CHAPTER VIII.

MEMBER OF CONGRESS-FIRST TERM.

Mr. Hendricks entered upon his national career at a memorable period in our history. It was the beginning of a new half-century. It was a time for new measures and new men. The members of the illustrious trio in which all memories of previous decades center, were passing away. Calhoun had departed from earth in the preceding year, and Clay and Webster were nearing the portals of the tomb. As if to symbolize the change, new chambers were planned for the Congresses of the future, and the process of transforming the old Capitol into the vast legislative palace of to-day had already begun.

The slavery question, it was hoped, was settled-if not forever, at least for years to come. The great Compromise Measures of 1850 had been the work of statesmen of both parties, and Senators and Congressmen had vied with each other in support of them. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, was always fond of relating the story of this compromise; and since that story depicts the last dramatic scene in the legislation of the closing halfcentury, it is here given in the Senator's words:

"This country was agitated from its center to its circumference by the slavery agitation. All eyes in the nation were turned to the three great lights that survived the days of the Revolution. They looked to Clay, then in retirement at Ashland, and to Webster and Cass in the United States Senate. Clay had retired to Ashland, having, as he supposed, performed his mission on earth,

and was preparing himself for a better sphere of existence in another world. In that retirement he heard the discordant, harsh and grating sounds of sectional strife and disunion, and he aroused and came forth and resumed his seat in the Senate, the great theater of his great deeds.

"From the moment that Clay arrived among us, he became the leader of all the Union men, whether Whigs or Democrats. For nine months we each assembled each day in the council chamber, Clay in the chair, with Cass upon his right hand and Webster upon his left, and the Democrats and Whigs gathered round, forgetting differences, and only animated by one common, patriotic sentiment, to devise means and measures by which we could defeat the mad and revolutionary scheme of the Northern Abolitionists and Southern Disunionists. We did devise those means. Clay brought them forward, Cass advocated them, the Union Whigs and Union Democrats voted for them, Fillmore signed them, and they gave peace and quiet to the country."

The Compromise of 1850 was very unlike the MissouriCompromise of thirty years before. The latter was a very simple one, consisting of but two provisions; Missouri was admitted as a Slave State, and it was agreed that all the rest of the national domain in the West which lay north of latitude 36° 30' should be forever free. The new Compromise of 1850 was a complicated affair. It was rendered necessary by the annexation of Texas with indefinite boundaries and the acquisition of lands from Mexico at the close of the Mexican war, to all of which new territory the Missouri Compromise did not in terms apply. It took into consideration various disconnected subjects of dispute which had helped to estrange the sections. In view of its motley character, it was called an Omnibus Upset. The principal provisions of this Compromise were five in number, as follows:

1. California was admitted as a free State, in accordance with the wishes of her people, who of their own accord had adopted a free State Constitution.

2. Utah and New Mexico Territories were organized, and permitted to work their own will in the matter of freedom or slavery, being left without congressional restriction on the subject.

3. Texas was paid $10,000,000 to relinquish her claim to a large region on the left bank of the Rio Grande, which was now to form a part of New Mexico.

4. The domestic slave trade was prohibited in the District of Columbia.

5. A more stringent law was enacted for the capture and rendition of fugitive slaves.

That California, if admitted, should be permitted, as a State, to regulate her own domestic concerns, was not strange, but was in exact conformity with the popular idea of the rights of the States. Utah and New Mexico, however, were not States, but Territories. There could be no "State sovereignty" in their case, and the term "popular sovereignty" was invented to characterize this exercise of power by a Territory. Such a course had been suggested in 1848 by General Cass in the celebrated "Nicholson letter," and had been advised by President Taylor in his only message to Congress, in 1849.

Taylor was a Louisiana slaveholder, but not a proslavery extremist. He was much influenced by Senator Seward, the anti-slavery Whig statesman of the Empire State. Vice-President Fillmore had been an anti-slavery leader of the same party in the same commonwealth, but became the leader of the more conservative Whigs at the capital. The feeling of rivalry existing between the two New York statesmen had its influence, doubtless, in making them chiefs of opposing factions. On succeeding to the Presidency through the death of Taylor, while the Compromise Measures were pending, Fillmore called

Webster to his cabinet, leaving Clay to be the last of the old trio in the Senate. The new President readily signed the various bills of the Omnibus Upset.

Thus, upon the leading questions which divided the people, the Whig Administration and leaders were in accord with the leading Democrats in Congress.

The career of Mr. Hendricks in the Constitutional Convention marked him as a suitable man to represent his district in Congress. That district-the fifth-was a large one, extending from Brown county on the south to Tipton on the north, and from Madison on the east to Hendricks on the west. It had been ably represented for many years by Jonathan McCarty, James H. Rariden, Andrew Kennedy, William J. Brown, William W. Wick and, again, William J. Brown. So extensive a constituency, including the State capital, demanded a candidate. of more than local reputation and of superior qualifications. To enter the legislative councils of the Republic seemed to Mr. Hendricks a worthy and laudable ambition; and as his name was brought forward with enthusiasm by the Democrats of Shelby, he entered the lists with a determination to win.

The Congressional Convention was held at Indianapolis in the Senate chamber, on May 16. There was no end of candidates. One county presented six, and nearly every one had at least a single "favorite son." Thirtytwo ballots were taken without result, and on the thirtythird the contest was terminated in favor of the young man from Shelby county. This, it may be remarked, was the last time that Mr. Hendricks ever secured a nomination against any considerable opposition. In every subsequent instance where he was chosen as a candidate for office, it was practically, if not absolutely, unanimous.

Colonel James P. Rush, of Hancock county, was nominated by the Whigs as his opponent, and exerted him

self to make a strong race.

It was a singular canvass.

Scarcely any of the old questions which had divided the parties were longer living issues. For the Compromise Measures of the year before, both parties were responsible. The most unpopular of those measures in the North was the Fugitive Slave Law. As yet, the public indignation had not been fully aroused against it, but an influence was being brought to bear which would lash into fury the feelings of the masses in the Northern States. The wife of Professor C. E. Stowe, of Andover, was at that time conducting in the columns of the National Era -the anti-slavery paper at Washington-a fascinating serial story of "Life Among the Lowly," portraying vividly the crimes and horrors attendant upon the system of slavery in the South. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," as it was called, was received with the highest favor at home and abroad, though, of course, it was condemned by the South. In subsequent editions it achieved a wider popularity and exerted a deeper influence than any other book of its class. The force of its influence was not strong in Indiana as yet, and the congressional issue was reduced almost to a choice of men.

A local incident of the canvass represents Mr. Hendricks as a " log roller" in a very literal sense of the term, and is related as follows:

Though the Central District, the back counties were in the back woods. The northern part of Hamilton and all of Tipton county were new. Journeying one day to fill an appointment in a neighborhood yet several miles distant, he alighted from his horse-the only means of navigation at all practicable in those days-to help a man who was doing the hard work of rolling logs. He was trying to accomplish the task (always difficult for one) of putting the third log on the top of two lying together. But with assistance it was easily executed. Mr. Hendricks, without explanation as to his purpose, mounted