Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/239

FRANKLIN PIERCE 187 him, with but little preparation, to argue success fully intricate questions of law. The masses oT" the Democratic party in the free states so strongly favored the exclusion of slavery from the territory ceded by Mexico that their leaders were compelled to yield, and from 1847 till 1850 their resolutions and platforms advocated free-soil principles. This was especially the case in New Hampshire, and even Gen. Pierce s great popularity could not stem the tide. But in 1850 the passage of the so-called "compromise measures" by congress, the chief of which were the fugitive- slave law and the admission of California as a free state, raised a new issue. Adherence to those measures became to a great extent a test of party fidelity in both the Whig and Democratic parties. Gen. Pierce zealously championed them in New Hampshire, and at a dinner given to him and other personal friends by Daniel Webster at his farm house in Franklin, N. H., Pierce, in an eloquent speech, assured the great Whig statesman that if his own party rejected him for his 7th of March speech, the Democracy would "lift him so high that his feet would not touch the stars." Finally the masses of both the great parties gave to the com promise measures a sullen acquiescence, on the ground that they were a final settlement of the slavery question. The Democratic national con vention met at Baltimore, June 12, 1852. After