l and murderous lawlessness practised against Abolitionists was
praised by northern congressmen often as slavery came up in debate. Even
Senator Silas Wright, of New York, subsequently famous as a foe of
slavery, in remarks upon the reference of anti-slavery petitions,
boasted of the atrocities at Utica in 1835 and of others similar, as
proof that "resistance to these dangerous and wicked agitators in the
North had reached a point beyond law and above law." A bill, in 1836,
for closing the mails to abolitionist literature, another defiance of
the Constitution, Amendment I., secured engrossment in the Senate by the
casting vote of Vice-President Van Buren; Wright, Tallmadge, and
Buchanan also favoring; but failed to pass, nineteen to twenty-five,
because Benton, Clay, and Crittenden had the patriotism to vote nay.

Discussion hereon laid bare the vital contradiction in our governmental
system. Calhoun showed that the Constitution permits each State for
itself to define, in order to inhibit, incendiary literature.
Characteristically, he would have forced mail agents to obey state laws
upon this matter. Yet for Congress to have so directed would plainly
have been abridging freedom of the press.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Thomas H. Benton.

Had the Whig Party, while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough
boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have
been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance
passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders
and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern
members--twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise--proved deadly to the organization, its faithful old
battalions going over in the South to the Democrats, in the North to the
Republicans.

Many Whigs took the latter course by a circuitous route. Ever since the
alien and sedition laws, cry had been raised at intervals against the
too easy attainment of citizenship by the unnumbered immigrants
thronging to our shores, and agitation raised, more or less successful,
to thrust forward "Nativism" or Americanism, with opposition to the
Roman Catholic Church, as an issue in our politics. To such movements
Whigs, as legatees of Federalism, were always more friendly than
Democrats, which was partly a cause and partly a consequence of the
affinity that naturalized citizens all along showed for the Democratic
Party.