With Fillmore in the White House, the situation seemed stabilized for the time being. But northern Whigs were restless. Most of them were having a hard time swallowing the fugitive slave law. The party was sending a growing number of radical antislavery men to Congress: Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and George W. Julian entered the House in 1849; Benjamin Wade of Ohio came to the Senate in 1851. If such men as these gained control of the party it would splinter along North-South lines. Southern Whigs had barely survived Taylor’s apostasy; another such shock would shatter them.
