ations." Southern members pointed to the battle-fields of
the Revolution, and warned the people of the free States to beware;
while the menace was uttered that if the representatives of the
Northern States should vote California into the Union as a free
State, without some compensating measures to the South, their
numbers would be decimated by violence. Mr. Toombs, in referring
to the exclusion of slavery from the common territory, said "I will
then, if I can, bring my children and my constituents to the altar
of liberty, and like Hamilcar, I will swear them to eternal hostility
to your foul domination." On January 29th, Mr. Clay introduced
his eight resolutions of compromise, which still further weakened
the anti-slavery policy of Northern Whigs; and when, on February
4th, another vote was taken on the Wilmot proviso, it was laid on
the table by yeas 104, noes 75;--showing a majority of 29, and a
change of 47 votes in a little more than one month! Thus began
the sickening career of political apostacy, which so gathered
momentum during the spring and summer months that it became impossible
to admit the free State of California into the Union until the
passage of the Texas Boundary Bill and the new Fugitive Slave Act
had been made certain.

Early in the session I called on President Taylor with Mr. Giddings
and Judge Allen. I had a very strong curiosity to see the man
whose name I had used so freely in two exasperating political
campaigns, and desired to stand corrected in my estimate of his
character, if I should find such correction to be demanded by the
truth. Our interview with the old soldier was exceedingly interesting
and amusing. I decidedly liked his kindly, honest, farmer-like
face, and his old-fashioned simplicity of dress and manners. His
conversation was awkward and labored, and evinced a lack of self-
possession; while his whole demeanor suggested his frontier life,
and that he had reached a position for which he was singularly
unfitted by training and experience, or any natural aptitude. In
the few remarks he addressed to me about farming in the West, he
greatly amused us by saying, "I would like to visit Indiana, and
see your plows, hoes--and other reaping implements"; failing, as
he often did, to find the word he wanted. He frequently mispronounced
his words, hesitated and stammered, and sometimes made a breakdown
in the middle of a sentence. But although he seemed to be in the
hands of the