Southron thus explained to its subscribers the Whig idea of such an assemblage:

They will meet not as citizens of the South, nor to promote or attain any sectional measure or interest; but as citizens of the American Union, by devising means to preserve, inviolate, the compromises of the Federal compact under which the Union was accomplished. It will be a time for calmness and caution, for firmness and moderation. No excitement, no display of passion, not a bravado nor a threat will become the dignity of that imposing assemblage. There can be no endeavor to create excitement or animosity in any part of the Union; for the great purpose of this convention will be to promote peace and good neighborhood among all the members of the confederacy and to allay agitation—to put it down forever."

When the convention met and proceeded to carry out the suggestions made by Calhoun as to the proper course to be taken in defence of southern rights," it was compelled to modify its plans to satisfy a minority of Whigs, who declared against making the admission of California under the recent statehood movement there a cause for resistance, and who considered a southern convention inexpedient for the present. They claimed that without a recognition of these two objections the movement could not retain its non-partisan character. The convention yielded the first point in the final resolutions but refused to concede more than that, except to prefix an expression of devotion and attachment to the Union. Accordingly, an address was sent out inviting the southern states to participate in a convention to be held at Nashville on the third of June, 1850.

49 Sept. 21, 1849.

50 Calhoun to Colonel C. S. Tarpley, July 9, 1849, Jackson Southron, May 24, 1850; also in National Intelligencer, June 4, 18, 1850; Calhoun Correspondence, 1206.

Proceedings in Jackson Southron, Oct. 5, 1849.

During all this time the nationalistic character of the southern wing of the Whig party was becoming more and more apparent. The leaders strongly deprecated the tendency in their section to resort to fire-eating resolutions and gasconade;" they professed to be as ready to defend the just rights of the South as the most loudmouthed agitator. All of the four Whig executives south of Mason and Dixon's line were loyal advocates of conservative unionism and believers in the future of the republic. Governor Thomas S. Brown of Florida considered the election of a president from the South as "the strongest evidence that could be given of the desire of the North to do ample justice to the South and to regard her rights "." Governor Manly of North Carolina found it possible, contrary to the almost universal custom in the South, completely to avoid consideration of the slavery question in his inaugural address. The chief executive of Tennessee, Neil S. Brown, deprecated the fanaticism that sought to array one section of the Union against the other and defined himself as "for the South as long as he could consistently with the preservation of the Union, but for the Union at all events "." Governor Crittenden of Kentucky reiterated the lofty sentiments of his first

54

55

52 Clayton, who became secretary of state under Taylor, wrote to Crittenden, Jan. 23, 1849, apropos of the Virginia resolutions: "They threaten dissolution if a law is passed extending the Maryland law prohibiting the slave trade in this District over our little potato patch less than seven miles square! My soul sickens at the threats to dissolve the Union. This bullying will rouse the North to a great folly on their part." Crittenden MSS.

....

53 National Intelligencer, Jan. 27, 1849; Niles' Register, LXXV, 108

109.

54 Niles' Register, LXXV, 121-122.

55 Nashville Republican Banner, April 25, May 9. Cf. his message of Oct. 5, in id., Oct. 6, 1849.

message in regard to the union of the states. Closing an urgent appeal in its behalf, he declared: "Dear as Kentucky is to us she is not our whole country. The Union, the whole Union, is our country; and proud as we justly are in the name of Kentuckian, we have a loftier and more far-famed title, that of American citizen". The contrast between the parties, however, was best displayed in Maryland, where the Democratic governor spoke of resistance and of making common cause with the South, while the Whig president of the Senate sought to allay the violent antagonism between the two sections of the nation."

The balanced condition of the parties in the lower house of the new Congress promised an interesting contest over the speakership. The complication anticipated was the question as to how the handful of Freesoil men would cast their votes. As they held the balance of power, by acting apart from the regular parties, they were in a position to dictate terms or to prevent the election of an undesirable speaker unless the rule requiring an absolute majority for election was abandoned. But there was another little group which deserves more of our attention on account of the independent position which it unexpectedly took in the matter of the organization of the House.

The contagion of ultra sectionalism had by this time. begun to infect the hot-heads of the Whig party in the South. Those who had supported Taylor's candidacy with the evident intention of controlling his action and guaranteeing an administration in the interests of

5 Message of Dec. 31, 1849, in Louisville Journal, Jan. 3, 1850. Baltimore American, editorial, "Whig and Democratic" in National Intelligencer, Jan. 21; cf. id., Jan. 7; Baltimore Clipper, Jan. 2, 3, 1850.

the southern states, found themselves doomed to bitter disappointment. Instead, they noted with anxiety that the "abolitionist" Seward had forced his way nto the president's good graces and installed himself as the confidential friend of the administration." Such was the state of affairs when the southern members of Congress began to arrive in Washington, where, pending the opening of the session, they conferred together and compared notes on the situation. Clingman of North Carolina returned among the first, fresh from a tour of the northern states and more impressed than ever with the strength of anti-slavery feeling in the North. He was completely convinced that the entire northern Whig delegation was pledged to apply the slavery restriction wherever possible and that in this it would have the support of the northern Democrats. The conviction developed among Clingman, Toombs, Stephens, and other southern Whig members, that under the generalship of Seward the Whig party was to be made the anti-slavery party, in order to recuperate its strength in the North; they even came. to believe that Taylor would sign the proviso if it passed Congress. When the president refused to give any satisfactory pledges, even of a private character, to reassure them, a number of Whigs under the leadership of Toombs, who were prepared to disrupt the party and to go the length of disunion if need be, decided to put their party to a test and to make an issue in connection with the speakership."

58 Avary, Recollections of A. H. Stephens, 25; Coleman, Life of J. J. Crittenden, I, 365-366.

59 Speeches and Writings of T. L. Clingman, 231-234; Johnston and Browne, Life of A. H. Stephens, 237-241, 253; Coleman, Life of J. J. Crittenden, I, 365.

On the first of December, Toombs presented to the Whig caucus which was to select a candidate for speaker a resolution committing the party against the passage of the Wilmot proviso and against the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The introduction of this resolution naturally caused intense excitement, which the moderate southern members tried to allay by opposing the resolution, though making it clear that they agreed with the sentiments expressed. When at their suggestion the consideration of the resolution was postponed, all but two of the eight who voted in the negative withdrew, after which Winthrop was named for the speakership." During the prolonged balloting these disaffected members gave their votes to southern Whigs, sometimes to some of their own number, until after three weeks Cobb of Georgia, a Democrat, was elected on the sixty-third ballot. Toombs, the spokesman for this group, violently opposed the resolution for the adoption of the plurality rule, nor was his purpose thus subserved in making possible the election of a southerner, for by this time he and his associates hoped to force the election of a southern man by southern votes and one not subservient to the interests of party."

The course of these insurgent Whigs was criticised and condemned by the vast majority of the party journals in the South outside of Georgia. Their course was not only "impolitic and unjustifiable but altogether unreasonable", said the Mobile Advertiser. They

00 Proceedings of caucus, National Intelligencer, Dec. 6, 1849. Morehead, who was chairman of the Whig caucus, and the southern Whigs of more nationalistic stripe believed that the North was entitled to the speakership. Morehead to Crittenden, Dec. 25, 1849, Crittenden MSS. Stephens, Constitutional View, II, 178-179; cf. Calhoun Correspondence, 783.

62 Mobile Advertiser, Dec. 12, 1849.