rd it by agreeing to a plan proposed by
Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts,--that New Mexico (including all
present territory south of 36 degrees 30 minutes except the Indian
territory), be admitted as a State with slavery if its people should so
vote. They offered also to admit Colorado, Nevada, and Dakota as
territories, with no express exclusion of slavery. But neither side
would leave to the other the possible future extension to the South--in
Mexico and Cuba. Further, the Republicans showed a willingness to amend
the Personal Liberty laws, so far as they might be unconstitutional, and
to provide for governmental payment for fugitives who were not returned.
They expressed entire readiness to unite in a national convention for
the revision of the Constitution. And finally there was not only
proposed, but actually passed by the Senate and House, by two-thirds
majorities, at the very end of the session, a constitutional amendment
prohibiting any future amendment that should authorize Congress to
interfere with slavery in the States where it existed.

In vain, all,--in vain for the Republicans to hold out the olive branch,
to mutilate their own principles, and to bar the door against any
ultimate constitutional abolition of slavery. Even the slave States
still in the Union were not to be satisfied by all this, and the
Confederacy gave it no heed. And now, in the background, was visible a
rising force, in which the temper was far other than compromise. The
most significant voice came from Massachusetts. After all the old
antagonism of Massachusetts and South Carolina,--after the clash of
Calhoun and Hayne with Webster, the expulsion of Samuel Hoar, the
assault of Brooks on Sumner,--the two commonwealths stood forth, each
the leader of its own section. It was a hostility which sprung from no
accident, and no remembrance of old feuds, but from the opposition of
two types of society, the oligarchic idea most fully developed in South
Carolina, the industrial democracy in Massachusetts. The new Governor of
the State was John A. Andrew, a man of clear convictions, a great heart,
and a magnanimous temper. His New Year's message to the Legislature
opened with a businesslike discussion of the State's finances and other
materialities. Thence he passed to national affairs; he defended the
Personal Liberty law, of which his more conservative predecessor,
Governor Banks, had advised the repeal, but which Andrew justified as a
leg