Meanwhile the country was enjoying the fruits of the Compromise and striving to persuade itself that it would endure. The people earnestly desired to believe that the slavery question was settled forever. So strong was the wish to be done with it that, but for the restless ambition of the politicians, the truce might have been protracted for many years. Permanent peace on the preposterous condition of maintaining on equipoise between active, aggressive and hostile forces was, of course, impossible. but it was confidently expected. Clay, Stephens and fifty-two other Members of the Senate and House issued a manifesto in January, 1851, in which they announced that the Compromise was final and, to give their manifesto the highest solemnity, gravely declared that they would not support anyone for office who was not in favor of faithfully upholding it.
In the North approval for the Compromise was general and enthusiastic.
It was hoped that money-making would no longer be disturbed by fanatical agitation of moral questions.
And yet there were murmurs of anger against the detested law. It was hard to compel the descendents of the Puritans to hunt down the fleeing slaves when they believed that the curse of God rested on the institution and that the rights of the fugitive were as sacred as those of his pursuers. There were outbreaks of defiance, violent rescues, occasional riots. But resistance was sporadic. The people were disposed to wash their hands of all responsibility for the law, to deprecate its existence, but, since it had been pronounced a final Compromise, to pray that it might prove so. In the South the general opinion was that the danger was past and that years of peace were in prospect. Enthusiastic meetings approving the compromise were held everywhere outside of South Carolina and Mississippi.
While the entire moral victory of the Compromise rested with the people of the South, they had won nothing substantial but the Fugitive Slave Law, which was of questionable value. The great object for which they had conspired, sinned and fought had slipped from their grasp. California was a free State. New Mexico with indecent haste had called a Convention, adopted a Constitution prohibiting slavery, and now demanded admission.
The Compromise, however, bade fair to endure. Fillmore in his annual message in December said, with perfect truth, that a great majority of the people sympathized in its spirit and purpose and were prepared in all respects to sustain it. In Congress an optimistic feeling prevailed. Clay complacently congratulated the country on the general acquiescence in the law and said that it had encountered but little resistance outside of Boston. Douglas assured the Senate that Illinois in good faith discharged its duty under the late Act. It was flanked on the east and west by the slave States of Kentucky and Missouri. It did not intend to become a free negro colony by offering refuge to the fleeing slaves of neighboring States and, not relying on the action of the Federal Government alone for protection, had enacted severe laws of its own to prevent it. When a Judge in that State he had imposed heavy penalties on citizens convicted of the offense of harboring fugitives from service. It was the duty of all citizens to sustain and execute the law, a duty imposed by patriotism and loyalty to the Constitution.
But there was an organization in the North to evade and resist the law, with men of talent, genius, energy, daring and desperate purpose at its head. It was a conspiracy against the Government, and men occupying seats in the Senate were responsible for the outrages the Boston mob perpetrated in resistance of the law. The Abolitionists were arming negroes in the free States and inciting them to murder anyone who attempted to seize them under the provisions of the law.
Already he aspired to the Presidency and began to jealously guard his reputation against the sinister suspicions which in those days haunted the ambitious statesman. The great problem which then taxed the ingenuity of the aspiring politician was, how to win the South without alienating the North, or how to hold the North without losing the South. Irreconcilable differences of opinion on fundamental questions, deepening ominously into passionate hostility of sentiment, were already manifesting themselves. The task of the politician was to steer his dangerous course between this Scylla and Charybdis.
If he gave color to the suspicion that he even tolerated the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North, the South would reject him with horror. If he espoused too warmly the cause that had become so dear to the heart of the South, the North, goaded by its over-sensitive conscience, would spurn him with disgust. In the existing state of party organization the highest success was not possible without at least partial reconciliation of these irreconcilable forces. Northern statesmen could not hope to succeed by brave appeals to the passions and prejudices of the South, for they would lose their home constituencies, the worst fatality that can befall an American politician. They could not hope to succeed by brave appeals to the earnest convictions of the North, for they had not yet authority as affirmative rules of political conduct.
