cious event. But, oh! the deceitfulness of human felicity. In an instant the scene was changed the feast a fight-the wedding festival a mortal combat-the table itself supplying the implements of war! "At first a medley flight, Of bowls and jars supply the fight; Once implements of feasts, but now of fate." You know how it ended. The fight broke up the feast. The wedding was postponed. And so may it be with this attempted conjunction of California with the many ill-suited spouses which the Committee of Thirteen have provid ed for her. Mr. President, it is time to be done with this comedy of errors. California is suffering for want of admission. New Mexico is suffering for want of protection. The public business is suffering for want of attention. The character of Congress is suffering for want of progress in business. It is time to put an end to so many evils; and I have made the motion intended to terminate them, by moving the indefinite postponement of this unmanageable mass of incongruous bills, each an impediment to the other, that they may be taken up one by one, in their proper order, to receive the decision which their respective merits require. CHAPTER CXCIII. DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR. at an election, and was a major-general in the service, at the time of his election. Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista, were his titles to popular favor-backed by irreproachable private character, undoubted patriotism, and established reputation for judgment and firmness. His brief career showed no deficiency of political wisdom for want of previous political training. He came into the administration at a time of great difficulty, and acted up to the emergency of his position. The slavery agitation was raging; the Southern manifesto had been issued: California, New Mexico, Utah, were without governments: a Southern Congress was in process of being called, the very name of which implied disunion: a Southern convention was actually called, and met, to consult upon disunion. He met the whole crisis firmly, determined to do what was right among all the States, and to maintain the Federal Union at all hazards. His first, and only annual message, marked out his course. The admission of California as a State was recommended by him, and would avoid all questions about slavery. Leaving Utah and New Mexico to ripen into State governments, and then decide the question for themselves, also avoided the question in those territories where slavery was then extinct under the laws of the country from which they came to the United States. Texas had an unsettled boundary on the side of New Mexico. President Taylor considered that question to be one between the United States and New Mexico, and not between New Mexico and Texas; and to be settled by the United States in some legal and amicable way-as, by compact, by mutual legislation, or judicial decision. Some ardent spirits in Texas proposed to take possession of one half of New Mexico, in virtue of a naked pretension to it, founded in their own laws and constitution. President Taylor would have resisted that pretension, and protected New Mexico in its ancient actual possession until the question of boundary should have been settled in a He died in the second year of his presidency, suddenly, and unexpectedly, of violent fever, brought on by long exposure to the burning heat of a fourth of July sun-noted as the warmest of the season. He attended the ceremonies of the day, sitting out the speeches, and omitting no attention which he believed the decorum of his station required. It cost him his life. The ceremony took place on Friday on the Tuesday following, he was dead-legal way. His death was a public calamity. the violent attack commencing soon after his return to the presidential mansion. He was the first President elected upon a reputation purely military. He had been in the regular army from early youth. Far from having ever exercised civil office, he had never even voted No man could have been more devoted to the Union, or more opposed to the slavery agitation; and his position as a Southern man, and a slaveholder—his military reputation, and his election by a majority of the people and of the Stateswould have given him a power in the settlement of these questions which no President without to be so to the end of his official term. Dying these qualifications could have possessed. In the political division he classed with the whig party, but his administration, as far as it went, was applauded by the democracy, and promised at the head of the government, a national lamentation bewailed his departure from life and power, and embalmed his memory in the affections of his country. ADMINISTRATION OF MILLARD FILLMORE. CHAPTER CXCIV. INAUGURATION AND CABINET OF MR. FILLMORE. WEDNESDAY, July the tenth, witnessed the inauguration of Mr. Fillmore, Vice-President of the United States, become President by the death of President Taylor. It took place in the Hall of the House of Representatives, in the presence of both Houses of Congress, in conformity to the wish of the new President, communicated in a message. The constitution requires nothing of the President elect, before entering on the duties of