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that forbidden subject on the floor of the House; Reverdy Johnson, a Whig from Maryland, administering correction to John P. Hale, an insubordinate Democrat from New Hampshire, for the same offense, and at the time screaming that the "blood of our glorious battle-fields in Mexico rested on the hands of the President"; Mr. Clingman challenging the House with the broad statement that "it is a misnomer to speak of our institution at the South as peculiar; ours is the general system of the world, and the _free_ system is the peculiar one," and Mr. Palfrey dryly responding that slavery was natural just as barbarism was, just as fig-leaves and bare skins were a natural dress. When the time arrived, however, for leaving off grimacing and posturing, and the House went to voting, the advocates of slavery usually carried the day, as the South, Whigs and Democrats together, voted solidly, and the North was divided. Especially was this the case after the arrival of the treaty of peace between the United States and Mexico, which was signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo on the 2d of February and was in the hands of the Senate only twenty days later. It was ratified by that body on the 10th of March, with a series of amendments which were at once accepted by Mexico, and the treaty of peace was officially promulgated on the national festival of the Fourth of July. From the hour when the treaty was received in Washington, however, the discussion as to the conduct of the war naturally languished; the ablest speeches of the day before became obsolete in the presence of accomplished facts; and the interest of Congress promptly turned to |
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