presently secured an election to the House of Representatives. The political tasks of the future were for other hands than those which for a generation had directed them.

The years immediately following the war with Mexico saw the rise of a number of important diplomatic questions, with some of which slavery was indirectly involved. The spirit of "manifest destiny," inspired by the acquisition of territory on the Pacific, joined to Northern hostility to territorial enhancement of slavery, bred, on the one hand, an arrogant temper in regard to Europe, and, on the other, caution in dealing with the countries to the south.

One result of the revolution of 1848 in Austria was the establishment of a shortlived Hungarian republic. The dispatch of an American agent to extend recognition to the new State, in case it should prove permanent, drew from Austria a protest. Webster, the Secretary of State, in a letter to Hülsemann, the Austrian chargé d'affaires at Washington, upheld with vigor the right of the United States to express its sympathy with struggling people anywhere. "The power of this republic," he wrote, "at the present moment is spread over a region one of the richest and most fertile on the globe, and of an extent in comparison

with which the possessions of the House of Hapsburg are but a patch on the earth's surface.. Nothing will deter either the Government or the people of the United States from exercising, at their own discretion, the rights belonging to them as an independent nation, and of forming and expressing their own opinions, freely and at all times, upon the great political events which may transpire among the civilized nations of the earth." Webster admitted that the letter was "boastful and rough," but justified himself on the ground that it was well to "speak out," and that the letter would appeal to the national pride and make disunion contemptible.

The discovery of gold in California raised the question of the control of the isthmian passages between Panama and Tehuantepec, across which emigrants were traveling in increasing numbers. The best route for a ship canal was believed to be that of the San Juan River and its connecting lakes, in the State of Nicaragua. Great Britain, however, claimed a protectorate over the Mosquito Indians on the east coast of Nicaragua; and although the validity of the claim was denied by the United States, the construction of a canal or other highway without British consent would be likely to provoke war. In 1850 Clayton, Secretary of State, concluded with Sir Henry Lytton

Bulwer, British minister at Washington, a treaty by which the two powers agreed to aid in the construction of an interoceanic canal across the isthmus, to guarantee its neutrality, and to invite other nations to join in the guarantee. At the same time control or dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any other part of Central America was mutually renounced. A dispute over the extent of British authority in the region, culminating in the bombardment of Greytown, at the mouth of the San Juan River, by a United States vessel in 1854, was left for later settlement.

Relations with Cuba were difficult throughout Fillmore's administration. An intimation, in 1848, of a willingness on the part of the United States to purchase the island had drawn from Spain the reply that "sooner than see the island transferred to any power they would prefer seeing it sunk in the ocean." In the South, however, where the desire for annexation was pronounced, a willing ear was given to reports that the Cubans were ready to revolt; and the government found it impossible to prevent filibustering. When in August, 1851, the leading agitator, Lopez, was captured and executed by the Spanish authorities in Cuba, and fifty of his followers, some of them prominent young men from the South, were court-martialed and shot, a mob at

New Orleans retaliated by attacking the Spanish consulate and looting Spanish shops. For this outbreak the United States properly made reparation.1

1 T. C. Smith, Parties and Slavery, 82, 83.

CHAPTER IX

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

It was to the credit of President Pierce that he made no attempt to conceal or qualify his opinions on the question of slavery. "I believe," he declared in his inaugural, "that involuntary servitude, as it exists in different States of this Confederacy, is recognized by the Constitution. I believe that it stands like any other admitted right, and that the States where it exists are entitled to efficient remedies to enforce the constitutional provisions. I hold that the laws of 1850, commonly called the 'compromise measures,' are strictly constitutional and to be unhesitatingly carried into effect. I believe that the constitutional authorities of this Republic are bound to regard the rights of the South in this respect as they would view any other legal and constitutional right, and that the laws to enforce them should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully and ac