CHAPTER IV.

IN CONGRESS-MR. FILLMORE'S COURSE ON SLAVERYTHE CONGRESSMAN AND HIS VIEWS.

MR.

́R. FILLMORE'S legislative service had also advanced his professional standing and his confidence in his ability to cope with more experienced members of the bar. This had all led to his removal to Buffalo in the summer of 1830, and the formation of his first law partnership, with Joseph Clary. This was an advantageous connection, and from this time forward Mr. Fillmore walked rapidly into a valuable practice, as well as into public favor. Although not returned to the Legislature this year, his political aspirations were developed, and his attention was now directed to a wider field in which to try his abilities.

In the fall of 1832 he was nominated by the Antimasons of his district, and elected to the Lower House of Congress. Into the Antimasonic party, if it should be designated as a party, in Western New York, had been gathered the greater portion of the opponents of General Jackson's Administration. Old Federalists, National Republicans, Anti-Jackson Democrats, all were merged into this short-lived crusade on Freemasonry. The new and substantial party

organization of Whig and Democrat was little heeded here in the furious assault on this old and hitherto respectable, but futile, secret order. Although the facts of the abduction of Morgan were well known. in all parts of the Nation, as the distance increased from the seat of the outrage, the opposition became less decided. The Jackson Democracy kept out of the secret order conflict or embraced the Masonic side, and the Masons who did not desert the society went with the Jackson Democrats or belonged to the Democratic party. Mr. Fillmore's race was an easy one with little exertion on his part, and on the 2d of December, 1833, he took his seat in what was called the "panic session of the Twenty-third Congress." In both Houses at this time there was a fine array of talent and character. In the House, besides John Quincy Adams, the only Ex-President who ever appeared in such service, or any public service of consequence, there were Edward Everett; William Slade, of Vermont; Churchill C. Cambreleng, then of New York; Horace Binney, of Pennsylvania; William S. Archer, John Y. Mason, Charles Fenton Mercer, Andrew Stevenson, and Henry A. Wise, of Virginia; George McDuffie, of South Carolina; Richard M. Johnson and Thomas A. Marshall, of Kentucky; James K. Polk, John Bell, Cave Johnson, and David Crockett, of Tennessee; Thomas Corwin and William Allen, of Ohio; Clement C. Clay, of Alabama, and others; and in the Senate were Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, W. C. Preston, William R. King, George Poindexter, Thomas Ewing, Felix

Grundy, W. P. Mangum, John Tyler, William C. Rives, Joseph Kent, John M. Clayton, Theodore Frelinghuysen, S. L. Southard, Silas Wright, and the editor of the "New Hampshire Patriot," Isaac Hill, as well as some other able men.

The Whigs were greatly in the minority in the House at this time, and of course, they took secondary places on committees, even the most experienced of them. Andrew Stevenson, of Virginia, was again. elected Speaker, by the large Administration majority; and the House was completely in accord with the will of General Jackson, even sufficiently so on the Bank war, now at its height, for all practical purposes. Although not warmly in accord with most of the Whigs on this stupendous issue, Mr. Fillmore stood. fully on that side, and his vote was always with the opposition on the important stakes. On the resolutions to recharter the Bank of the United States, against restoring the deposits to the Bank, and in favor of continuing the State banks as repositories for the public funds, he voted with the Whigs; as did he on the various points at issue during this exciting term. He took little active part in the debates, and while he performed the services imposed upon him he made no attempt to depart from the modest course he had taken in the Legislature.

At the end of this term he again resumed his professional labors with a lucrative and successful business. His increasing good standing and former satisfactory public services induced his party to place him in nomination as one of their candidates

for Congress in the fall of 1836. He was again successful, and at the extra session called by Mr. Van Buren in 1837, took his seat in the first session of the "Twenty-fifth Congress." James K. Polk was elected Speaker of the House over John Bell, the Whig candidate, by a small majority. Mr. Fillmore now took a more prominent part in the discussions before the House. The modest but manly course he had taken in his first term had strengthened his position. Against the bill to postpone the fourth installment of deposits with the States, on the 25th of September, Mr. Fillmore delivered a speech from which the following extracts are taken:

"But, Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to the bill upon your table. I am opposed to it, first, sir, on the ground that it is hypocritical and false in its language. The title of the bill is an act to postpone' the payment of this fourth installment. This is a false label, sir, to the door through which we are to enter into the mysteries of this bill. But let us look at the bill itself. It declares that the payment of this installment 'shall be postponed until further provision by law.' What is this, then, sir, but a repeal of so much of the act of 1836 as authorizes the payment of this fourth installment? It does not merely postpone the payment to a definite time, then to be made. without any further legislative action, but it postpones it until further provision by law;' that is, until by a new law Congress shall direct this payment to be made. If this bill pass, nothing short of a new law can ever give this money to the States. Then the effect of this bill is to repeal the law of 1836.

"Why not say so, then? Why profess to postpone when you absolutely revoke? Why not call things by

their right names? Is there some iniquity in the transaction that it is necessary to conceal? Is it intended to excite expectations among the people that are never to be realized? Sir, I disdain such a course. I will never give my vote for a law that, on its face, bears evidence of fraudulent concealment and hypocritical designs.

"I am aware, sir, that an amendment has been offered by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Pickens), that, if adopted, would obviate this objection. But as that amendment is undoubtedly intended to sugar over this nauseous pill, to make it a little more palatable to some who loathe it now, and as I should still be opposed to the bill if the amendment were adopted, for reasons which I shall hereafter give, I am inclined to let those who are prepared to swallow anything take the dose as it is, and vote against the amendment as well as the bill. If this money be not now paid, I have no idea that the States will ever receive it. Let us have it now, according to promise, or tell us at once we have nothing to expect. Do not tantalize us by exciting further hopes that are never to be realized.

"But, sir, I am also opposed to the bill for another reason, and that is that this sudden change of the destiny of near ten millions of dollars is calculated still further to derange the currency and business operations of the country, and add to the accumulated distresses of the community under which they now labor. If there be one truth, above all others, well settled in political economy, it is this: that if you would make a nation prosperous and happy, give them a uniform and unchangeable currency. It is as essential as uniformity and stability in your weights and measures. This currency is the lifeblood of the body politic. Its supply should be equal and uniform. Every throb of the heart is felt to the utmost extremities. If the regular flow and pulsation fail, languor and faintness follow; but 'overaction,' as the