretofore sufficiently made known,

induced me to feel exceedingly anxious, and, as I yet think, very naturally, to aid in defeating his new scheme of reviving a decaying popularity by putting himself forward as the most prominent advocate of the measure of Californian admission, which it was already quite easy to perceive could not but prove otherwise than one of great, as well as deserved popularity. With such views I wrote a newspaper article addressed to a very eminent citizen of Virginia (not at all deserving to be inserted here, but to which the accidents of legislative contestation subsequently imparted a sort of semi-documentary stamp), in which I endeavored, in a very free and formal manner, to guard the public mind of the country against Mr. Benton's subtle devices, after which I addressed an earnest letter to Mr. Calhoun, who had been most virulently assailed by Mr. Benton a few weeks before in one of his public speeches in Missouri, communicating to him intelligence of this attack upon him, and urging him to lose no time in vindicating himself against what I could not but recognize as unprovoked and unmerited aspersions. Mr. Calhoun very soon wrote the desired response, a proof-sheet copy of which having been transmitted to me by its author, with a request that I would cause the same to be inserted in the Union newspaper in Washington; it made its appearance accordingly, without delay, in the columns of that journal. In my letter to Mr. Calhoun already referred to, I urged him most warmly to be himself the introducer and chief champion at the coming session of Congress of the measure of admission, giving him my reason for supposing that California would be, and ought to be admitted, and suggesting the impolicy, as well