Chapter XV

THE BEGINNING OF STRIFE; OR, THE TAYLOR AND FILLMORE WEBBING.

1849–1853.

The Young Polka Dancer becomes Floor Manager.—The large Apples of
Discord emptied on the Floor of Congress.—What they were; and the
Pacific Trees from which they fell.—Of California, New Mexico, and
Deseret.—General Taylor’s Death, and Mr. Fillmore’s suave Manners and
smooth Appeals.—Wendell Phillips and J. Davis.—Political Nurses and
Anodynes.—Kossuth and his Short Catechism.—How it did not take, and
how he did.—A large Piece of Japanned Ware.—Deaths of Clay and
Webster.—The Autumn Glory which they shed on a Stormy Season.

The young man who, in Texas and Mexico, had got through the polka to the delight of the spectators, and the discontent of the floor committee, became himself the general manager for the coming season; Millard Fillmore being first assistant.

Already, however, the apple of discord, or rather a whole barrelful of very red-faced Spitzenbergs, mixed with meal-colored russets, had been emptied into the Union, and rolled over the floor of Congress. The acquisitions, gained from Mexico by arms and the treaty of 1848, including the new gold weights handed up by California, disturbed the adjustments of Mr. Calhoun’s patent balances, which only worked well when a colored State was put on one side at the same moment that an uncolored one was put upon the other,—an operation about as difficult and just as natural, as that which regulates the number of children in a family to the number of bushels of wheat grown in any season, or to the number of windy days in the year. In 1850, three Territories pressed for admission as States, each carrying some of the fatal apples; California, with a Constitution excluding slavery; New Mexico, formed out of Texas, but disputing with her a boundary line; and Utah, then called Deseret, taking in all the women which could be drawn thither, and, by the aid of its dry air, absorbing them into the Smith and Young families. Texas herself, admitted into the Union in December, 1847, always swaggering with a rapier in her belt and a patch over her eye, bullied New Mexico lustily on one side, so as to make lustier claims upon the United States on the other,—a cock-eyed way of shooting that made one barrel with two diverging eyes over the sight do the work of a double-shooter. Petitions from the North for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and from the South for a more stringent fugitive-slave act, rolled very large Spitzenbergs and russets on the floor of Congress.

Looking from the legislative galleries upon the newly arrived heap, a Western stroller might have asked of his comrade, as the freshly landed Irishman demanded of his countrymen, at his first sight of a tortoise walking about, “Be these live snuff-boxes common in these America; be they or _be_ they?” and might have received a like answer, “Be asy, and look on I tell ye, for I dunno’s they be, and I dunno _as_ they be.”

Suddenly, however, Mr. Clay’s old established omnibus, belonging to the compromise line,—which generally took up all the passengers, rejoicing at their good luck, although apt to set them down very discontented at the end of the way,—drove in to carry off in one load all of these fretting, complaining subjects.

Just at this time, July 9, 1850, the large-hearted but short-headed President died, and the polite and urbane Fillmore,

“Washing his hands with invisible soap,
In imperceptible water,”

stepped out on the balcony, and, bowing suavely towards the driver and the quarrelsome load, begged Mr. Webster, Mr. Corwin, Mr. Crittenden, and other by-standers, to be good enough to assist in getting the carry-all and the disagreeable objects that kept so many people awake o’ nights, out of Washington. It was not until September, however, before the tightly crammed vehicle was started, carrying California in a State suit, unattended by a colored servant, New Mexico, and Utah as Territorial passengers, with the liberty of having bronzed property or not along with them, slavers taken out of the District of Columbia never to return, a chest containing ten million dollars for the State with a patch on its eye, and messengers to the Northern free States, informing them that hereafter they were to break up all underground railroads, and to send stray Southern baggage, without its owners, back whence it had departed.

Of course everybody was dissatisfied, except Wendell Phillips, J. Davis, and their following,—the ascendentalists and descendentalists,—who, sincere devotees for equality and inequality, found a novel pleasure in having new stand-points, from which they could each look up to or down upon, a grievance large enough for thought, speech, and action.

The political nurses, of course, thought that the paregoric had forever quieted the crying evils; but wiser people foresaw that these attempts to get remedies for wide-awake consciences and interests out of a Congress-water bottle were just as idle as the conjurer’s trick to obtain whiskey, wine cordial, brandy, and milk-punch from the same nozzle.

In 1851 Louis Kossuth, brought over from Turkey, whither he had escaped from Hungary in a national ship, put forth, immediately on his arrival here, a very short catechism, which comprised a single question and answer.

“_Q._ What is the chief end of Americans?

“_A._ To fight Austria evermore.”

After spending most eloquent commentaries upon this brief compendium of duty, in which he braided newly spun English words and upbraided American indifference, he abandoned the missionary field, leaving a large Kossuth party, but a very small body of proselytes to Kossuth’s gospel.

In 1852 we obtained an immensely large piece of japanned ware,—a Japanese treaty bargained for by Commodore Perry,—a piece which seems to grow larger the longer we look at it.

The death of Mr. Clay in June, 1852, and of Mr. Webster in October following, left, like the touch of frost in autumn, a dying glory to the troubled and storm-swept season which had just passed over America.