CHAP. above human! and to that we must look. In the meantime not extend the evil.”

LV.

1849.

Mar.

31.

July,

9.

Soon after this occurred the death of John C. Calhoun. He first entered Congress in 1811, and during almost forty years had filled various offices in the service of his country. A man of primitive tastes and simple manners, uniting the kindliest of feelings with unflinching integrity, and devotion to duty. The latter portion of his public career was marked by the most strenuous advocacy of States' rights and Southern institutions.

A few months later President Taylor was also numbered with the dead. He suddenly became ill with a violent fever, which terminated his life in a few days, after he had held office sixteen months. He had shown himself equal to the emergency; and his death was a public calamity indeed. Though elected by one party, his policy and acts were approved by all, and the whole nation mourned his loss.

MILLARD FILLMORE.

The Vice-President, on the 10th of July, took the oath, and was inaugurated as President. It was done without show or parade; merely a joint committee of three from each House of Congress, and the members of the cabinet, attended him. The oath was administered. by the venerable William Cranch, Chief Justice of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, who, appointed by John Adams, had held the office for fifty years. Not an unnecessary word was spoken; the ceremony was one of deep solemnity.

The first official act of Mr. Fillmore was to call upon Congress to take suitable measures for the funeral of the late President," who had been so recently raised by the unsolicited voice of the people to the highest civil authority

ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA.

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LV.

in the government." An impressive funeral service was CHAP. performed, and eulogies pronounced upon him by many of the leading statesmen of the country. The Cabinet re- 1850. signed, and the President nominated another, at the head of which was Daniel Webster as Secretary of State.

Four months had nearly elapsed since Henry Clay reported his Compromise Bill. Its provisions had been thoroughly discussed by the members of both Houses. It was then taken up article by article and passed-the last the Fugitive Slave law. The similar law which had been Sept. enacted in 1787, as part of the ordinance prohibiting slavery in the Territory north-west of the Ohio, and also a law to the same effect passed during Washington's administration, were thought to be defective, and a new one 1793. was framed.

The Supreme Court of the United States held the opinion that justices of the peace in the respective States, were not called upon to enforce the law for the rendition of slaves. Since the agitation of the slavery question in Congress, a dislike to enforcing that law had greatly increased in the free States. The feeling reached the Legislatures and some of them, by law, prohibited the use of their jails for the confinement of fugitive slaves, and the justices of the peace refused to act on the subject. To obviate the latter difficulty the present bill provided for the appointment of United States' commissioners, before whom such cases could be tried.

When the vote on the reception of California was taken, and she admitted to the Union, her senators, Wm. M. Gwin and John C. Fremont, who had been in waiting, immediately took their seats.

18.

The vast region known as Utah, was in the possession of the Indians and the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, a religious sect. It was founded by Joseph Smith, a native of Vermont, but at that time a resident of Central New 1827.

LV.

CHAP. York; illiterate and superstitious, cunning and unprincipled; when a youth he loved to dupe his companions; 1850. at the age of fifteen he pretended that he had seen visions; and at twenty-two that he had received a direct revelation from heaven; that he had been directed to a certain hill, where he would find golden plates, covered with Egyptian characters, which he alone, as a prophet, was empowered to decipher. This was the famous "Book of Mormon." It professed to give a new system of religion, and to chronicle events which occurred on this continent long anterior to the Christian era.

It is said a man named Spaulding, when laboring under ill health wrote the story to alleviate his hours of ennui; after his death the manuscript fell into the hands of Smith, who unscrupulously used it to deceive his fellow-men.

His system of polygamy led to gross immoralities; and the vicious, as well as the ignorant, some of whom may have been honest, became his disciples. In five 1833. years he had twelve hundred followers. At this time the whole sect removed to Jackson county, Missouri. As they professed to be the true saints, by virtue of which they were to become the inheritors of the western country, they became objects of distrust to the Missourians. The militia were called out, but the Mormons avoided a con1840. flict by crossing the river to Illinois.

They prepared to make that State their home. On a bluff, overlooking the Mississippi, they founded a city, Nauvoo, and erected an imposing temple. Thefts and robberies were numerous in the vicinity, and these crimes were attributed to the Mormons, some of whom were arrested. The saints, it was said, controlled the courts, for the prisoners were speedily liberated. An intense excitement was produced in the country by these proceedings. At length the Prophet himself, and a brother, were arrested and thrown into prison in the town of Carthage.

SALT LAKE CITY-DISUNION CONVENTION.

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A mob collected a few days after, and in the melee the CHAP brothers were slain. The spirit aroused against them was so violent that the Mormons could find safety alone in 1844. flight, and the following year they sold their possessions, left their beautiful city, which contained ten thousand inhabitants, and under chosen elders emigrated away across the plains and over the Rocky Mountains, and finally found a resting place in the Great Basin. As they were now upon the soil of Mexico, they hoped their troubles were at an end. They significantly called their new home, Deseret-the land of the Honey Bee. To recruit their numbers they sent missionaries to every quarter of the globe; that these zealous apostles have met with astonishing success in obtaining proselytes, is a sad reflection.

Meantime they labored with great zeal in founding a city on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. It is on ground four thousand three hundred feet above the level of the ocean, and planned on a large scale; its streets eight rods wide, and every house surrounded by a garden.

Presently came the war with Mexico, and the ceding of all that region to the United States. The Mormons were the first to organize themselves as a territory under the name of Deseret, but Congress saw proper to change the name to Utah. President Fillmore appointed Brigham Young, one of their elders, the first governor.

After the passage of the Compromise Bill, the agitation by no means ceased in the south. The design of seceding from the Union was openly avowed. A Disunion Convention met at Nashville, Tennessee. It invited the assembling of a "Southern Congress," but the legislatures of only two States responded to the call-South Carolina and Mississippi. The former elected their quota of representatives to the Congress. The great mass of the people were moved but little by these appeals, and the country

1850.

LV.

CHAP. breathed more freely in the confident belief that the vexed question was really at rest.

1850

In no previous discussion of the subject did the great majority of the people of the Union manifest so much interest, not because it had become more important, but a great change had been wrought, since, thirty years before, the country was agitated by the discussions, which led to the enactment of the Missouri Compromise. The number of newspapers had increased at an unprecedented rate, and with them the facilities for publishing general intelligence and reporting the debates in Congress, and now was added the telegraph, which seemed almost to bring the ears of the nation to the Halls of Legislation. Yet in a still greater proportion had the numbers of intelligent readers increased, millions of whom became familiar with the question and the principles involved, and watched with increasing interest every new phase the subject assumed. This may account for the earnestness which characterized this conflict of opinions; the mass of the people read and judged for themselves. The philanthropist may not dread the response of their hearts ;—they may be slow to act, but they are untrammelled by pledges and uninfluenced by political aspirations.

About the commencement of Taylor's administration, General Lopez, a Spaniard, endeavored to create a revolution in Cuba. He represented that the people of that island were anxious and prepared to throw off the yoke of the mother country; and by this means he persuaded large numbers of adventurous spirits in the United States to engage in the enterprise. The pretext was to aid the Cubans; but the real object was to secure the annexation of the island to the United States. President Taylor promptly issued a proclamation forbidding citizens of the Union to engage in the expedition. The warning was unheeded, and a company of six hundred men, under the