predicted its speedy dissolution. As in 1832,' there were menaces of secession from the Union, by Southern representatives, and never before did civil war appear so inevitable. Happily for the country, some of the ablest statesmen and patriots the Republic had ever gloried in, were members of the national Legislature, at that time, and with consummate skill they directed and controlled the storm. In the midst of the tumult and alarm in Congress, and throughout the land, Henry Clay again' appeared as the potent peace-maker

between the Hotspurs of the North and South; and on the 25th of January, 1850, he offered, in the Senate a plan of compromise which met the difficulty. Eleven days afterward [February 5, 1850] he spoke nobly in defense of his plan, denounced secession as treason, and implored his countrymen to make

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2 Page 464. Henry Clay was born in Hanover county, Virginia, in April, 1777. His early education was defective, and he arose to greatness by the force of his own genius. His extraordinary intellectual powers began to develop at an early age, and at nineteen he commenced the study of the law. When admitted to practice, at the age of twenty, he went over the mountains to the fertile valleys of Kentucky, and there laid the foundations of his greatness as a lawyer and orator. The latter quality was first fully developed when a convention was called to revise the Constitution of Kentucky. Then he worked manfully and unceasingly to procure the election of delegates who would favor the emancipation of the slaves. He became a member of the Kentucky Legislature in 1803, and there he took a front rank. He was chosen to fill a vacant seat in the United States Senate in 1806, and in 1811 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives, and became its Speaker. From that time until his death, he was continually in public life. He long held a front rank among American statesmen, and died, while a member of the United States Senate, in the city of Washington, at the close of June, 1852.

every sacrifice but honor, in support of the Union. Mr. Clay's plan was warmly seconded by Daniel Webster;' and other senators approving of compromise, submitted propositions. Finally, on motion of Senator Foote of Mississippi, a committee of thirteen was appointed to consider the various plans and report a bill. The committee consisted of six northern and six southern senators, and these chose the thirteenth. The Senate appointed Mr. Clay chairman of the committee, and on the 8th of May following, he reported a bill. It was discussed for four months, and on the 9th of September, each measure included in the bill having been thoroughly considered separately, the famous Compromise Act of 1850, having passed both Houses of Congress, became a law. Because several measures, distinct in their objects, were embodied in the act, it is sometimes known as the "Omnibus Bill." The most important stipulations of the act were, 1st. That California should be admitted into the Union as a State, with its anti-slavery Constitution, and its territorial extent from Oregon to the Mexican possessions; 2d. That the vast country east of California, containing the Mormon settlements near the Great Salt Lake, should be erected into a Territory called Utah, without mention of slavery; 3d. That New Mexico should be erected into a Territory, within satisfactory boundaries, and without any stipulations respecting slavery, and that ten millions of dollars should be paid to Texas from the National treasury, in purchase of her claims; 4th. That the slave-trade in the District of Columbia should be abolished; 5th. A law providing for the arrest in the northern or free States, and return to their masters, of all slaves who should escape from bondage. The last measure of the Compromise Act produced wide-spread dissatisfaction in the Free-labor States; and the execution, evasion, and violation of the law, in several instances, have led to serious disturbances and much bitter sectional feeling.

13

While the great Compromise question was under discussion, the nation was called to lament the loss of its Chief Magistrate. President Taylor was seized with a malady, similar in its effects to cholera, which terminated his earthly career on the 9th of July, 1850. In accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, he was immediately succeeded in office by

who, on the 10th of July, took the oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." President Taylor's cabinet resigned; but the new President, with great delicacy, declined to consider their resignations

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3 Article II., section 1, of the National Constitution.

* Millard Fillmore was born in January, 1800, in Cayuga county, New York. His early education was limited, and at a suitable age he was apprenticed to a wool-carder. At the age of nineteen, his talent attracted the attention of Judge Wood, of Cayuga county, and he took the humble apprentice under his charge, to study the science of law. He became eminent in his profession. He was elected to the Assembly of his native State in 1829, and in 1832, was chosen to represent his district in Congress. He was re-elected in 1837, and was continued in office several years. In 1844, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of Governor of his native State, and in 1848 he was elected Vice-President of the United States. The death of Taylor gave him the presidency, and he conducted public affairs with dignity and skill. In the summer of 1856, he was nominated for the office of President of the United States, by the "American" party, with A. J. Donelson for Vice-President. See Note 1, page 479.

until after the obsequies of the deceased President had been performed. At his request, they remained in office until the 15th of the month, when President Fillmore appointed new heads of the departments.'

The administration of President Taylor had been brief, but it was distin

guished by events intimately connected, as we shall observe, by men and measures, with the late Civil War. One of these was an invasion of Cuba by a force under General Lopez, a native of that island, which was organized and officered in the United States. in violation of existing neutrality laws. It was said that the native Cubans were restive under the rule of Spanish GovernorGenerals, and that a desire for independence burned in the hearts of many of the best men there. Lopez was ranked among these, and, in forming this invading expedition, he counted largely upon this feeling for co-operation. He

