The contest resulted in defeat-a result that was as unexpected to the Whigs as their hopes had previously been certain and high. The defeat was not to the Whigs of New York alone, as Mr. Clay was at the same time vanquished by Mr. Polk in the contest for the Presidency of the United states.

In the fall of 1847 Mr. Fillmore was elected comptroller of the state of New York, an office which at that time included duties now distributed among other departments of the government. This office was filled hot only with care, honesty and in good faith toward the people, but with an addition of thought and suggestion which showed that he was not a mere worker with figures, but one with a breadth and keenness of vision of unusual quality. In 1849 he suggested the formation of a banking system, the central idea of which in years afterward was carried out in the national banking system of to-day-that of a national bank, with the stocks of the United States as the sole basis upon which to issue currency. In June, 1848, Mr. Fillmore was nominated for vice-president by the Whig National convention, on a ticket of which General Zachary Taylor was the head. His selection at this time was a peculiar compliment, and meant more than is often conveyed in the nomination for that office. The popular demand for General Taylor, added to the belief on the part of the Whig leaders that his Mexican achievements would prove a strong card in the decision of the question, marked him with certainty as the nominee for President, while his lack of acquaintance with affairs of state made it politic that a trained statesman should be associated with him on the ticket. In this turn of events Mr. Fillmore was looked upon as the man needed, and he was consequently made the choice of the convention. Reference to the campaign and its result has already been made in the life of President Taylor, and need not be repeated here. In February, 1849, he resigned the office of comptroller, and on March 5, was inaugurated vicepresident of the United States, the fourth having fallen on the Sabbath.

It was no easy task to faithfully and impartially preside over the senate in a time of such great excitement and acrimonious debate as was the order in those ominous days, in the close of the first half of the century. The question of slavery was in the forefront, and already many threats had been made that a dissolution of the Union was to be demanded, and the demand carried into effect. The resolutions of 1847 had gone no farther than to deny the power of congress to prohibit slavery in a territory. "That was enough," says Senator Benton, "while congress alone was the power to be guarded against; but it became insufficient and even a stumbling block when New Mexico and California were acquired, and where no congress prohibition was necessary because their soil was already free. A new dogma was invented to fit the case-that of the transmigration of the constitution (the slavery part of it) into the territories,

overriding and overruling all the anti-slavery laws which it found there, and planting the institution there under its own wing, and maintaining it beyond the power of eradication either by congress or the people of the territory. Before this dogma was proclaimed, efforts were made to get the constitution extended to these territories by act of congress: failing in these attempts, the difficulty was leaped over by boldly assuming that the constitution went of itself—that is to say, the slavery part of it." Mr. Calhoun and the wing of the party to which he belonged, avowed an open purpose to carry slavery into the territories "under the wing of the Constitution," and treated as enemies to the south all who opposed them. The debates that grew out of this question were of the most vehement and exciting that were ever heard in the capital of our country. Mr. Fillmore endeavored to preside with such dignity and fairness as was possible, but at one time was compelled to threaten the exercise of the fullest authority of which he was in command. In 1826 Mr. Calhoun, while vice-president, had established the rule that he had no power to call senators to order. That decision had been held as authority by all the occupants of the vicepresident's chair, until Mr. Fillmore, in a decisive speech to the senate, announced his determination to preserve order, even though he should be compelled to disregard the ruling of his predecessors. The senate unanimously approved of his decision, and even ordered that his remarks be formally entered on the journal.

Mr. Fillmore presided during the long months of discussion over Mr. Clay's so-called "omnibus" bill, and did so with such fairness and impartiality that no one knew his position thereon, with the exception of President Taylor, to whom he said that should he be called upon to give the casting vote it would be in favor of the bill. That measure was the grand stroke by which the eminent senator hoped to end and close up forever the slavery question, and avert the dangers to our country that were threatened. Early in the session he introduced a series of eight resolutions. and was himself placed at the head of a committee of thirteen that was to combine all their principles in one bill, which was to settle the question forever. When the bill was returned it was found to be but a tie for the binding of many incongruous elements together-the admission of California, the arranging of territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico, the settlement of the Texas boundary, the decision as to slavery in the District of Columbia, and a fugitive slave law. When the debate was at its height on this important and sweeping measure, Mr. Seward, of New York, let in a ray of light from the then awakening north, by proposing a renewal of the Wilmot proviso:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than by conviction for crime, shall ever be allowed in either of said territories of Utah and New Mexico."

Twenty-three senators cast their votes for this measure, and thirty-three against. The debate on Mr. Clay's bill consequently went on; and it was yet under way when death entered the White House, and Millard Fillmore found himself called to the weightier and more important office of President of the United States.

He was inaugurated on Wednesday, July 10, 1850. The ceremony was performed in the hall of the house of representatives, in the presence of both houses of congress. This lack of any display was by the express wish of Mr. Fillmore, who desired to reduce the ceremony of his inauguration, under the sad circumstances surrounding him, to an official act only. He was attended by a committee of the two houses of congress, Messrs. Soule of Louisiana, Davis of Massachusetts, and Underwood of Kentucky, on the part of the senate, and Winthrop of Massachusetts, Morse of Louisiana and Moorhead of Kentucky on the part of the house; and by all the members of the late President's cabinet. The oath was administered by the venerable William Cranch, the chief justice of the circuit court of the District of Columbia, who had received his appointment from the hands of President John Adams fifty years before. President Fillmore delivered no inaugural, but after taking the oath bowed to the assembled houses and retired.

