of the amendment
was to override the anti-slavery laws of the Territories, and plant
the institution of slavery therein, beyond the reach of Congressional
or territorial law.

Mr. Webster expounded the Constitution and combated the newly
brought forward slave-extension doctrine, but a majority of the
Senate voted for the amendment.

The House, however, voted down the rider, and between the two
branches of Congress it failed. For a time appropriations of
necessary supplies for the government were made to depend on the
success of the measure.(64)

Thus again the newly acquired domain escaped the doom of perpetual
slavery.

But we have done with the Mexican War and the acquisition of Mexican
territory. It remains to be told how this vast domain was disposed
of. No part of it ever became slave.

There was not time in Polk's administration to dispose of it.
General Zachary Taylor, the hero of Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey,
and Buena Vista, became President, March 4, 1849. He was wholly
without political experience and had never even voted at an election.
He was purely a professional soldier, and a Southerner by birth
and training; was a patriot, possessed of great common sense, and
knew nothing of intrigue, and was endowed with a high sense of
justice, and believed in the rights of the majority. He belonged
to no cabal to promote, extend, or perpetuate slavery, and, probably,
in his conscience was opposed to it. His Southern friends could
not use him, and when they demanded his aid, as President, to plant
slavery in California, he not only declined to serve them, but
openly declared that California should be free. In different words,
but words of like import, he responded to them, as he did to General
Wool, at a critical moment in the battle of Buena Vista. Wool
remarked: "_General, we are whipped_." Taylor responded: "_That
is for me to determine_."(65)

(57) Lt.-Col. Henry Clay, Jr., fell at Buena Vista February 23,
1847, and Maj. Edward Webster died at San Angel, Mexico, January
23, 1848.

(58) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., p. 680.

(59) _Ibid_., p. 681.

(60) Taylor became President March, 1849, succeeding Polk, and
died in office July 9, 1850. Scott was nominated by his party
(Whig) in 1852, and defeated; Franklin Pierce, a subordinate General
of the war, was elected by his party (Democrat) President in 1852.

(61) _Thirty Years' View_, vol. ii., pp. 688-692.

(62) _Hist. Ready Ref._,