lant one, no doubt; in which mere handfuls of American troops, most of them volunteers, overran a whole vast country, beat repeatedly several numerous armies, confident in their own prowess, on their own soil, under all odds, supplied the United States with a fresh stock of heroes to last till the War of Secession, and finally tore away from a neighbouring republic 850,000 square miles of territory. But the conquest is big with mischief to the conquerors; the bitter slavery feud breaks out afresh over the division of the spoil. Calhoun openly denies the title of Congress to legislate on slavery for the territories. That which, in the view of the great founders of the Republic, was to have been but a temporary accident in the history of his country, he proclaims to be part and parcel of its Constitution. The right is boldly claimed for the slaveholder to carry his curse with him wherever he goes. The North on the other side tried, by the "Wilmot proviso," to preserve all territory acquired from Mexico free from slavery, as it had been under Mexican rule. California settled the dispute for herself by declaring against slavery. Like Mr. Tyler, Mr. Polk could not win the honour of a renomination to the Presidency, but, more fortunate than he, withdrew from it (1849) to die at his home three months after. A man exemplary in private life, Burton says, the only good acts of whose Presidency were his own, the bad those of his Cabinet. Considering by whom this was headed, we may believe at least that Mr. Polk did not borrow much good from it. The next name in the list (which represents a temporary Whig triumph) is the only one, between Van Buren and Lincoln, on which the mind dwells with any degree of complacency. General ZACHARY TAYLOR, of Mississippi, another Virginian by birth and consequently seventh Virginian President (born 1784 -as I find elsewhere, 1790-died 1850), had been bred a farmer on the then Kentucky frontier, took to arms in 1808, distinguished himself during the war of 1812, and afterwards in the Seminole war, led (but only after almost extorting express orders to do so from the Executive) the invasion of Mexico, won victories at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, stormed Monterey, and won, with an army chiefly composed of recruits, his final victory at Buena Vista, where "Sherman's and Bragg's artillery," it is recorded, "did fearful execution," after General Scott had taken the chief conduct of the campaign. Beyond all doubt a first-rate soldier, gentle as he was brave; simple in manners, beloved of his soldiers, and who, to be carried by acclamation to the Presidency, in all probability never would have needed to stoop to the slave-power by that purchase of eighty slaves which gave Mr. Lowell occasion for a detail in the canvass of his immortal "Birdofredum Sawin." It is remarkable, indeed, that, differing from all his predecessors, Taylor had never filled any civil office before reaching the highest; but he soon showed that he was not the less fit for it on that account. His Inaugural was short and to the point, and dwelt upon the value of the Union, which he evidently saw to be threatened already from within. "Whatever dangers may "threaten it, I shall stand by it, and "maintain it in its integrity to the full "extent of the obligations imposed and "the power conferred upon me by the "Constitution." General Taylor made good his words, so far as time allowed, by moderation towards foreign powers, and by firmness against filibustering. But the country was convulsed through the presumption of the Californians in deciding for themselves against the admission of slavery. The Missouri compromise had only directly prohibited slavery, north of 36° 40′; but the slaveholders had chosen to construe it as establishing slavery as far as that line, and, part of California running south of it, they howled as if robbed. Clay was trying to patch up the matter, as his wont was, by compromise, and bringing forward an "omnibus" bill of six different members, touching and tinkering everywhere the whole subject of slavery and the slave-trade. Calhoun was dying. His last speech, prophesying disunion, was read in the Senate by James Mason of Virginia (late Confederate Commissioner to Europe). He died four months before the President, who was killed by a Fourth of July celebration. The oration was long, the wind was high, the old President listened bare-headed. The next day he was attacked by cholera, followed by remittent fever. In five days he was gone; his last soldierly words being:-"I am pre"pared: I have endeavoured to do my duty." But he left an ominous legacy to his countrymen in the person of his son-in-law, Mr. Jefferson Davis, hero of Mississippi repudiation. The Presidency now fell to a Northerner by birth, MILLARD FILLMORE, of New York, Whig Vice-President, born in 1800; the first who had risen from the actual working classes, since he had been apprenticed to a woolcarder, others say, a clothier; but who had begun studying law at nineteen, risen rapidly into practice, sat in the State Legislature, in