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country towns, but its influence in
Boston was limited, and it was hesitating and timid.
1 The leading commercial journal of the city was the ‘Daily Advertiser.’
During the agitation of the slavery question it had shown indifference to the growth of the slave-power, and had even denied the existence of such a power.
It apologized for the mobs which assailed the Abolitionists, and sneered at the agitation against slavery as ‘clamor’ and a ‘quixotism in behalf of human rights.’
2 It approved the Compromise when offered by
Clay, and during 1850 and 1851 defended it in elaborate articles, urging pertinaciously the duty of good citizens to aid in executing the
Fugitive Slave law. It went so far in the
Southern direction as to object to the admission of
California independently, desiring to have her kept back in order to make one of the conditions of
Clay's scheme of pacification.
It objected to the retention of
Taylor's Cabinet by
Fillmore, because, Southern as it was, it was an anti-Compromise Cabinet.
3 It threatened the withdrawal of Whig support from public men who persevered in opposing the Compromise, and in insisting on the repeal of the
Fugitive Slave law,—singling out
Mann,
Fowler, and
Scudder, then Whig members of Congress.
It viewed with composure and indifference every advance of slavery, and treated the barbarities of the slave system, and the seizure of alleged slaves at the
North, without the suggestion of any sympathy for the victim, and with a calmness and method which amaze the reader who now turns its pages.
The ‘Courier,’ anonymously edited since
Buckingham's retirement two years before, opposed the Compromise up to the day of
Webster's speech.
It denied the existence of Southern grievances, and the expediency of yielding to Southern clamor;
4 and its tone was manly and spirited.
But immediately after the speech it took a reverse direction, and without any explanation came to
Webster's support.
From that time it was bitter, even malignant, in its treatment of all who dissented from
Webster.
Its leaders were mostly written by
George S. Hillard and
George Lunt.
These two journals teemed with elaborate defences