She grumbled that,
although she had helped fight for and pay for this territory, she
could not control it, and could not move into it legally the slaves
which then made the most valued part of a southern man's property.
As against this feeling, the united politicians had thrown to the
hot-headed Southerners a sop in the form of the Fugitive Slave Act.
The right for a southern owner to follow and claim his slave in any
northern state was granted under the Constitution of the United
States. Under the compromise of 1850, it was extended and
confirmed.
The abolitionists of the North rose in arms against this part of
the great compromise measure; a law which, though constitutional,
seemed to them nefarious and infamous. The leaders in Congress,
both Whig and Democrat, feared now, therefore, nothing in the world
so much as the outbreak of a new political party, which might
disorganize this nicely adjusted compromise, put an end to what all
politicians were fond of calling the "finality" of the arrangement,
and so bring on, if not an encounter of armed forces, if not a
rupture of the Union, at least what to them seemed almost as bad,
the disintegration of the two great parties of the day, the Whigs
and Democrats.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128