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1 Daniel Webster, Secretary of State; Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury; Charles M. Conrad, Secretary of War; Alexander H. H. Stuart, Secretary of the Interior; William A. Graham, Secretary of the Navy; John J. Crittenden, Attorney-General; Nathan K. Hall, Postmaster-General. Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, in January, 1782, and was educated chiefly at the Phillips Academy at Exter, and Dartmouth College at Hanover. He studied law in Boston, and was admitted to the bar in 1805. He commenced practice in his native State, and soon became eminent. He first appeared in public life in 1813, when he took his seat as a member of the National House of Representatives. At that session his speeches were remarkable, and a southern member remarked, "The North has not his equal, nor the South his superior." Although in public life a greater portion of the time from that period until his death, yet he always had an extensive and lucrative law practice. He stood foremost as a constitutional lawyer; and for many years he was peerless as a statesman. He died at Marshfield, Massachusetts, in October, 1852, at the age of almost seventy-one years. 2 Page 40.

landed at Cardenas on the 19th of April, 1850, expecting to be joined by some of the Spanish troops and native Cubans, and by concerted action to overturn the Government. But the people and troops did not co-operate with him, and be returned to the United States to prepare for a more formidable expedition. We shall meet him again presently.

During Taylor's administration, one State was formed and three Territories were organized; and preparations were made for establishing other local governments within the domain of the United States. That State was California, and the Territories were of those of New Mexico, Utah, and Minnesota.' The greater portion of the inhabitants of Utah are of the religious sect called Mormons, who, after suffering much in Missouri and Illinois, from their opposers, left those States in 1848, and penetrated the deep wilderness in the interior of our continent; and near the Great Salt Lake, in the midst of the savage Utah tribes, they have built a large city, made extensive plantations, and founded an empire almost as large, in territorial extent, as that of

1 Minnesota (sky-colored water) is the Indian name of the river St. Peter, the largest tributary of the Mississippi, in that region. It was a part of the vast Territory of Louisiana, and was organized in March, 1849. An embryo village, twelve miles below the Falls of St. Anthony, named St. Paul, was made the capital, and in less than ten years it contained more than ten thousand souls. Its growth was unprecedented, even in the wonderful progress of other cities of the West, and at one time it promised to speedily equal Chicago in its population. The whole region of Minnesota is very attractive; and it has been called the New England of the West.

Alexander the Great. The sect was founded in 1827, by a shrewd young man named Joseph Smith, a native of central New York, who professed to have received a special revelation from Heaven, giving him knowledge of a book which had been buried many centuries before, in a hill near the village of Palmyra, whose leaves were of gold, upon which were engraved the records of the ancient people of America, and a new gospel for man. He found dupes, believers, and followers; and now [1867] there are Mormon missionaries in many portions of the globe, and the communion numbers, probably, not less than two hundred and fifty thousand souls. There has long been a sufficient number in Utah to entitle them to a State constitution, and admission into the Union, but their social system, which embraces polygamy, sanctioned by authority, is a bar to such admission. Their permission of polygamy, or men having more than one wife, will be a serious bar to their admission, for Christianity and sound morality forbid the custom. The Mormons have poetically called their country Deseret-the land of the Honey Bee-but Congress has entitled it Utah, and by that name it must be known in history.

JOSEPH SMITH.

The country inhabited by the Mormons is one of the most remarkable on the face of the globe. It consists of a series of extensive valleys and rocky margins, spread out into an immense basin, surrounded by rugged mountains, out of which no waters flow. It is midway between the States on the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, perfectly isolated from habitable regions, and embracing a domain covering sixteen degrees of longitude in the Utah latitude. On the east are the sterile spurs of the Rocky Mountains, stretching down to the vast plains traversed by the Platte river; on the west, extending nearly a thousand miles toward the Pacific, are arid salt deserts, broken by barren mountains; and north and south are immense mountain districts. The valleys afford pe

1 The Mormon exodus was one of the most wonderful events on record, when considered in all its phases. In September, 1846, the last ling ring Mormons at Nauvoo, Illinois, where they had built a splendid temple, were driven away at the point of the bayonet, by 1,600 troops. In Febru ary preceding, some sixteen hundred men, women, and children, fearful of the wrath of the people around them, had crossed the Mississippi on the ice, and traveling with ox-teams and on foot, they penetrated the wilderness to the Indian country, near Council Bluffs, on the Missouri. The remnant who started in autumn, many of whom were sick men, feeble women, and delicate girls, were compelled to traverse the same dreary region. The united host, under the guidance of Brigham Young, who is yet their temporal and spiritual leader, halted on the broad prairies of Missouri the following summer, turned up the virgin soil, and planted. Here leaving a few to cultivate and gather for wanderers who might come after them, the host moved on, making the wilderness vocal with preaching and singing. Order marked every step of their progress, for the voice of Young, whom they regarded as a seer, was to them as the voice of God. On they went, forming Tabernacle Camps, or temporary resting-places in the wilderness. No obstacles impeded their progress. They forded swift-running streams, and bridged the deeper floods; crept up the great eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and from the lofty summits of the Wasatch range, they beheld, on the 20th of July, 1847, the valley where they were to rest and build a city, and the placid waters of the Great Salt Lake, glittering in the beams of the setting sun. To those weary wanderers, this moutain top was a Pisgah. From it they saw the Promised Land-to them a scene of wondrous interest. Westward, lofty peaks, bathed in purple air, pierced the sky; and as far as the eye could reach, north and south. stretched the fertile Valley of Promise, and here and there the vapors of hot springs, gushing from rocky coverts, curled above the hills, like smoke from the hearth-fires of home. The Pilgrims entered the valley on the 21st of July, and on the 24th the President and High Council arrived. There they planted a city, the Jerusalem-the Holy City-of the Mormon people.