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 1852J Election of President Pierce. 419 saved. Clay also cried out to the last for peace, for good faith in the acceptance and fulfilment of the Compromise, for a steady allegiance in the maintenance of the old parties and the old programmes, against discontent and uproar and disquieting agitation. Both men passed from the stage before they could know what the outcome would be, hoping for the best, but doubting and distressed, their veteran heads bowed as if before a breaking storm. The year of their death (1852) synchronised with the election of a President ; and the state of parties gave cause for the gravest solicitude, to the leaders who remained as well as to those who were taken away. The Whigs uttered their usual declaration of principles, and avowed themselves entirely satisfied with the compromise measures of 1850; but they seemed to reckon for success rather upon the popularity of their candidate, General Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mexican war, than upon the attractiveness of their programme and principles. There were scores of Whigs who had no stomach for the Compromise and were alienated by their party's support of it. They could not yet quite bring themselves to act with the outspoken Free-Soil party, which met in convention at Pittsburg in August and boldly pronounced the Fugitive Slave Law repugnant both to the principles of law and to the spirit of Christianity, declaring its own programme to be "no more slave States, no more slave Territories, no nationalised slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of slaves " ; but they held off from their old allegiance and would not help their party against either the Free- Soilers or the Democrats. The Democrats, for their part, spoke with their old-time confidence and acted with unity and spirit. They de- clared, not only that they approved of the Compromise, but also that they would " faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799." They regarded those principles, they said, " as constituting one of the main foundations of their political creed," and meant " to carry them out in their obvious meaning and import." Their nominating convention found it impossible to choose between the three leading candidates for the party's favours, Lewis Cass of Michigan, James Buchanan of Pennsyl- vania, and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, and therefore nominated Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, an affable and prepossessing gentleman whom no one could condemn, and whom his supporters could admire for his quiet serviceableness as a member of the legislature of his State and of the federal House of Representatives, and for his unostentatious performance of his duty as an officer of volunteers in the Mexican war. And Pierce was elected. He received the electoral votes of every State except Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee two hundred and fifty-four votes to General Scott's forty-two. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives was, more- over, increased by thirty-seven, and in the Senate by six. No influential CH. xiii. 27 2