his station, except to take the oath of office, faithfully to execute his duties, and do his best to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution; and that oath might be taken any where, and before any magistrate having power to administer oaths, and then filed in the department of State; but propriety and custom have made it a ceremony to be publicly performed, and impressively conducted. A place on the great eastern portico of the Capitol, where tens of thousands could witness it, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to administer the oath, have always been the place and the magistrate for this ceremony, in the case of Presidents elected to the office-giving the utmost display to it-and very suitably, as in such cases there is always a feeling of general gratification and exultation. Mr. Fillmore, with great propriety, reduced the ceremony of his inauguration to an official act, impressively done in Congress, and to be marked by solemnity without joy. A committee of the two Houses attended him-Messrs. Soulé, of Louisiana, Davis, of Massachusetts, and Underwood, of Kentucky, on the part of the Senate; Messrs. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, Morse, of Louisiana, and Morehead, of Kentucky, on the part of the House; and he was accompanied by all the members of the late President's cabinet. The Chief Justice of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, the venerable William Cranch, appointed fifty years before, by President John Adams, administered the oath; which being done, the President, without any inaugural address, bowed, and retired; and the ceremony was at an end. The first official act of the new President was an immediate message to the two Houses, recommending suitable measures to be taken by them for the funeral of the deceased Presidentsaying: "A great man has fallen among us, and a whole country is called to an occasion of unexpected, deep, and general mourning. to adopt such measures as in their discretion "I recommend to the two Houses of Congress 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 or brilliancy; who has of the people to the highest civil authority in been so recently raised by the unsolicited voice 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 for ever. "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 this deeply melancholy occasion." The two Houses readily complied with this recommendation, and a solemn public funeral was unanimously voted, and in due time, impressively performed. All the members of the late President's cabinet gave in their resignations immediately, but were requested by President Fillmore to retain their places until successors could be appointed; which they did. In due time, the new cabinet was constituted: Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, Secretary of State; Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury; Alexander H. H. Stuart, of Virginia, Secretary of the Interior; Charles M. Conrad, of Louisiana, Secretary at War; William A. Graham, of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy (succeeded by John P. Kennedy, of Maryland); John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, Attorney-General; Nathan K. Hall, of New York (succeeded by Samuel D. Hubbard, of Connecticut). CHAPTER CXCV. REJECTION OF MR. CLAY'S PLAN OF COMPROMISE. THE Committee of Thirteen had reported in favor of Mr. Clay's plan. It was a committee so numerous, almost a quarter of the Senate, that its recommendation would seem to insure the senatorial concurrence. Not so the fact. The incongruities were too obvious and glaring to admit of conjunction. The subjects were too different to admit of one vote-yea or nay-upon all of them together. The injustice of mixing up the admission of California, a State which had rejected slavery for itself, with all the vexations of the slave question in the territories, was too apparent to subject her to the degradation of such an association. It was evident that nc compromise, of any kind whatever, on the subject of slavery, under any one of its aspects separately, much less under all put together, could possibly be made. There was no spirit of concession-no spirit in which there could be giving and taking-in which a compromise could be made. Whatever was to be done, it was evident would be done in the ordinary spirit of legislation, in which the majority gives law to the minority. The only case in which there was even forbearance, was in that of rejecting the Wilmot proviso. That measure was rejected again as heretofore, and by the votes of those who were opposed to extending slavery into the territories, because it was unnecessary and inoperative-irritating to the slave States with out benefit to the free States-a mere work of supererogation, of which the only fruit was to be discontent. It was rejected, not on the principle of non-intervention-not on the principle of leaving to the territories to do as they pleased on the question; but because there had been intervention! because Mexican law and constitution had intervened! had abolished slavery by law in those dominions! which law would All that the opponents to the extension of slaremain in force, until repealed by Congress. very had