Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/364

354 a good many friends among them. The effect all this had upon Congress was not to strengthen the Southern extremists, whose main capital consisted in the terror spread by their threats of disunion and war, but rather to discourage Southern opposition to a compromise.

The other event of importance was the sudden death of President Taylor, who, on the Fourth of July, had exposed himself to an unusually hot sun, and then, on the 9th, succumbed to a violent fever. The Vice-President succeeding him in his office, Millard Fillmore, a man of fair abilities but little positiveness of character, had, before his election, passed as a Wilmot Proviso Whig. It has been widely believed that his jealousy of Seward, who easily outstripped him as a competitor for the leadership of the Whig party in New York, induced him to take his position on the other side. But it is by no means improbable that he favored Clay's compromise from natural inclination; for he was one of those men who, when put into positions of great responsibility, will avoid all strong measures, thinking that to be “the safe middle course.”

The old Cabinet resigned immediately after Taylor's death. Upon the advice of Clay, supported by Mangum, Fillmore appointed Webster Secretary of State. The Treasury Department he gave to Thomas Corwin of Ohio, who had been a very earnest anti-slavery man, but gradually became one of the most conservative of Northern