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cede, considering, as I did, and as I then explained to Mr. Webster himself, that if all the measures of compromise, including the bill for admitting California, should have been once referred to the Committee of Thirteen, there were insuperable parliamentary obstacles to taking up any one of these bills separately, unless a motion for the reconsideration of the resolution of reference should be first carried. Immediately after this conversation, Mr. Webster returned to his seat, when I called up my resolution. When it was put upon its passage, Mr. Webster rose and stated his intention to vote for raising the Committee of Thirteen, but took occasion also to mention in the hearing of the Senate the arrangement which he and I had entered into, as already described. This immediately called forth language of indignant surprise from my own senatorial colleague, Mr. Davis, from Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, and Mr. Clemens, of Alabama, who seemed to object very strongly to the private understanding between Mr. Webster and myself of which they had just been apprised, and one or the other of them insinuated something about the movement being an illicit one, and threatened even to vote against the resolution. I went immediately to the seats of these gentlemen, made such an explanation of what had occurred as the circumstances so easily admitted of, and succeeded in so far pacifying them that they all voted for the resolution, which presently passed.

The committee had now to be formed. According to the terms of the resolution which had been adopted, the Senate would have to designate the members of the committee by ballot. Senatorial comity allowing the mover

COMMITTEE OF THIRTEEN.

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of the resolution the privilege of naming the persons to be placed on the committee, I caused a list of the members thereof to be laid on the desks of the senators, and the following gentlemen were unanimously voted into the committee: Henry Clay, of Kentucky, chairman; Dickinson, of New York; Phelps, of Vermont; Bell, of Tennessee; Cass, of Michigan; Webster, of Massachusetts; Berrien, of Georgia; Cooper, of Pennsylvania; Downs, of Louisiana; King, of Alabama; Mangum, of North Carolina; Mason, of Virginia; and Bright, of Indiana. Six of these gentlemen were Democrats, six of them were Whigs; six were Southern men, and six were Northern men; with Henry Clay, the Nestor of the Senate (who was now no longer a party man, and who had emphatically announced himself as knowing "no North and no South, no East and no West"), as chairman. A fairer committee was never formed, and no committee was ever better fitted, as the event soon proved, wisely and successfully to execute the important task allotted to it.

In a few days, Mr. Clay, who had retired to the country in order to draw the bills which the committee was expected to report, returned to the Senate, and announced the following programme for the future action of the Senate, accompanying the same with an elaborate and welldrawn report, which it is judged unnecessary to insert here:

"1st. The admission of any new state or states formed out of Texas to be postponed until they shall hereafter present themselves to be received into the Union, when it will be the duty of Congress fairly and faithfully to execute the compact with Texas by admitting such new

state or states.

"2d. The admission forthwith of California into the Union, with the boundaries which she has proposed.

"3d. The establishment of territorial governments, without the Wilmot Proviso, for New Mexico and Utah, embracing all the territory recently acquired from Mexico not contained in the boundaries of California.

"4th. The combination of these two last measures in the same bill.

"5th. The establishment of the western and northern boundaries of Texas, and the exclusion from her jurisdiction of all New Mexico, with the grant to Texas of a pecuniary equivalent; and the section for that purpose to be incorporated in the bill admitting California and establishing territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico.

"6th. More effectual enactments of law to secure the prompt delivery of persons bound to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof, who escape into another state; and,

"7th. Abstaining from abolishing slavery, but, under a heavy penalty, prohibiting the slave-trade in the District of Columbia."

MR. CLAY AND MR. WEBSTER.

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CHAPTER VIII.

Great Compromise Struggle of 1850.—Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster the principal Figures in the Picture.- Mr. Webster's 7th of March Speech, and its prodigious Effect upon the Public Mind.-Striking Extracts therefrom.—Mr. Calhoun's last Speech in the Senate, in which he urges that the Admission of California shall be made a test Question.-Emphatic Protest by the Author to this Portion of the Speech, and painful Altercation with Mr. Calhoun in Reference to the disputed Point.Proceedings of the Nashville Convention.-Wise and patriotic Conduct of Judge Sharkey, the President thereof, which prevents immediate Mischief.-Judge Sharkey arrives in Washington, and is offered the Department of War, which he declines.-Some Account of Judge Sharkey's Life and Character.

THE contest between the friends of peace and those whose conduct was at this period seriously threatening to disturb the public repose, was now fairly in progress. Of all the champions of the measures of compromise, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster undoubtedly commanded the largest share of the public respect, and their course in Congress awakened in various quarters much both of commendation and of dispraise. Mr. Clay had delivered at an early period of the session several speeches of marked ability and eloquence, which had called forth gratifying responses in all parts of the republic. It was now evident that old party prejudices were fast giving way to sentiments of a very different character all over the land. Public men of considerable prominence and of no mean influence, who had been the steady and unswerving op

ponents of the measures of policy in past times advocated by Mr. Clay even from the commencement of their political career, were every day approaching him kindly, and tendering to him their future friendship and support. Many of the old supporters of Jackson were seen to come into his presence, and were heard to avow their devotion to his person and character. Men from whom he had been estranged for twenty years, and who were known to have pursued him at a former period with charges of a nature even to touch his reputation for integrity, were now heard to disavow these charges formally, and to confess that they had done him the most cruel injustice. It was most evident to all that no living man could do so much as Mr. Clay then had it in his power to do to suppress the commotion which was already furiously raging, and to keep in abeyance, for the present at least, the horrors of intestine conflict. About this time, at Mr. Clay's instance, I addressed numerous letters to eminent and well-known persons residing in various states of the Union, asking their opinion of the compromise measures, their replies to which were uniformly published in the Union newspaper, then edited by the veteran Ritchie, and were supposed by some to have had a more or less beneficial effect in maturing public sentiment, and in removing prejudice from the minds of good citizens.

Mr. Webster's 7th of March speech; delivered, as will be observed, anterior to the raising of the Committee of Thirteen, had produced beneficial effects every where, which effects were displaying themselves throughout the republic. His statement of facts was generally looked upon as unanswerable; his argumentative conclusions

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