and
though his followers maintained their position resolutely, their Whig
allies were deserting them, and the Nashville convention proved a fiasco
when it assembled in June. President Taylor died on the 9th of July, and
the last obstacle to the success of Clay and Webster was removed.
Millard Fillmore, the Vice-President, a close friend of Clay, became
President; the Cabinet was reorganized, Webster becoming Secretary of
State. One by one during the month of August all the features of the
"Omnibus Bill" became law. The great majority of the Southerners
indicated their ready acceptance of the compromise as a "finality"; and
radicals like Jefferson Davis, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and William L.
Yancey retired from public life, either voluntarily or by compulsion of
the people. The big cities of the East and the Northwest celebrated the
passage of the crisis with the firing of cannon, and everywhere the
thanks of the people were expressed to the "great Congress" which had
saved them from civil war.

[Illustration: California Election of 1852]

[Illustration: The Presidential Election of 1852]

If the logic of events ever pointed to one individual as the proper
leader of the people or the fit man for the Presidency, it pointed to
Daniel Webster in 1852. The Whigs had not all voted for the compromise,
but their leaders had been its authors. The party was entitled to claim
the glory for a great performance; and if they claimed it and nominated
their candidate upon a platform of "henceforth there shall be peace
between the sections," they would undoubtedly win and control the
Federal Government for at least two or three presidential terms.

But with a most remarkable aptitude for blundering, the Whigs in their
convention of 1852 hesitated in their pronouncement upon the compromise,
and refused to nominate Webster. The radical element procured the
nomination of General Winfield Scott, a Southern man of anti-slavery
proclivities, and Scott blundered through the campaign, losing votes
every time he made a public statement. Heart-broken, the "Godlike
Webster" died before the day of election. Nor was Clay spared to witness
the crushing defeat which awaited his beloved party in November. The
Whig newspapers of that autumn appeared in mourning too frequently for
the public mind not to be affected.

Conservative interests turned to the Democratic party, whose leaders
promptly declared in their convention that the compromise was a