Congress, had been unsuccessful candidate for the Governorship of his State, and was finally elected on the same "ticket" with General Taylor, as a safe and respectable second-rate. A well-meaning A well-meaning man, no doubt; well-fitted for subordinate office; who, when he stumbled into the highest, had moreover the good sense to choose really able men (Daniel Webster, and, on his death, Edward Everett) for Secretaries of State. The country continued to be convulsed by Southern agitators. Mr. Jefferson Davis and others protested in writing against the admission of California without slavery; the slave states held a convention at Nashville; a Southern Congress was proposed; South Carolina fixed her quota of representatives at it, Mississippi passing also an act for promoting it. Clay, indeed, obtained what many considered at the time his greatest triumph by the passing of the greater part of his "omnibus" bill; the Fugitive Slave law attempt to put its powers in force roused the nearly stagnant feelings of the North against man-stealing, and riots occurred at Philadelphia, at Boston. The South took huff again; South Carolina threatened to withdraw from Congress; her Governor, in his message, recommended separation. The filibustering spirit was abroad, and almost involved the United States in a war with Spain, besides various quarrels with England, and Peru. But the Unionist spirit was still strong in the South. Ponisett of South Carolina, Houston of Texas, Howell Cobb of Georgia (since a member of the Confederate Cabinet), made a vigorous stand against the Southern fire-eaters. In the midst of the agitation Clay died, and Webster (1852). Mr. Fillmore dropped out of office at the expiration of his term (1853); of which it may be said that he did but little mischief, and hindered some, during its continuance, but that it left him with the delusion that, having filled the highest office, he was fitted for it. Hence we see him turn up again during the great contest of 1857, as the candidate of the "Native American party, called by its opponents the "Peaceat-any-price men," or "Dough faces". men who thought that evil can be avoided by not speaking of it. His name was also mentioned last year as that of a possible Vice-President with M'Clellan. FRANKLIN PIERCE (born 1804), elected against the candidate of highest character who had been put forward for many years for the Presidency-noble old General Scott, the ever-loyal Virginianwas by no means a favourable exchange even for a mediocrity like Mr. Fillmore. A Northerner (of New Hampshire), a graduate, a successful lawyer, he had risen rapidly through his State Legislature and the United States House of Representatives to the Senate at thirty-three; had withdrawn after five years' service, but had enlisted for the Mexican war as a volunteer, distinguished himself, and reached the rank of brigadier-general. Personally able, but without strength of will, endeared with much personal charm the eulogistic biography of his friend Mr. Hawthorne. But his Presidency was most discreditable. He took into his Cabinet the notorious repudiator of Mississippi, the chief of the Southern firebrands, Mr. Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of War; sent to Spain as envoy an avowed advocate of the conquest of Cuba, Pierre Soulé; promoted underhand, it is said, the so-called Ostend Conference of filibustering diplomats; kept in hot water with England; received an envoy from the filibuster Walker, then preying on Nicaragua; [succeeded meanwhile, and rapidly too, in setting Congress against him, and receiving from it various rebuffs. The North distrusted him as a renegade, governing for the benefit of those who were enemies to the Union; the South as a Northerner, even whilst he is acting as a mere Southern partizan. A man stood near, outside of office, who, though of lower type than the Clays, Websters, and Calhouns, yet overshadowed the President as completely as did those the Polks, Tylers, or Fillmores -Stephen A. Douglas, the "Little Giant of Illinois." With his doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty," as it was termed in derision-i. e. of the right of the first occupants of a territory to decide for themselves on what terms it should be governed, with or without slavery-he held the Northern democracy, and much of the Southern; the latter, because it seems the natural corollary of the Statesrights' theory; the former, because it seems to contain the promise that the bulk of unoccupied territory would be secured, by mere overweight of numbers, to the free North. Practically, it meant the transferring of grave political questions from the few to the crowd, from the educated to the ignorant, from the decision of a majority in Congress to that of the bludgeon, the rifle, and the bowie knife, all along every possible border-line between freedom and slavery; in short, the legalizing and organizing of civil war. To the arbitrament of force was thus referred the great internal question of Mr. Pierce's administration -that of the settlement of Kansas line-with or without slavery. Yet the Kansas struggle, the direct fruit of Mr. