should include a large portion of New Mexico, by whom this pretension was repelled, and Texas threatened a resort to

arms.

In this state of things a plan of so-called compromise was introduced into the Senate by a committee of thirteen, of which Mr. Clay was chairman, embracing the following particulars, viz: 1. The future admission of new slave States, to be formed out of Texas. 2. The admission, forthwith, of California, with her proposed boundaries. 3. The establishment of territorial governments without the Wilmot proviso, for New Mexico and Utah. 4. The combination of the two last mentioned measures in one bill. 5. The establishment of the Western and Northern boundary of Texas excluding from her jurisdiction all of New Mexico, with a grant to Texas of a pecuniary equivalent. 6. More effectual enactments to secure the return of fugitive slaves, (as previously introduced in a bill by Mr. Mason of Virginia.) 7. The abolition of the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia.*

Mr. Clay's project of securing all these measures simult neously, by the adoption of this Report of the Committee, did not succeed. After a tedious and protracted effort, the plan was marred by amendments, till the Report, as a whole, was defeated and abandoned. A similar project was next attempted by separate bills, and with the following results:

1. The admission of California as a free State, with her proper boundaries.

2. Territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah without excluding slavery, and with the provision that the States hereafter formed out of them shall be admitted into the Union either with or without slavery, as the Constitutions of the new States shall decide.

3. The boundary of Texas is so fixed as to surrender to that slave Ste at least ninety thousand square miles of free soil, and yet the same bill creates a national debt of ten millions

*See National Era of May 16, 1850.

of dollars to buy off the notoriously fraudulent and unfounded claims of Texas to New Mexico.*

4. The abolition of the slave trade, but not of slavery, in the District of Columbia. This does not prevent citizens of the Federal District from selling their slaves into any of the States. It only prevents traders from bringing slaves into the District for sale and transportation.

5. An act, supplementary to the act of 1793, for facilitating the recapture of fugitive slaves. By this new act all the remaining defenses of personal liberty, in the non-slaveholding States, are effectually broken down, and every man, black or white, (for the law makes no distinction,) holds his exemption from chattelhood, so far as legal protection is concerned, at the mercy of any Southern man who may choose to claim him as his slave, in connection with any one of a horde of government officials, to be appointed for the special purpose, who is authorized to surrender him, without jury trial, with no testimony but that of the claimant or his agent, while the testimony of the person claimed is not to be received. All citizens are commanded to assist in seizing and surrendering fugitives, and all persons are forbidden to harbor them or aid their escape, under penalty of one thousand dollars, with imprisonment not exceeding six months, besides one thousand dollars to be recovered in a civil suit for damages, for each slave so aided or harbored.+

* National Era, Sept. 12, 1850.

+ It will be seen that the substance of Mr. Clay's Compromise bill was reached by these separate enactments. According to Thomas H. Benton, Senator from Missouri, there was still another item in the Compromise, not included in the Report of the Committee of Thirteen, but the subject of a verbal understanding among the members. The cotton manufacturers of New England were to be propitiated by a high tariff. But after the Southern members had got all they could, and especially the Fugitive Slave Bill, they deserted their Eastern friends, and defeated the tariff in the House of Representatives. The following is from the National Era of Oct.

3, 1850:

"Mr. Benton is apt to be very pithy in colloquial comment. Conversing with a senatorial friend the other day, about the Compromise or Omnibus, in which he took so tender an interest, he remarked: 'Sir, there were four inside passengers in that Omnibus-there was California, sir; there was New Mexico; there was Texas; there was Utah, sir!-four inside passengers. There was two outside passengers,

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FURTHER ACTION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT-GENERAL POLICY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY CONTROLLED BY SLAVERY.

Considerations and testimonies in point-Commercial prosperity of the North-The Embargo-Non-intercourse-Second Embargo-Destruction of the Old National Bank-Calhoun's War of 1812 with Great Britain-Treatment of New EnglandSouthern ascendency established-Rise of manufactures-Their wreck on return of Peace-Revival of Northern Commerce-Calhoun's Protective Tariff of 1816Southern call for a National Bank, and why?-Pecuniary embarrassments of 1819-20-Southern bankruptcy of 1824-Cotton Speculations of 1826 and 1887— Bankruptcy of U. S. Bank, and why?-Its demise-Clamors of Calhoun against his own Tariff system-Nullification-Recapitulation-Note concerning State action.

