s to slavery in the past
generation because it was established in the territories concerned; but
there was no such reason now. The second concession was that of a new
Federal law to ensure the return of fugitive slaves from the free
States. The demand for this was partly factitious, for the States in
the far South, which were not exposed to loss of slaves, were the most
insistent on it, and it would appear that the Southern leaders felt it
politic to force the acceptance of the measure in a form which would
humiliate their opponents. There is no escape from the contention,
which Lincoln especially admitted without reserve, that the enactment
of an effective Act of this sort was, if demanded, due under the
provisions of the Constitution; but the measure actually passed was
manifestly defiant of all principles of justice. It was so framed as
almost to destroy the chance which a lawfully free negro might have of
proving his freedom, if arrested by the professional slave-hunters as a
runaway. It was the sort of Act which a President should have vetoed
as a fraud upon the Constitution. Thus over and above the objection,
now plain, to any compromise, the actual compromise proposed was marked
by flagrant wrong. But it was put through by the weight of Webster and
Clay.

This event marks the close of a period. It was the last achievement of
Webster and Clay, both of whom passed away in 1852 in the hope that
they had permanently pacified the Union. Calhoun, their great
contemporary, had already died in 1850, gloomily presaging and
lamenting the coming danger to the Union which was so largely his own
creation. For a while the cheerful view of Webster and Clay seemed
better justified. There had been angry protest in the North against
the Fugitive Slave Law; there was some forcible resistance to arrests
of negroes; and some States passed Protection of Liberty Acts of their
own to impede the Federal law in its working. But the excitement,
which had flared up suddenly, died down as suddenly. In the
Presidential election of 1852 Northerners generally reflected that they
wanted quiet and had an instinct, curiously falsified, that the
Democratic party was the more likely to give it them. The Whigs again
proposed a hero, General Scott, a greater soldier than Taylor, but a
vainer man, who mistakenly broke with all precedent and went upon the
stump for himself. The President who was elected, Franklin Pierce of
New Hampshire,