Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/391

Rh ular situation, he has his own intellect, his own cunning, and his own means of escape at his command.” Indeed, the South should be satisfied. He was sure the President and the Cabinet were “immovably determined” to carry out the law, and to employ all the means in their power to that end; and the people would aid them. In his opinion the “compromise had worked a miracle.” The agitation about the Wilmot Proviso had disappeared; also that about California, and about slavery in the District of Columbia. The compromise had “made thousands of converts among the abolitionists themselves.” Peace and good feeling had been produced by it surpassing his “most sanguine expectations.” Only a few ultraists were still restless, but the people would frown them down. If necessary, however, to quiet the apprehensions of his Southern friends, and to prevent the repetition of such occurrences as the liberation of Shadrach still more effectually, he would willingly see the President authorized to dispense with the proclamation required by existing law, when, in anticipation of a disturbance in connection with the arrest of a fugitive slave, he should call the militia or the army of the United States into service.

A majority of the Southern Senators accepted Clay's sanguine view of things. But those who still insisted that the fugitive-slave law would never be sure of effectual enforcement unless the Northern people themselves enforced it with cordiality