60 POLITICAL LIFE -I 



the State of New York, then the most important of State 

 offices, had been defeated as Whig candidate for governor, 

 and had been a representative in Congress. He was the 

 second of the accidental Presidents, and soon felt it his 

 duty to array himself on the side of those who, by com- 

 promise with the South on the slavery question, sought 

 to maintain and strengthen the Federal Union. Under 

 him came the compromise measures on which our great 

 statesmen of the middle period of the nineteenth century, 

 Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and Benton, made their last 

 speeches. Mr. Fillmore was undoubtedly led mainly by 

 patriotic motives, in promoting the series of measures 

 which were expected to end all trouble between the North 

 and South, but which, unfortunately, embraced the Fu- 

 gitive Slave Law ; yet this, as I then thought, rendered him 

 accursed. I remember feeling an abhorrence for his very 

 name, and this feeling was increased when there took 

 place, in the city of Syracuse, the famous " Jerry Rescue." 



