Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/217

 The Sifted Grain and the Gi'aifi Sifters 207 The time now drew near when Wisconsin was to take her place in the Union, and exert her share of influence on the national polity, and through that polity on a phase of political evolution. South Carolina, by the voice of Calhoun, was preaching reaction, through slavery and in defiance of nationality : Massachusetts, through Gar- rison and Webster, was proclaiming the moral idea and nationality as abstractions ; while J. O. Adams confronted Calhoun with the ominous contention that, the instant he or his had recourse to force, that instant the moral wrong could be made good by the sword wielded in defence of nationality and in the name of the Con- stitution. As 1848 waxed old, the debate grew angry. J. Q. Adams died in the early months of that memorable year ; but his death in no way affected the course of events. The leadership in the anti- slavery struggle on the floor of Congress and within the limits of the Constitution had passed from him four years before. He was too old longer to bear the weight of armor, or to wield weapons once familiar ; but the effect of his teachings remained, and they were living realities wherever the New England column had penetrated, — throughout central New York, in the " Western Reserve," and especially in the region which bordered on Lake Michigan. Gar- rison still declaimed against the Union as an unholy alliance with sin ; while, in the mind of Webster, his sense of the wrong of slavery was fast being overweighted by apprehension for nationality. In the mean time, a war of criminal aggression against Mexico in behalf of Calhoun's reactionary movement had been brought to a close, and the question was as to the partition of plunder. On that great issues hinged, and over it was fought the presidental election of 1848. A little more than fifty years ago, that was the first elec- tion in which Wisconsin participated. The number of those who now retain a distinct recollection of the canvass of 1848, and the questions then so earnestly debated are not many ; I chance to be one of those few. I recall one trifling incident connected, not with the canvass but with the events of that year, which, for some reason, made an impression upon me, and now illustrates curiously the re- moteness of the time. I have said that J. O. Adams died in Feb- ruary, 1848. Carried back with much funereal state from the Capitol at Washington to Massachusetts, he was in March buried at Quincy. An eloquent discourse was then delivered over his grave by the minister of the church of which the ex-President had been a member. He who delivered it was a scholar, as well as a natural orator of high order ; and, in the course of what he said he had occasion to refer to this remote region, then not yet admitted