an
incorrect account of the caucus in a newspaper of that time.]

CHAPTER V.

Review (_continued_).--Contrast between General Taylor and General
Cass.--The Cabinet of President Taylor.--Political Condition of
the Country.--Effect produced by the Discovery of Gold in California.
--Convening of Thirty-first Congress.--Election of Howell Cobb as
Speaker.--President Taylor's Message.--His Recommendations Distasteful
to the South.--Illustrious Membership of the Senate.--Mr. Clay and
the Taylor Administration.--Mr. Calhoun's Last Speech in the Senate.
--His Death.--His Character and Public Services.--Mr. Webster's
7th of March Speech.--Its Effect upon the Public and upon Mr.
Webster.--Mr. Clay's Committee of Thirteen.--The Omnibus Bill.--
Conflict with General Taylor's Administration.--Death of the
President.--Mr. Fillmore reverses Taylor's Policy and supports the
Compromise Measures.--Defeat of Compromise Bill.--Passage of the
Measures separately.--Memorable Session of Congress.--Whig and
Democratic Parties sustain the Compromise Measures.--National
Conventions.--Whigs nominate Winfield Scott over Fillmore.--Mr.
Clay supports Fillmore.--Mr. Webster's Friends.--Democrats nominate
Franklin Pierce.--Character of the Campaign.--Overwhelming Defeat
of Scott.--Destruction of the Whig Party.--Death of Mr. Clay.--
Death of Mr. Webster.--Their Public Characters and Services
compared.

With the election of General Taylor, the various issues of the
slavery question were left undecided and unchanged. Indeed, the
progress of the canvass had presented a political anomaly. General
Cass was born in New England of Puritan stock. All his mature life
had been spent in the free North-West. He was a lawyer, a statesman,
always a civilian, except for a single year in the volunteer service
of 1812. General Taylor was born in Virginia, was reared in
Kentucky, was a soldier by profession from his earliest years of
manhood, had passed all his life in the South, was a resident of
Louisiana, engaged in planting, and was the owner of a large number
of slaves. Yet in the face of these facts General Cass ran as the
distinctively pro-slavery candidate, and General Taylor received
three-fourths of the votes of New England, and was supported
throughout the North by the anti-slavery Whigs, who accepted William
H. Seward as a leader and Horace Greeley as an exponent. But his
contradiction was apparent, not real. It was soon found that the
conf