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill (which allowed slavery to be introduced north of 36° 30', whenever the people of the territories should think fit), was but the most palpable symptom of the fast advancing break-up of the American polity -otherwise evidenced by such acts, on the part of the South, as Brooks's brutal assault on Sumner, and the cane of honour presented to the former by the ladies of South Carolina; as the open advocacy in convention at Savannah of the reopening of the slave-trade; as the famous Dred Scott decision of the proslavery judges in the Supreme Court of the United States, denying all rights of citizenship to the coloured race, declaring the Missouri compromise illegal so far as it forbade slavery anywhere, and consequently ensuring to the slave-owner the right to carry his slaves even into those states which absolutely forbade slavery; on the part of the North, by open legal resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, by an Act of Massachusetts professing to repeal it; in both North and South, by the formation of the strange "Know-Nothing" party, having for watchword "America for the Americans," which, however, soon split on the rock of slavery, but out of its better elements, combined with old Whigs, Free-Soilers, Abolitionists, gave birth to the great Republican party, second of the name. Mr. Pierce in turn sank out of office without obtaining the honour of a renomination, nor has he since figured in politics-personal trials, indeed, overshadowing the later years of his life. The new election was a historical one. The Democratic Convention, after hesitating between Douglas and Buchanan, fixed upon the latter for candidate; the Republicans chose Fremont, explorer of the Pacific route, declarer of Californian independence, and first Californian senator; the Native Americans, a remnant of Know-Nothings who had refused to take ground against the extension of slavery, declaring, as before mentioned, of slavery and the slave-trade. Calhoun was dying. His last speech, prophesying disunion, was read in the Senate by James Mason of Virginia (late Confederate Commissioner to Europe). He died four months before the President, who was killed by a Fourth of July celebration. The oration was long, the wind was high, the old President listened bare-headed. The next day he was attacked by cholera, followed by remittent fever. In five days he was gone; his last soldierly words being :-"I am pre"pared: I have endeavoured to do my "duty." But he left an ominous legacy to his countrymen in the person of his son-in-law, Mr. Jefferson Davis, hero of Mississippi repudiation. The Presidency now fell to a Northerner by birth, MILLARD FILLMORE, of New York, Whig Vice-President, born in 1800; the first who had risen from the actual working classes, since he had been apprenticed to a woolcarder, others say, a clothier; but who had begun studying law at nineteen, risen rapidly into practice, sat in the State Legislature, in Congress, had been unsuccessful candidate for the Governorship of his State, and was finally elected on the same "ticket" with General Taylor, as a safe and respectable second-rate. A well-meaning man, no doubt; well-fitted for subordinate office; who, when he stumbled into the highest, had moreover the good sense to choose really able men (Daniel Webster, and, on his death, Edward Everett) for Secretaries of State. The country continued to be convulsed by Southern agitators. Mr. Jefferson Davis and others protested in writing against the admission of California without slavery; the slave states held a convention at Nashville; a Southern Congress was proposed; South Carolina fixed her quota of representatives at it, Mississippi passing also an act for promoting it. Clay, indeed, obtained what many considered at the time his greatest triumph by the passing of the greater part of his "omnibus" bill; the Fugitive Slave law attempt to put its powers in force roused the nearly stagnant feelings of the North against man-stealing, and riots occurred at Philadelphia, at Boston. The South took huff again; South Carolina threatened to withdraw from Congress; her Governor, in his message, recommended separation. The filibustering spirit was abroad, and almost involved the United States in a war with Spain, besides various quarrels with England, and Peru. But the Unionist spirit was still strong in the South. Ponisett of South Carolina, Houston of Texas, Howell Cobb of Georgia (since a member of the Confederate Cabinet), made a vigorous stand against the Southern fire-eaters. In the midst of the agitation Clay died, and Webster (1852). Mr. Fillmore dropped out of office at the expiration of his term (1853); of which it may be said that he did but little mischief, and hindered some, during its continuance, but that it left him with the delusion that, having filled the highest office, he was fitted for it. Hence we see him turn up again during the great contest of 1857, as the candidate of the "Native American