Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/317

CHAPTER III.

ATTEMPTS TO NULLIFY THE COMPROMISE.

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT IN 1852—DEMOCRAT, WHIG AND FREESOILER—THE SETTLEMENT OF 1850 RATIFIED—PIERCE PRESIDENT—NULLIFICATION MEASURES IN NORTHERN STATES—RENEWAL OF AGITATION BY FREESOILERS—SHADOWS SHOWING A COMING EVENT—SECTIONAL DISCORD NECESSARY TO THE FREESOIL FACTION—KANSAS TROUBLES AND EMIGRANT AID SOCIETIES—THE SHAPING OF A PARTY STRICTLY NORTHERN—LOCAL SUCCESSES.

WHILE this apparently factious but dangerous opposition to the stability of the compromise settlement was being thus pressed among the Northern States, the political parties were preparing for the Presidential election of 1852.

The Democratic State conventions sent delegates to the national convention at Baltimore June i, 1852, thoroughly impressed with the view that the settlement was fully agreed to by the people of the United States, and consequently political controversies must be caused by questions not so sectional as that of slavery. Resolutions were passed re-affirming the principles of the compromise and pronouncing against further slavery agitation in Congress.

The Whig party, meeting in national convention the same month, passed strictly State Rights resolutions and also resolved that the compromise was a settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous and exciting questions thus settled. The resolutions pledged the Whig party to "discountenance all efforts to continue or