Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/314

276 sectional dispute or to provide for the division of the United States. But the year 1851 saw the thorough acceptance by the vast majority of Southern people of this great &quot;Settlement&quot; as a finality. No State legislation nor any other form of active opposition to any feature of the compromise was tried anywhere South.

It is a pity that this triumph was not as complete at the North. Greeley, editor of the powerful Tribune, denounced the compromise with great violence and upbraided the Northern statesmen who were supporting it as truculent to the slave-holding lords. The embittered leader went so far as to accuse some of these statesmen of duplicity in loudly declaiming that constitutional obligations required the surrender of fugitive slaves while they secretly gave money to aid the runaway in escaping to Canada. In vigorous language he wrote concerning the &quot;great Peace measures, "The net product was a corrupt monstrosity in legislation and morals which even the great name of Clay should not shield from lasting opprobrium.&quot; (American Conflict, I, 210.)

Great leaders with a large and excited following began at once an active and bitter agitation in many Northern States. Seward in New York, Stevens in Pennsylvania, Wade, Fessenden, Giddings and others equally eminent, provoked a popular hostility which displayed itself not in harmless, local mass meetings only, but in positive revolutionary legislation by States. A Massachusetts convention was called to denounce all who were concerned in securing the passage of these compromise bills, and the noble Webster, greatest of New England men of any age, fell under condemnation. A New England republic was so much talked about as to draw out from Caleb Gushing an eloquent appeal on July 4, 1851, for the Union. &quot;I have endeavored to picture to my self,&quot; he said, &quot;that republic of New England to the adoption of which the inconsiderateness of many among us, the perverseness of others, and the criminally ambi-