feated by a revolt of public opinion against the fugitive-slave law. They found it necessary to stir up a public sentiment on their side. A systematic agitation was set on foot. An immense meeting, called by merchants of New York, in which the formation of a “Union party” was foreshadowed, opened the campaign. Similar demonstrations followed in Boston and many other cities. Foremost in that agitation was Daniel Webster, and wherever he appeared he spoke with the zealous bitterness of a recent convert. The measures forming the great compromise were put before the people as no less binding than additions to the Constitution would be. And, as usually the point most sharply attacked is most hotly defended, the binding force of the fugitive-slave law was insisted upon with such exceptional urgency as if the catching of fugitive slaves had become the main constitutional duty of the American citizen. This could not fail to react.
Clay made a speech in response to an invitation from the Kentucky legislature, in which, adhering to his theory that the principal object to be kept in view was to quiet the dangerous excitement at the South, he represented the compromise as “substantially a Southern triumph,” inasmuch as California would have been admitted under any circumstances, while the establishment of territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah without the Wilmot Proviso, and the enactment of the fugitive-slave law, were in accordance with the wishes
