e; but as the sea follows the moon, the hearts of men were following
the new risen luminary of humanity's God-given rights.

And so, under each special phase of the conflict, slavery had against it
that dominant force which acts on one side in the material progress of
society, and on the other side in the human conscience; that
force--"some call it Evolution, and others call it God."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MEXICAN WAR

We have seen that about 1832-3 a new distinctness and prominence was
given to the slavery question by various events,--the substantial
victory of the South Carolina nullifiers, and the leadership thenceforth
of the South by Calhoun; Nat Turner's rising, and the rejection by
Virginia of the emancipation policy; the compensated liberation of the
West India slaves by the British Government; and the birth of aggressive
Abolitionism under the lead of Garrison. We have now to glance at the
main course of history for the next twenty years. Party politics had for
a time no direct relation to slavery. The new organizations of Whigs and
Democrats disputed on questions of a national bank, internal
improvements, and the tariff. The Presidency was easily won in 1836 by
Jackson's lieutenant, Van Buren; but the commercial crash of 1837
produced a revulsion of feeling which enabled the Whigs to elect
Benjamin Harrison in 1840. His early death gave the Presidency to John
Tyler of Virginia, who soon alienated his party, and who was thoroughly
Southern in his sympathies and policy.

The newly aroused anti-slavery enthusiasm in the North found expression
in petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
It was not intrinsically a great matter, but it was the one point where
the national authority seemed clearly to have a chance to act--questions
of new territory being for the time in abeyance. Petitions poured in on
Congress with thousands of signatures--then with tens, then hundreds of
thousands. There was a hot struggle as to whether the petitions should
be received at all by the Senate and House. John Quincy Adams, willing
after his Presidency to serve in the humbler capacity of congressman,
was the champion of the right of petition. Calhoun had entered the
Senate in 1832 and remained there with a brief intermission until his
death in 1850. He stood independent of the two great parties, with his
own State always solidly behind him, and with growing influence over the
whole South. He was the l