oad, and
only be careful not to turn off with him when he takes his own.

The _Visitor_ had thousands of readers scattered over every State and
Territory in the nation, in England and the Canadas. It was quoted more
perhaps than any other paper in the country, and whether for blame or
praise, its sentiments were circulated, and men of good judgment thought
it made thousands of votes for the Free Soil party.

CHAPTER XXVI.

VISIT WASHINGTON.--AGE, 35.

When slavery thought to reap the fruits of the war into which she had
plunged the nation with Mexico, lo! there was a lion in her path, and
not a Bunyan lion either, for this kingly beast wore no collar, no chain
held him. The roused North had laid her great labor paw on the
California gold fields and stood showing her teeth while the serpent
with raised crest was coiled to strike, and the world waited and
wondered.

Henry Clay, the synonym for compromise, was still in the United States
Senate, and, with his cat-like tread, stepped in between the
belligerents with a cunning device--a device similar to that by which
the boys disposed of the knife they found jointly--one was to own, the
other to carry and use it. So by this plan the lion was to own
California, and the snake was to occupy it as a hunting-ground; nay, not
it alone, but every State and Territory in the Union must be given up to
its slimy purposes. In other words, California was to be admitted as a
free State, upon condition of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill,
which authorized the slave-hunter to follow the fugitive into every
home, every spot of this broad land; to tear him from any altar, and
demand the services of every "good citizen" in his hellish work. Men by
thousands, once counted friends of freedom, bowed abjectly to this
infamous decision.

Daniel Webster, the leading Whig statesman, made a set speech in favor
of thus giving up the whole country to the dominion of the slave power.
It was another great bid for the next presidential nomination, which
must be controlled by the South. The danger was imminent, the crisis
alarming, and the excitement very great. I longed to be in Washington,
so I wrote to Horace Greeley, who answered that he would pay me five
dollars a column for letters. It was said that this was the first time a
woman had been engaged in that capacity.

I went to Washington in the early part of '50, going by canal to the
western foot of the Alleghenies, and then by ra