But this very fact enhanced his power with the South, and increased his hold upon his own people.

He taught the philosophy and supplied the arguments to the ambitious generation of public men who came after him, and who were prepared, as he was not, to force the issue to the arbitrament of arms.

Deplorable as was the end to which his teachings led, he could not have acquired the influence he wielded over millions of men unless he had been gifted with acute intellect, distinguished by moral excellence, and inspired by the sincerest…

History will adjudge him to have been single-hearted and honest in his political creed.

It will equally adjudge him to have been wrong in his theory of the Federal Government, and dead to the awakened sentiment of Christendom in his views concerning the enslavement of man.

His life was eminently pure, his career exceptional, his fame established beyond the reach of calumny, beyond the power of detraction.

Instead of arraigning the propagandists of slavery, he arraigned its opponents.

Instead of indicting the Disunionists of the South, the poured out his wrath upon the Abolitionists of the North.

Excitement and passion do not, however, always issue decrees and pronounce judgments of absolute right.

It gave to the friends of the Union the abundant logic which established the right and the power of the government to preserve itself.

A fame so lofty, a work so grand, cannot be marred by one mistake, if mistake it be conceded.

These men had not given up the creed which demanded an anti-slavery restriction on every inch of soil owned by the United States.

They viewed with abhorrence the legislation which had placed freedom and slavery on the same plane in the Territories of Utah and New Mexico.

They believed that Texas had been paid for a baseless claim ten millions of dollars, one-half of which, as a sharp critic declared, was hush-money, the other half blood-money.

They regarded the cruel law for the return of fugitive slaves as an abomination in the sight of God and man.

It allowed the personal liberty of a man to be peremptorily decided by a United- States commissioner, acting with absolute power and without appeal.

For a claim exceeding twenty dollars in value, every citizen has the right to a trial by jury; but by this law the body, the life, the very soul of a man, possibly a free-born citizen, might be consigned to perpetual enslavement on the…

An apparently slight, yet especially odious feature of the law which served in large degree to render it inoperative was that the United-States commissioner, in the event of his remanding the alleged fugitive to slavery, received a fee of…

The tendency would naturally be to consolidate the slave-holding States in support of the Democratic candidates, because that party had a large, well-organized force throughout the North cherishing the same principles, co-operating for the…

He knew when he wrote his letter that the Democrats would pledge themselves to the finality of the Compromise, and he knew the Southern Whigs would be overwhelmed if there should be halting or hesitation on this issue either in their…

He felt, as the responsible author of the Compromise, that he was himself on trial, and it would be a peculiar mortification if the party which he had led so long should fail to sustain him in this final crisis of his public life.

The personal characteristics of the candidates were lost sight of in the face of the great issues involved.

The people soon perceived that if there was indeed merit in the Compromise measures, it would be wise to intrust them to the keeping of the party that was unreservedly--North and South-- in favor of upholding and enforcing them.

Supporting the candidate and spitting on the platform became the expressive if inelegant watchword of many Northern Whigs, but for every Whig vote which this phrase kept to his party allegiance in the free States, it drove two over to the…

The wonder excited by the raising of the vast army which saved the Union from destruction was even surpassed by the wonder excited by its prompt and peaceful dissolution.