This policy was antagonized by the ultra antislavery people, who wanted the distinct prohibition of slavery in Territorial organizations, and also by the extreme slavery Whigs, who desired them admitted as Territories without any expression on slavery, believing that slaves could be taken into any Territory south of the Missouri Compromise line unless prohibited by the organic law. Clay had returned to the Senate, and being neither more nor less than human, he had little inclination to harmonize with an accidental Whig President who filled the position to which Clay felt he was justly entitled. As opposed to the policy of the President, Clay came in as pacificator and proposed what then became known, and what have since been known as the Compromise Measures of 1850. It is doubtful whether either the administration or the Clay Compromise policy could have been successful had the President lived. Certainly the Compromise bill would have failed, but it is uncertain whether the administration could have wielded sufficient power to carry its policy through Congress. Its policy was a negative one, postponing the slave issue in the new acquisitions until the people could act in their sovereign capacity in the creation of States. President Taylor died July 9, 1850, and Millard Fillmore became President by virtue of his office as Vice-President. Taylor’s death changed the political purposes of the administration in the earnest struggle then in Congress to meet the question of slavery in the newly acquired territory. Fillmore, like nearly all Vice-Presidents, was not in harmony with the President, and when he became President himself he reversed the policy of the administration. It was on this issue that Webster wrecked himself. He was in the confidence of the Taylor administration, and was chosen to be the champion of its policy for meeting the slavery issue in the Territories. He personally conferred with the Cabinet forty-eight hours before he delivered his memorable seventh-of-March speech, in which he cast his lot with Clay and the pro-slavery wing of the party, and neither the President nor any Cabinet officer had any notice of his purpose to change until they were astounded by hearing the views he expressed in his speech. William M. Meredith, of Philadelphia, was then Secretary of the Treasury, and he was so much offended by what he regarded as Webster’s perfidy that he never spoke to him thereafter.