to do then, was to do nothing. And they did nothing. The numerous measures put together in Mr. Clay's bill were disconnected and separated. Each measure received a separate and independent consideration, and with a result which showed the injustice of the attempted conjunction. United, they had received the support of the majority of the committee: separated, and no two were passed by the same vote: and only four members of the whole grand committee that voted alike on each of the measures. CHAPTER CXCVI. THE ADMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA: PROTEST OF SOUTHERN SENATORS: REMARKS UPON IT BY MR. BENTON. tend the Missouri line through to the Pacific, so as to authorize the existence of slavery in all the territory south of that latitude. On this motion the yeas and nays were: "YEAS-Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Bell, Berrien, Butler, Clemens, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Downs, Foote, Houston, Hunter, King, Mangum, Mason, Morton, Pearce, Pratt, Rusk, Sebastian, Soulé, Turney, and Yulee-24. "NAYS-Messrs. Baldwin, Benton, Bradbury, Bright, Cass, Clarke, Cooper, Davis of Massa THIS became the "test" question in the great slavery agitation which disturbed Congress and the Union, and as such was impressively pre-chusetts, Dayton, Dickinson, Dodge of Wisconsented by Mr. Calhoun in the last and most intensely considered speech of his life-read for him in the Senate by Mr. Mason of Virginia. In that speech, and at the conclusion of it, and as the resulting consequence of the whole of it, he said: "It is time, senators, that there should be an open and manly avowal on all sides, as to what is intended to be done. If the question is not now settled, it is uncertain whether it ever can hereafter be; and we, as the representatives of the States of this Union, regarded as governments, should come to a distinct understanding as to our respective views, in order to ascertain whether the great questions at issue can be settled or not. If you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle them on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace. If you are unwilling that we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall know what to do, when you reduce the question to submission or resistance. If you remain silent, you will compell us to infer by your acts what you intend. In that case, California will become the test question. If you admit her, under all the difficulties that oppose her admission, you compel us to infer that you intend to exclude us from the whole of the acquired territories, with the intention of destroying irretrievably the equilibrium between the two sections. We would be blind not to perceive, in that case, that your real objects are power and aggrandizement, and infatuated not to act accordingly." Mr. Calhoun died before the bill for the admission of California was taken up: but his principles did not die with him: and the test question which he had proclaimed remained a legacy to his friends. As such they took it up, and cherished it. The bill was taken up in the Senate, and many motions made to amend, of which the most material was by Mr. Turney of Tennessee, to limit the southern boundary of the State to the latitude of 36° 30', and to exVOL. II.-49 sin, Dodge of Iowa, Douglass, Ewing, Felch, Greene, Hale, Hamlin, Jones, Norris, Phelps, Seward, Shields, Smith, Spruance, Sturgeon, Underwood, Upham, Wales, Walker, Whitcomb, and Winthrop-32." The amendments having all been disposed of, the question was taken upon the passage of the bill, and resulted in its favor, 34 yeas to 18 nays. The vote was: "YEAS-Messrs. Baldwin, Bell, Benton, Bradbury, Bright, Cass, Chase, Cooper, Davis of Massachusetts, Dickinson, Dodge of Wisconsin, Dodge of Iowa, Douglass, Ewing, Felch, Greene, Hale, Hamlin, Houston, Jones, Miller, Norris, Phelps, Seward, Shields, Smith, Spruance, Sturgeon, Underwood, Upham, Wales, Walker, Whitcomb, and Winthrop-34. "NAYS-Messrs. Atchison, Barnwell, Berrien, Butler, Clemens, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Foote, Hunter, King, Mason, Morton, Pratt, Rusk, Sebastian, Soulé, Turney, and Yulee-18." Immediately upon the passage of the bill through the Senate, ten of the senators opposed to it offered a protest against it, which was read at the secretary's table, of which the leading points were these: "We, the undersigned senators, deeply impressed with the importance of the occasion, and with a solemn sense of the responsibility under which we are acting, respectfully submit the following protest against the bill admitting California as a State into this Union, and request that it may be entered upon the Journal of the Senate. We feel that it is not enough to have resisted in debate alone a bill so fraught with mischief to the Union and the States which we represent, with all the resources of argument which we possessed; but that it is also due to ourselves, the people whose interest have been intrusted to our care, and to posterity, which even in its most distant generawhatever form may be most solemn and endurtions may feel its consequences, to leave in ing, a memorial of the opposition which we have made to this measure, and of the reasons |