diet, education, and the institutions of government are all most favorable to development and power.

Why, then, should we regulate our policy by the views of European cabinets, or play the part of subordinates when we should be dictators in the affairs of this hemisphere? "One battle for liberty," says Bulwer, "quickens and exalts that proud and emulous spirit, from which are called forth the civilization and the arts that liberty should produce, more rapidly than centuries of repose."

We are in the restless period of youth; the law of the age is progress; let our flag be given to the winds, and our principles go with it wherever it is unfurled. Conquest is essential to our internal repose. War sometimes becomes the best security for peace.

CHAPTER XVI.

Effects of the Compromise in Mississippi.—Reorganization of Partics.-Union Party.-Southern Rights Party.-Foote nominated for Governor.-Influence and Patronage of the Federal Government.-Mr. Webster.-Letter from Judge Clayton.-Quitman's Position.-South Carolina Correspondence. — Renominated for Governor.-Contrast between Quitman and Foote.-Their Canvass. -Rupture.-Success of the Unionists.--Declension of Quitman.

1851. THE prosecution against General Quitman, as we have seen, was abandoned, but the government had, in part, accomplished its purpose. It had hauled down the flag of Mississippi from her capitol, and forced her chief magistrate to resign, though it had not the power to arrest a fugitive slave in the city of Boston. It could not enforce the provisions of the Compromise, and negro thieves and assassins defied its authority. But it could exclude the citizens of Charleston from Fort Moultrie, consecrated by the blood of their ancestors, because their expressions on the fourth of July exhibited more devotion to Carolina than reverence for the national government.

When Quitman returned home he found the compromise measures, recently enacted by Congress, the great issue of the day. On the 30th of November, 1850, an act had been passed by the Legislature, apparently with the approbation of a great majority of the community, providing for a convention of the people of Mississippi, to consider the state of our federal relations and the remedies to be applied. It solemnly recited the evils complained of as destructive of our domestic institu

as

tions and of the sovereignty of the states, and provided for the election of delegates on the 1st Monday of September, 1851, and the meeting of the convention on the 2d Monday of November following. Great excitement now pervaded the state, over-riding the old political organizations. The friends of the Compromise took the name of the Union party, and styled its opponents disunionists. They, on the other hand, assumed the title of the Southern party, and referred to their adversaries submissionists." The Southern party embraced a large proportion of the old Democratic party, with a small class of what were termed state-rights Whigs. The Union party consisted of the great body of the oldline Whigs, and a strong detachment of Democrats, who regarded nullification, secession, or any other mode of stato resistance as more to bo dreaded than the evils complained of. The great names from both parties that had sanctioned the Compromise blinded many to the aggressions it covered, and thousands who disapproved it as an original measure felt it to be a duty to acquiesce in it as a law of the land, rather hoping than expecting from it the restoration of tranquillity and the arrest of encroachment. This party, thus composed of many who approved the Compromise as a matter of policy, and of others who merely acquiesced in it as preferable to a severance of the Union, nominated General H. Stuart Foote, then a senator in Congress, as their candidate for governor. From an attitude of opposition to it in its details, he had suddenly become prominent in his support of the measure, and avowed himself its champion on its merits. Up to this nomination the Southern party had not expected a serious contest. The people of the state, in their primary and mass meetings, and in political conventions, irrespectivo of party, had so often denounced the very measures recognized by the adjust

mont; successive Legislatures had spoken in tho samo tone with so much emphasis, it was presumed a similar sentiment would be expressed by the people. It soon became evident, however, that a serious contest was on hand. Mr. Fillmore-President by the death of General Taylor-expected to obtain a new lease of power by the popularity of a measure which had converted many of his lifetime opponents into his most confidential friends, and he exerted, of course, the whole power and patronage of the federal government to sustain it. Mr. Webster, who, with his rival and fellow-commoner, the illustrious Clay, had been twice disappointed by the nominations of Harrison and Taylor, regarded the Compromise as his last card for the presidency, and forgot his habitual propriety in the blindness of his zeal. In a speech delivered at Annapolis in the latter part of March he expressed "the most devoted attachment to the Union, and proclaimed the obligation to support it to be as binding as the obligation to support the Constitution. He regarded the recent compromise measures as the salvation of the country, and denounced the opponents of those measures as disunionists."

The author of this biography, then editor of the Louisiana Courier, on the 30th of March, referred to this speech as follows:

"This, then, is the decree of Mr. Webster, the American secretary of state, and, after Mr. Clay, the most powerful man in the Whig party. In a speech deliberately made, every word and sentiment of which he knew would carry with it the authority of his illustrious name, he singles out a numerous class of his fellow-citizens, embracing men of the most eminent public and private worth, and proscribes them as 'disunionists.' Such language from ordinary men may be passed by with contempt; but when it eminates from Daniel Webster, the effect amounts to proscription. It has the force of a decree. It makes

public opinion. In many quarters it will expose an opponent of the Compromise to insult and oppression.

"Now what is the Compromise? Is it part or parcel of the Constitution? Is it a pact or compact, intangible and inviolable, for any given number of years? Is it any thing more than an ordinary law, as to whose merits, or expediency, or constitutionality, men may honestly differ, and which may be modified or repealed, relaxed or made more stringent, by any subsequent Congress? It is not. How, then, can it be made a test of union or disunion? Can it imply a want of patriotism to oppose a statute of experimental policy, the effect of which no one was sure of at the moment of its passage, and whose merits are now, as much as ever, a matter of controversy? Human judgments are fallible. Is there equity or reason in assuming that a body of legislators may construct a remedy for an existing evil, and then consider as criminals all who deny the efficacy of that remedy? The idea is monstrous. As well might they tear down the altars of the Lord God Almighty, and compel Christians to worship some idol erected by their own hands.

"It can not be pretended that the statutes of compromiso have the samo sanctity and authority as the Constitution of the United States. And yet that Constitution, the sacred charter of our liberties, has been, from time to time, amended, and alterations are often proposed, without subjecting any one to suspicion or censure. Can, then, a majority of Congress throw such sanctity around a law as to subject those who dispute its efficacy to the charge of treason? Unquestionably not. Yet this is the assumption of Mr. Webster. It is the very essence of tyranny, it is the incarnation of the administration of the elder Adams, when a difference of opinion was construed as criminal, and citizens rotted in dungeons for daring to question the enactments of Congress.

"This very assumption hurled that dynasty from power. The election of Mr. Jefferson, though conducted according to the forms of the Constitution, had the force and effect of a revolution. From that moment dates the cra of free discussion, and this is the first bold attempt that has been since made to stifle it by terrorism and