A popular history of the United States of America, from the aboriginal times to the present day (1881) (14581838729)

Identifier: popularhistoryof00ridpaj (find matches)
Title: A popular history of the United States of America, from the aboriginal times to the present day
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: Cincinnati, Philadelphia (etc.) Jones brothers & company San Francisco, A. L. Bancroft & co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation



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ember the last clausewas adopted, and thewhole received the im-mediate sanction of thePresident. The ex-citement in the coun-try rapidly abated, andthe distracting contro-versy seemed at an end.Such was the last, andperhaps the greatest,of those pacific mea-sures originated andcarried through Con-gress by the geniusof Henry Clay. Heshortly afterward badeadieu to the Senate,and sought at his be-loved Ashland a briefrest from the arduouscares of public life. The passage of the Omnibus Bill brought a political quiet; butthe moral convictions of very few men were altered by its provisions.Public opinion remained as before: in the North, a general, indefinite,but growing hostility to slavery; in the South, a fixed and resolutepurpose to defend and extend that institution. To the President,whose party was in the ascendency in m<ost of the Free States, themeasure was fatal; for although his cabinet had advised him to signthe bill, the Whigs were at heart opposed to the fugitive slave law,
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HENRY CLAY. 466 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. and when he gave his assent they turned coldly from him. In theWhig National convention, two years afterwards, although the policyof the President was approved and the compromise measures ratifiedby a vote of two hundred and twenty-seven against sixty, not twentyNorthern votes could be obtained for his renomination. Thus dopolitical parties punish their leaders for hesitating to espouse a prin-ciple which the parties themselves are afraid to avow. The year 1850 was marked by a lawless attempt on the part ofsome American adventurers to gain possession of Cuba. It wasthought that the people of that island were anxious to throw off theSpanish yoke and to annex themselves to the United States. In orderto encourage such a movement, General Lopez organized an expedi-tion in the South, and on the 19th of May, 1850, effected a landingat Cardenas, a port of Cuba. But there was no uprising in his favor;neither Cubans nor Spanish soldiers joined his