Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/320

282 great leaders in effecting and sustaining the &quot;settlement of 1850.&quot; Their combined strength would have nominated either. By opposition both lost. It is not improbable that either might have been elected, but if defeated the vote would have been close enough to have prevented the disbanding of the great old Whig party which had triumphed in 1840 and 1848. Clay and Webster died with their expiring party. Fillmore s followers rowed away quickly from the sinking ship. Webster s devoted friends, mourning his death and resenting his rejection by the people whom he had served, went sullenly into other affiliations.

The ruins of this magnificent party furnished the best material of a new hostile, determined organization. Scott s friends, angered by their stinging defeat; the adherents of Fillmore and Webster, thoroughly disgusted with old party alliance all were now out of national power and held even their States precariously. They were ready for a new agitation by which power might be regained.

The Whig vote for Scott was 1,386,580; the agitators vote for Hale was only 155,825; Pierce’s vote of 1,601,274 exceeded the Whig poll by only a little more than 200,000. It will be seen that, while this analysis shows the Whig strength, it also discloses the strength of public sentiment against further sectional agitation. Only a few more than 155,000 votes out of over 2,000,000 declared in 1852 for a continued sectional contest. The popular verdict showed unmistakably that the people designed to let the sectional question of slavery work out its own destiny on the principles of the settlement of 1850. In this contest the South voted unanimously against sectional agitation.

Only one threatening cloud hung in the sky. The Free Soilers, though few in numbers, were a resolute, conscience-stricken brotherhood who were posted in various sections of the North, readers of but one class of