His first official act was in honor of the memory of the dead President, as he almost immediately sent a message to congress recommending that suitable measures be taken for the funeral. His language conveyed a high estimate of the qualities of his predecessor:

"A great man has fallen among us, and a whole country is called to an occasion of unexpected, deep, and general mourning. I recommend to the two houses of congress to adopt such measures as in their discretion they may deem proper, to perform with due solemnities the funeral obsequies of Zachary Taylor, late President of the United States; and thereby to signify the great and affectionate regard of the American people for the memory of one whose life has been devoted to the public service; whose career in arms has not been surpassed in usefulness and brilliancy; who has been so recently raised by the unsolicited voice of the people to the highest civil authority in the government, which he administered with so much honor and advantage to his country, and by whose sudden death so many hopes of future usefulness have been blighted forever.

"To you, senators and representatives of a nation in tears, I can say nothing which can alleviate the sorrow with which you are oppressed. I appeal to you to aid me, under the trying circumstances which surround me, in the discharge of the duties from which, however much I may be oppressed by them, I dare not shrink; and I rely upon Him, who holds in His hands the destinies of nations, to endow me with the requisite

strength for the task, and to avert from our country the evils apprehended from the heavy calamity which has befallen us.

"I shall most readily concur in whatever measures the wisdom of the two houses may suggest as befitting the deeply melancholy occasion.”

The spirit in which Mr. Fillmore approached his new duties is well shown in the above. He saw the magnitude of the task before him, and felt the insufficiency of one man in the accomplishment of anything without the cordial and patriotic support of all. He began the administration of his office with an earnest purpose to do what he could to preserve the Union and advance the material and moral interests of his country. He formed a strong cabinet, with Daniel Webster at the head, and almost immediately turned his attention to the settling of the important questions that had arisen in the southwest. He ordered a military force to New Mexico, with instructions to protect that territory from invasion from Texas, a danger that was feared because of the disputed boundary.

If there had been a deep interest to learn how President Taylor, a southern man, would officially voice himself on the slavery question, there must have been far more interest, especially in the south, as to what course President Fillmore, from the far north and representing in his sentiments a free-soil state, would pursue on this troubled and troubling question. When he finally affixed his signature to the fugitive slave law and it became a binding measure upon the people of the free north, where slavery grew more odious with every year that passed, he swept away with one stroke of the pen the greater portion of those who had been before counted among his warmest political friends. While his act may be indefensible and uncalled for as we look back from the high vantage ground of to-day, one need but cast himself in imagination to the lower plane of events upon which our country stood in 1850, to see that Mr. Fillmore was placed in a position of immense responsibility and the gravest danger. When we remember that Abraham Lincoln, even after the long threatened blow for the disruption of the Union had been struck, was determined to save that Union even though one of the conditions of salvation was that slavery should remain, and that a majority of the best men of the north stood with him therein, we can gain some idea of the fear with which the statesman of 1850 viewed the danger that the least clear-visioned among them could foresee. The south was relatively stronger in the councils of the nation than the north. Her leading men were determined that slavery should remain, and open threats as to what should be done in case the pet institution of the south was not allowed full sway were heard on every hand. It would indeed have been a grave responsibility on the part of any man. to have rashly invoked the gathering storm, the more especially as statesmen in all quarters were hoping and expecting, as President Taylor had suggested, that the trouble might be settled without the shedding of blood

and the Union preserved in purity and peace. While these considerations. may not in the minds of some excuse Mr. Fillmore for his action in signing that obnoxious law, yet they must be weighed and considered before a clear understanding can be had of the difficulties in which he was hedged. On August 6 Mr. Fillmore sent a message to congress advising that body of the danger of a collision with Texas, and urging a settlement of the controversy in relation to the boundary. Mr. Clay's compromise bill had been defeated on the final trial, but various acts known as "the compromise measures," and embracing substantially the features of Mr. Clay's bill, had been presented and passed. It was hoped by many, north and south, that they would quiet the disturbed condition of the public mind, and allow an approach to the final settlement of the slave question -as all knew it must sometime be settled-in peace and good will. The President moved carefully in all that he did. He referred to the attorneygeneral the question whether the act in relation to the return of fugitive slaves was in conflict with that portion of the Constitution relating to the writ of habeas corpus. On the opinion of that officer that the law was constitutional, Mr. Fillmore signed it, and with it the rest of the compromise measures, as compromises for the sake of safety and peace, and not because the principles within them all were in accord with his consciente or belief. The effect of the fugitive slave law upon the north was instantaneous. It was a fruitful field for the growth of abolition sentiment. It was opposed and denounced not only by the small but growing body of anti-slavery men, but by many Whigs as well. There were many who were passively willing that slavery should exist in the south, because they could see no safe way of preventing it, who were not disposed to be forced into aids for the return to the master of the slave who had escaped. Many attempts to put the law into action were openly resisted at various points in the north, notably in the Oberlin region of Ohio, in Boston, Syracuse, and Christiana, Pennsylvania; in the last named place actual bloodshed ensuing.

President Fillmore announced it as his intention to see that the law was enforced, and issued a proclamation in accordance therewith, calling on all officers of the government to perform their duty. Prosecutions were instituted in various sections against the rescuers, but little could be done in the direction of their punishment, as the law was unpopular and the people generally gave their sympathy to those who had placed themselves under the ban of the law. But results came that had not been foreseen. The actual contact that the north was thus given with the purposes and practices of slavery opened many eyes, and the principles of abolitionism. grew in strength with every hour that ran by.

In December, President Fillmore's first annual message was presented to congress. The following disconnected extracts therefrom will give