party, called by its opponents the "Peaceat-any-price men," or "Dough faces" men who thought that evil can be avoided by not speaking of it. His name was also mentioned last year as that of a possible Vice-President with M'Clellan. FRANKLIN PIERCE (born 1804), elected against the candidate of highest character who had been put forward for many years for the Presidency-noble old General Scott, the ever-loyal Virginianwas by no means a favourable exchange even for a mediocrity like Mr. Fillmore. A Northerner (of New Hampshire), a graduate, a successful lawyer, he had risen rapidly through his State Legislature and the United States House of Representatives to the Senate at thirty-three; had withdrawn after five years' service, but had enlisted for the Mexican war as a volunteer, distinguished himself, and reached the rank of brigadier-general. Personally able, but without strength of will, endeared with much personal charm the eulogistic biography of his friend Mr. Hawthorne. But his Presidency was most discreditable. He took into his Cabinet the notorious repudiator of Mississippi, the chief of the Southern firebrands, Mr. Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of War; sent to Spain as envoy an avowed advocate of the conquest of Cuba, Pierre Soulé; promoted underhand, it is said, the so-called Ostend Conference of filibustering diplomats; kept in hot water with England; received an envoy from the filibuster Walker, then preying on Nicaragua; succeeded meanwhile, and rapidly too, in setting Congress against him, and receiving from it various rebuffs. The North distrusted him as a renegade, governing for the benefit of those who were enemies to the Union; the South as a Northerner, even whilst he is acting as a mere Southern partizan. A man stood near, outside of office, who, though of lower type than the Clays, Websters, and Calhouns, yet overshadowed the President as completely as did those the Polks, Tylers, or Fillmores -Stephen A. Douglas, the "Little Giant of Illinois." With his doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty," as it was termed in derision-i. e. of the right of the first occupants of a territory to decide for themselves on what terms it should be governed, with or without slavery-he held the Northern democracy, and much of the Southern; the latter, because it seems the natural corollary of the Statesrights' theory; the former, because it seems to contain the promise that the bulk of unoccupied territory would be secured, by mere overweight of numbers, to the free North. Practically, it meant the transferring of grave political questions from the few to the crowd, from the educated to the ignorant, from the decision of a majority in Congress to that of the bludgeon, the rifle, and the bowie-knife, all along every possible border-line between freedom and slavery; in short, the legalizing and organizing of civil war. To the arbitrament of force was thus referred the great internal question of Mr. Pierce's administration that of the settlement of Kansas line-with or without slavery. Yet the Kansas struggle, the direct fruit of Mr. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill (which allowed slavery to be introduced north of 36° 30', whenever the people of the territories should think fit), was but the most palpable symptom of the fast advancing break-up of the American polity -otherwise evidenced by such acts, on the part of the South, as Brooks's brutal assault on Sumner, and the cane of honour presented to the former by the ladies of South Carolina; as the open advocacy in convention at Savannah of the reopening of the slave-trade; as the famous Dred Scott decision of the proslavery judges in the Supreme Court of the United States, denying all rights of citizenship to the coloured race, declaring the Missouri compromise illegal so far as it forbade slavery anywhere, and consequently ensuring to the slave-owner the right to carry his slaves even into those states which absolutely forbade slavery; on the part of the North, by open legal resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, by an Act of Massachusetts professing to repeal it; in both North and South, by the formation of the strange "Know-Nothing" party, having for watchword "America for the Americans," which, however, soon split on the rock of slavery, but out of its better elements, combined with old Whigs, Free-Soilers, Abolitionists, gave birth to the great Republican party, second of the name. Mr. Pierce in turn sank out of office without obtaining the honour of a renomination, nor has he since figured in politics-personal trials, indeed, overshadowing the later years of his life. The new election was a historical one. The Democratic Convention, after hesitating between Douglas and Buchanan, fixed upon the latter for candidate; the Republicans chose Fremont, explorer of the Pacific route, declarer of Californian independence, and first Californian senator; the Native Americans, a remnant of Know-Nothings who had refused to take ground against the extension of slavery, declaring, as before mentioned, |