slavery agitation
proved to be really a most violent reopening of it.

Webster, like Clay, did not survive to witness the next great
discussion in Congress on the slavery question, which resulted in
overturning much that was supposed to have been settled; nor did
they live to hear thundered from the supreme judicial tribunal of
the Union the appalling doctrines of the Dred Scott decision.
Webster died October 24, 1852. Benton lived to condemn the great
tribunal for this decision in most vehement terms. He died April
10, 1858. But few of the leading participants of the 1850 debates
lived to witness the final overthrow of slavery. Lewis Cass,
however, who, though a Democrat, generally followed and supported
Clay in his plan of compromise, not only lived to witness the birth
of the new doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty" (and to support it),
but to hear that slavery was, according to our Supreme Court, almost
national; then to see disunion in the _live tree;_ then war; then
slaves proclaimed free as a war measure; then disunion overthrown
on the battle-field; then restoration of a more perfect Union,
wherein slavery and involuntary servitude was forbidden by the
Constitution.(78)

In the succeeding Presidential election (1852) the two great parties
endorsed the late action of Congress in relation to the Territories
and slavery.

The Whig platform declared the acquiescence of the party in all
its acts: "The act known as the Fugitive Slave Law included. . . .
as a settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous and
exciting questions which they embrace. . . . We will maintain them
and insist on their strict enforcement."

On this platform General Winfield Scott was nominated for the
Presidency.

The Democratic platform of the same year, having first denied that
Congress had power under the Constitution to interfere with slavery
in the States, declared also that the party would "abide by and
adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the Compromise
measures settled by the last Congress,--the act for reclaiming
fugitives from service or labor included."

Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, a subordinate officer (Brigadier-
General) under Scott in Mexico, of no special renown, but a polite
and respectable gentleman, was nominated and elected on this platform
by a decided vote; Scott carrying only Massachusetts, Vermont,
Kentucky, and Tennessee. The "Free-Soil" party nominated John P.
Hale of New H