of the balance of power between the North and the South.  Webster, in his notable “Seventh of March speech,” condemned the Wilmot Proviso, advocated a strict enforcement of the fugitive slave law, denounced the abolitionists, and made a final plea for the Constitution, union, and liberty.  This was the address which called forth from Whittier the poem, “Ichabod,” deploring the fall of the mighty one whom he thought lost to all sense of faith and honor.

=The Terms of the Compromise of 1850.=—­When the debates were closed, the results were totaled in a series of compromise measures, all of which were signed in September, 1850, by the new President, Millard Fillmore, who had taken office two months before on the death of Zachary Taylor.  By these acts the boundaries of Texas were adjusted and the territory of New Mexico created, subject to the provision that all or any part of it might be admitted to the union “with or without slavery as their constitution may provide at the time of their admission.”  The Territory of Utah was similarly organized with the same conditions as to slavery, thus repudiating the Wilmot Proviso without guaranteeing slavery to the planters.  California was admitted as a free state under a constitution in which the people of the territory had themselves prohibited slavery.

The slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, but slavery itself existed as before at the capital of the nation.  This concession to anti-slavery sentiment was more than offset by a fugitive slave law, drastic in spirit and in letter.  It placed the enforcement of its terms in the hands of federal officers appointed from Washington and so removed it from the control of authorities locally elected.  It provided that masters or their agents, on filing claims in due form, might summarily remove their escaped slaves without affording their “alleged fugitives” the right of trial by jury, the right to witness, the right to offer any testimony in evidence.  Finally, to “put teeth” into the act, heavy penalties were prescribed for all who obstructed or assisted in obstructing the enforcement of the law.  Such was the Great Compromise of 1850.

[Illustration:  AN OLD CARTOON REPRESENTING WEBSTER “STEALING CLAY’S THUNDER”]

=The Pro-slavery Triumph in the Election of 1852.=—­The results of the election of 1852 seemed to show conclusively that the nation was weary of slavery agitation and wanted peace.  Both parties, Whigs and Democrats, endorsed the fugitive slave law and approved the Great Compromise.  The Democrats, with Franklin Pierce as their leader, swept the country against the war hero, General Winfield Scott, on whom the Whigs had staked their hopes.  Even Webster, broken with grief at his failure to receive the nomination, advised his friends to vote for Pierce and turned away from politics to meditate upon approaching death.  The verdict of the voters would seem to indicate that for the time everybody, save a handful of disgruntled