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HISTORIC AL ANNOTATION 641

governorship of Massachusetts, a post he held until 1839. During the next decade
Everett served as minister to Great Britain (1841-45) and president of Harvard
(1846-49). As secretary of state during the last four months of the Fillmore administration,
he defended the right of the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs.
Election to the U.S. Senate followed in 1853, but Everett's failure, on account of illness,
to cast a vote on the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 generated so much protest
from Massachusetts antislavery groups that he resigned. After several years on the
lecture circuit, Everett ran for vice president on the Constitutional Union ticket in
1860. During the Civil War he supported Lincoln and frequently lectured on behalf of
the war effort. At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on 19 November 1863, his two-hour
speech preceded Lincoln's briefer address. Paul Revere Frothingham, Edward
Everett: Orator and Statesman (Boston, 1925); DAB, 6:223-26.
6.13 Sumner] Charles Sumner.
6.16 Fox] Charles James Fox (1749-1806) was an English Whig statesman who
became a member of Parliament at the age of nineteen and during his career held the
offices of lord of the Admiralty and commissioner of the Treasury. He initially supported
Lord North, but during the American Revolution, Fox became an outspoken
opponent of the coercive measures North advocated. For his opposition to North's
administration, King George III removed Fox from his position in the Admiralty in
1774. In the speech to which Douglass refers, Fox warned the Parliament that Britain
could not sustain a war with both the American colonies and France. He urged Britain
to withdraw from the conflict with America and to concentrate on France. Later Fox
was a strong opponent of William Pitt the younger, arguing vigorously against a
renewed war with France. After Pitt's death in January 1806, Fox set out to negotiate
a peace with France but died before his bill to abolish the slave trade came up for
approval. George Otto Trevelyan, The Early History of Charles James Fox (1880;
New York, 1971); Loren Reid, Charles James Fox: A Man for the People (Columbia,
Mo., 1969); Edward Lascelles, The Life of Charles James Fox (New York, 1970);
Magnus Magnusson, ed., Cambridge Biographical Dictionary (Cambridge, Eng.,
1990), 535-36; DNB, 7:535-52.
6.16 Henry Clay] Henry Clay (1777-1852), a native Virginian, entered politics
during the 1790s in his adopted state of Kentucky and rose quickly to national prominence.
As a congressman, senator, secretary of state, founder of the Whig party, and
regular presidential candidate, Clay espoused broadly nationalistic programs designed
to avoid sectional antagonism caused by the issue of slavery. He figured prominently
in the debates that led to the passage of the Missouri Compromise, and he was a leading
architect of the Compromise of 1850. His support of the American Colonization
Society earned him the lasting hostility of Garrisonian abolitionists. In Congress, Clay
vigorously opposed abolitionist petitions against slavery in the District of Columbia.
Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York, 1991); Richard
H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860
(New York, 1976), 109; DAB, 4:73-79.