Review (_continued_).--Contrast between General Taylor and General Cass.--The Cabinet of President Taylor.--Political Condition of the Country.--Effect produced by the Discovery of Gold in California. --Convening of Thirty-first Congress.--Election of Howell Cobb as Speaker.--President Taylor's Message.--His Recommendations Distasteful to the South.--Illustrious Membership of the Senate.--Mr. Clay and the Taylor Administration.--Mr. Calhoun's Last Speech in the Senate. --His Death.--His Character and Public Services.--Mr. Webster's 7th of March Speech.--Its Effect upon the Public and upon Mr. Webster.--Mr. Clay's Committee of Thirteen.--The Omnibus Bill.-- Conflict with General Taylor's Administration.--Death of the President.--Mr. Fillmore reverses Taylor's Policy and supports the Compromise Measures.--Defeat of Compromise Bill.--Passage of the Measures separately.--Memorable Session of Congress.--Whig and Democratic Parties sustain the Compromise Measures.--National Conventions.--Whigs nominate Winfield Scott over Fillmore.--Mr. Clay supports Fillmore.--Mr. Webster's Friends.--Democrats nominate Franklin Pierce.--Character of the Campaign.--Overwhelming Defeat of Scott.--Destruction of the Whig Party.--Death of Mr. Clay.-- Death of Mr. Webster.--Their Public Characters and Services compared. With the election of General Taylor, the various issues of the slavery question were left undecided and unchanged. Indeed, the progress of the canvass had presented a political anomaly. General Cass was born in New England of Puritan stock. All his mature life had been spent in the free North-West. He was a lawyer, a statesman, always a civilian, except for a single year in the volunteer service of 1812. General Taylor was born in Virginia, was reared in Kentucky, was a soldier by profession from his earliest years of manhood, had passed all his life in the South, was a resident of Louisiana, engaged in planting, and was the owner of a large number of slaves. Yet in the face of these facts General Cass ran as the distinctively pro-slavery candidate, and General Taylor received three-fourths of the votes of New England, and was supported throughout the North by the anti-slavery Whigs, who accepted William H. Seward as a leader and Horace Greeley as an exponent. But his contradiction was apparent, not real. It was soon found that the confidence of the Northern men who voted for Taylor had not been misplaced. CABINET OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.