in the phrase of that day, "men who thought alike could act
together."

THE ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY.

This being the condition of the two great parties which divided
the country, it was evident that the acquisition of territory from
Mexico must lead to an agitation of the slavery question, of which
no man could measure the extent, or foresee the consequences. It
was the old Missouri struggle renewed, with more numerous combatants,
a stronger influence of the press, a mightier enginery of public
opinion. It arose as suddenly as the agitation of 1820, but gave
indications of deeper feeling and more prolonged controversy. The
able and ambitious men who had come into power at the South were
wielding the whole force of the national administration, and they
wielded it with commanding ability and unflinching energy. The
Free-soil sentiment which so largely pervaded the ranks of the
Northern Democracy had no representative in the cabinet, and a man
of pronounced anti-slavery views was as severely proscribed in
Washington as a Roundhead was in London after the coronation of
Charles II.

The policy of maintaining an equality of slave States with free
States was to be pursued, as it had already been from the foundation
of the government, with unceasing vigilance and untiring energy.
The balancing of forces between the new States added to the Union
had been so skillfully arranged, that for a long period two States
were admitted at nearly the same time,--one from the South, and
one from the North. Thus Kentucky and Vermont, Tennessee and Ohio,
Mississippi and Indiana, Alabama and Illinois, Missouri and Maine,
Arkansas and Michigan, Florida and Iowa, came into the Union in
pairs, not indeed at precisely the same moment in every case, but
always with reference each to the other in the order named. On
the admission of Florida and Iowa, Colonel Benton remarked that
"it seemed strange that two territories so different in age, so
distant from each other, so antagonistic in natural features and
political institutions, should ripen into States at the same time,
and come into the Union by a single Act; but these very antagonisms
--that is, the antagonistic provisions on the subject of slavery--
made the conjunction, and gave to the two young States an inseparable
admission." During the entire period from the formation of the
Federal Government to the inauguration of Mr. Polk, the only