A History of the American People

men (and women) in Massachusetts and South Carolina, determined to end slavery, or to
maintain it, at literally any cost.
Disgusted by his failure to get a solution to the California admission problem, and worn out
anyway, Polk made good his promise not to run again (dying soon after leaving the White
House). The Democrats fielded a strong Manifest Destiny candidate in the shape of Lewis Cass
(1782-1866), a Michigan senator who favored cheap land, squatters' rights, and all kinds of
popular causes. The Whigs countered this by picking General Zachary Taylor (thus confirming
Polk's fears of 'political generals'), whose victory at Buena Vista had made him a semi-legendary
figure. Neither party had a proper platform, especially on the slavery issue. But Taylor came
from Louisiana and had scores of slaves working on his estates. This infuriated three groups of
Whigs: Van Buren's New Yorkers who called themselves 'Barnburners,' fanatical Massachusetts
anti-slavery men who called themselves Conscience Whigs,' and another abolitionist group who called themselves the Liberty Party. They ganged up together, called themselves the Free Soil Party, and nominated Van Buren. In theory this should have split the Whig, anti-slavery vote, and let Cass and the Democrats in. In practice it had the opposite effect. In the election razzmatazz, Taylor was so identified with the South that he carried eight slave states. Cass, the Democrat, could manage only seven. Moreover, the free soilers split the Democratic as well as the Whig vote in New York and handed it to Taylor. He won by 1,360,099 to Cass's 1,220,544 (Van Buren getting only 291,263), and by 163 to 127 college votes. This confused and confusing election brought to the White House a man whom Clay, who had now missed his last-ever chance to become president, dismissed asexclusively a military man,'
with no political experience, bred up and always living in the camp with his sword by his side and his Epaulettes on his shoulders.' By contrast, Clay characterized his friend Millard Fillmore (1800-74), the Vice-President, an experienced New York Tweed machine-man, asable,
enlightened, indefatigable and ... patriotic.' Both these verdicts were soon put to the test. Clay
was wrong about Taylor. He was not a mere general, nor was he a pro-slaver, as the South had
hoped. He encouraged the Californians, who were anxious to get on with things and achieve
constitutional respectability, to elect a free state administration. This was done all the more easily
because the miners were overwhelmingly antislavery, fearing their jobs would be taken by
slaves. On December 4, 1849, in his message to Congress, Taylor asked it to admit California
immediately, and to stop debating exciting topics of sectional character'-he meant slavery- 'which produced painful apprehensions in the public mind'-that is, talk and fear of secession. Millard, by contrast, justified Clay's eulogium by presiding fairly and skillfully over the Senate, an important point since Congress, far from heeding the President's advice to steer off slavery, debated virtually nothing else in 1850. Then, on July 4, the President, having" presided over the ceremonies, gobbled down a lot of raw fruit, cabbages, and cucumbers-foodmade for
four-footed animals and not Bipeds' as one observer put it-and gulped quantities of iced water
(the heat and humidity were intense). It was probably the iced water that did it, though there was
talk of poison. Five days later the President died in agony of acute gastroenteritis, and Fillmore
took over. The new President, unlike Taylor, favored compromise over the California issue, and
Senator Clay, in effect the administration's spokesman in Congress, was able to deliver it to him.
By this time the debates had already lasted six months. Students of rhetorical form rate the
speeches in the Senate as among the greatest in the entire history of Anglo-Saxon oratory,
worthy to rank with the duels of Pitt and Fox, and Gladstone and Disraeli. In fact the three main
protagonists were uttering their swansongs. Calhoun was dying, Clay was at the end of his
immense career, and Webster became secretary of state in the Fillmore administration. Readers