enterprise of the age; and we have no other, if the only other one is the sacrifice of the mining interest of iron in the old Atlantic states. Sir, I have voted land by the square league across the continent, and twenty millions of dollars out of the public treasury for railroads. I will not vote one dollar out of the ironmines of my country, at the cost of the owner, and of the miner who is engaged in drawing its wealth to the surface.”

This was followed by a speech on "Texas and her Creditors,' "* which closes the list of Mr. Seward's senatorial efforts during that Congress. Both of these speeches are marked by the admirable union of statistics, general reasoning, and lofty sentiments of which the texture of his deliberative eloquence is composed.

After an extra session of several weeks called by the new administration to consider executive appointments, the senate adjourned in April, 1853. Mr. Seward was occupied during the summer in the courts of the United States, but he found time to accept an urgent call to deliver an address at the dedication of Capital University at Columbus the seat of government in the state of Ohio. This address rises to the dignity of an oration and pleads the cause of human nature as especially committed to the care of the people of the United States. It closes with an eloquent showing of the responsibilities, in this respect, of the college or the university as an American institution.†

Mr. Seward's studies during the recess of Congress closed with the delivery of an address before the American Institute at New York on the 20th of October, 1853. This address was a stirring appeal to the American people to rise to a higher tone of individual and national indepenWhile every dence, in thought, sentiment, and action. part of it was received with distinguished favor, no part was more just or more highly appreciated than the following touching tribute to the memory of James Tallmadge:

* See Vol. III., p. 667.

This address will be found among the selections in this volume.

"I have been for many reasons habitually averse from mingling in the sometimes excited debates which crowd upon each other in a great city. There was, however, an authority which I could not disobey, in the venerable name and almost paternal kindness of the eminent citizen, who so recently presided here with dignity and serenity all his own; and who transmitted the invitation of the Institute, and persuaded its acceptance!

How sudden his death! Only three weeks ago, the morning mail brought to me his announcement of his arrival to ar range this exhibition, and his summons to me to join him here; and the evening despatch, on the self-same day, bore the painful intelligence that the lofty genius which had communed with kindred spirits so long, on the interests of his country, had departed from the earth, and that the majestic form which had been animated by it, had disappeared for ever from among living

men.

"I had disciplined myself when coming here, so as to purpose to speak no word for the cause of human freedom, lest what might seem too persistent an advocacy might offend. But must I, therefore, abridge of its just proportions the eulogium which the occasion and the character of the honored dead alike demand?

"The first ballot which I cast for the chief magistracy of my native and most beloved state, bore the name of James Tallmadge, as the alternate of De Witt Clinton. If I have never faltered in pursuing the policy of that immortal statesman, through loud reproach and vindictive opposition during his life, and amid clamors and contentions, often amounting almost to faction, since his death, I have found as little occasion to hesitate or waver in adhering to the counsels and example of the illustrious compeer, who, after surviving him so many years, has now been removed, in ripened age, to the companionship of the just. How does not time vindicate fidelity to truth and to our country! A vote for Clinton and Tallmadge in 1824, what censures did it not bring then? Who will impeach that ballot now?

"A statesman's claim to the gratitude of his country rests on what were, or what would have been, the results of the policy he has recommended. If the counsels of James Tallmadge had

completely prevailed, then not only would American forests, mines, soil, invention, and industry, have rendered our country, now and for ever, independent of all other nations, except for what climate forbids; but then, also, no menial hand would ever have guided a plough, and no footstep of a slave would ever have been tracked on the soil of all that vast part of our national domain that stretches away from the banks of the Mississippi to the far western ocean.

"This was the policy of James Tallmadge. It was worthy of New York, in whose name it was promulgated. It would have been noble, even to have altogether failed in establishing it. He was successful, however, in part, though only through unwise delays and unnecessary compromises, which he strenuously opposed, and which, therefore, have not impaired his just fame. And so in the end, he more nearly than any other citizen of our time, realized the description of the happiest man in the world, given to the frivolous Croesus by the great Athenian : He saw his offspring, and they all survived him. At the close of an honorable and prosperous life, on the field of civic victory, he was rewarded with the honors of a public funeral by the state that he had enriched, adorned, and enlarged.'"

UPON the accession of Mr. Pierce to the presidency, high expectations were formed of great and beneficent legislative action by the first Congress under his administration, which met on the first Monday in December, 1853. Among the measures which, it was anticipated, would come up for consideration were the modification of the tariff, so as to enlarge the field of national industry-the construction of a railroad between the Atlantic states and the Pacific ocean the substitution of a system of gratuitous allotments of land, in limited quantities, to actual settlers, instead of the policy of sales of the public domain-the improvement and reform of the army and navy-the regulation of the commercial marine in regard to immigrant passengers the endowment of the states with portions of the public land, as a provision for the care of the insane within their limits-the establishment of steam-mails upon the Pacific ocean-and the opening of political and commercial relations with Japan.

Mr. Seward addressed himself to the accomplishment of these important objects with his accustomed diligence and zeal. Early in the session he introduced a bill for the construction of a railroad to the Pacific, and another for the establishment of steam-mails between San Francisco, the Sandwich Islands, Japan, and China. The times seemed favorable for such legislation. The public treasury was overflowing. The slavery agitation had died away both in Congress and throughout the country. This calm, how

ever, was doomed to a sudden interruption. The prospect of such extended beneficent legislation was destroyed by the introduction of a measure, which at once supplanted all other subjects in Congress, and in the political interest of the people. This was the novel and astounding proposal of Mr. Douglas of Illinois, in relation to the Kansas and Nebraska territories. The country saw with regret and mortification, the homestead bill transformed into one of mere graduation of the prices of the public lands. The bills for the improvement of the army and navy, and the bill for regulating the transportation of immigrants were dropped, before coming to maturity. The bill for a grant of lands to the states in aid of the insane, was defeated in the senate for want of a constitutional majority, after having been vetoed by the president. The bill for establishing the Pacific railroad was lost for want of time to debate it; and the bill for opening steam communication with the East, after passing the senate failed for want of consideration in the house. The administration had a majority of nearly two to one in both branches of Congress. The opponents of introducing slavery into the free territories, were in a decided minority in the house, while they constituted less than one fifth of the senate.

The measure, already alluded to, which produced this sudden derangement in Congress, was a provision in the bill for the organization of a territory in Nebraska, declaring that the states which might, at any future time, be formed in the new territory, should leave the question of slavery to be decided by the inhabitants, on the adoption of their constitution. This provision, as explained by the bill itself, was the application to Nebraska of the policy established in regard to Utah and New Mexico by the compromise of 1850. It was evident that the Missouri compromise of 1820 was thus virtually repealed. By that arrangement, it was provided that slavery should be excluded from the whole unorganized portion of the public