WITH the facts of the preceding history before us, it is very natural to inquire on what maxims, with what aims, and for what objects, the general policy of the Federal Government has been moulded, from the beginning to the present time. Not a single administration of that government have we found free from the controlling influence of slavery. Not only has slavery been steadily fostered as an important interest of the country, but as the paramount, the all-absorbing interest, before whose claims every other interest and all other interests combined, have been forced to give way.

We have, thus far, considered only the direct action of the

sir: There was the fugacious Slave Bill, and the District Slave-trade Abolition Bill. They could not be admitted inside, but they had outside seats, and the inside and outside passengers could be seen and known, sir. But there was another passenger, under the driver's seat, sir; carefully concealed in the boot, sir; breathing through chinks and holes like Henry Box Brown, sir-the Tariff, sir! But he had a worse fate than Box Brown-he was killed-killed in the House, sir-and I hope we shall have no more Omnibuses and no more passengers in the boot, sir!'"

Federal Government, in manifest support of slavery. But the general policy and the political economy of the country could scarcely fail to have had the most important bearings either for or against the slave interest. Is it credible that this has been overlooked? With the ever watchful eye that we know the slave power has had over its own interests, with all the successive administrations of the Government under its control, and ready, as we have seen, to do its bidding, with slaveholding Presidents and Cabinets of their selection, forty-nine years out of sixty-one, and while the support of slavery has been their constant care, can it be believed that the ever conflicting and totally irreconcilable interests of free and slave labor have never been thought of, nor taken into consideration, in shaping our national policy? Or can it be supposed that the always dominant slave power, everywhere else true to its own rapacious instincts, has, just here, where the chess games of political economy are constantly played between the rival interests of the country, been inattentive, or neutral, or that it has held the balances between the slaveholding and nonslaveholding States, with an even and impartial hand? No intelligent citizen can believe this. We might almost be certain, therefore, in advance of all direct scrutiny of the facts of our history, that the general policy of the country has been moulded by the slave power, for the benefit of slavery, and in consequent hostility to the interests of free labor. The law of self-preservation would require this, especially as the interests of slave labor are always destined to grapple with the inherent thriftlessness, imbecility and decline incident to the system, in striking contrast to the ever buoyant and recuperative energies of free labor. It would not be enough for the slave power, acting as a political economist, and mainly intent on retaining its political supremacy, to content itself with devices and expedients to prop up and encourage slave labor. It must do more than this. It must adroitly stab and cripple its rival. It must so shape and shift public measures as to disarrange, thwart, perplex, and unsettle the pursuits and the arrangements of free laborers, or else itself fall into inevitable

eclipse, sustain certain defeat, and let go the sceptre of power. An illustration and proof of all this we have in the recent demand of the late Mr. Calhoun, that the Constitution should be so amended as to restore to the slave States the same relative power that they had, at the first organization of the government, and which we know they have lost, in despite of their political ascendancy, by the opposite tendencies of freedom and slavery. In making that desperate demand, Mr. Calhoun laid bare his own heart, and the settled policy of the oligarchy of slaveholders. The free North must be shorn of her own natural strength, when needful, that slavery may preserve her balance of power. With this simple key, the historian may unlock the otherwise inexplicable labyrinths of American politics, for the last sixty years. Thus instructed, he will be enabled to read into one straightforward and undeviating chapter of national policy the fluctuations of eleven Presidential administrations, amid all the idle clamor of rival aspirants, and the rise and fall of the contending factions that have alternately affected to be the Government. In all these apparent changes, the slave power has governed, and with one steady purpose, and never more steadily and effectively than in the midst of seeming change and caprice.

If any one considers this a severe charge against the South, a southern witness shall be summoned to the stand. The torturing rack of party exigences and of personal rivalry, on one occasion, extorted the confession, on northern soil, from a statesman of the South. At a New York State Whig Convention in Utica, in 1839, Mr. Stanley, "the eloquent member of Congress, from North Carolina," declared that "John C. Calhoun introduced a certain measure (the sub-treasury bill) as a southern measure." "Mr. Calhoun," continued Mr. Stanley, "knew that it must break down northern manufactures and capital, and destroy the North. I conversed with Mr. Calhoun; he expressed himself contemptuously of Mr. Van Buren; he spoke of him only as a 'fly on the wheel.' It was not his measure, but our measure. We could retrieve all or destroy." It is in no spirit of sympathy with the whig party, and with