Auban after this remained
unmolested. A quaking administration, bent only on keeping
political matters in perfect balance, and on quenching promptly, as
best it might, any incipient blaze of anti-slavery zeal which might
break out from its smoldering, dared make no further move against
her. She was now too much in the public eye to be safe even in
suppression, and so was left to pursue her own way for a time; this
the more readily, of course, because she was doing nothing either
illegal or reprehensible. Indeed, as has been said, she was only
carrying out in private way a pet measure of Mr. Fillmore himself,
one which he had only with difficulty been persuaded to eliminate
from his first presidential message--that of purchasing the slaves
and deporting them from our shores. The government at Washington
perforce looked on, shivering, dreading lest this thing might fail,
dreading also lest it might not fail. It was a day of compromise,
of cowardice, of politics played as politics; a day of that
political unwisdom which always is dangerous--the fear of riding
straight, the ignorance of the saving quality of honest courage.
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