had shut from his eyes
the future. The great plot for maintaining the political domination of
the South had miscarried. New national territory had become inevitable
with the firing of the first gun. Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to
postpone the evil day for the South by proposing a military policy of
"masterly inactivity" whereby time might be gained for his side to
prepare to meet the blow when it fell. But his "masterly inactivity"
policy was swept aside by the momentum of the national passion which the
war had aroused.

California and New Mexico became the strategic points of the slavery
struggle at the close of the war. To open both to the immigration of
slave-labor was thenceforth the grand design of the South. Over Oregon
occurred a fierce preliminary trial of strength between the sections.
The South was thrown in the contest, and the anti-slavery principle of
the Ordinance of 1787 applied to the Territory. Calhoun, who was
apparently of the mind that as Oregon went so would go California and
New Mexico, was violently agitated by this reverse. "The great strife
between the North and the South is ended," he passionately declared.
Immediately the charge was made and widely circulated through the slave
States that the stronger was oppressing the weaker section, wresting
from it its just share in the common fruits of common victories. For had
not California and New Mexico been won by the bravery and blood of the
South as of the North, and how then was the North to deprive the South
of its joint ownership of them without destroying the federal equality
of the two halves of the Union? What was it but to subvert the Union
existing among the States?

Disunion sentiment was thenceforth ladled out to the slave States in
increasing quantities. The turning of the long lane in the domination of
the slave-power was visibly near. With Garrison at one end and Calhoun
at the other the work of dissolution advanced apace. The latter
announced, in 1848, that the separation of the two sections was
complete. Ten years before, Garrison had made proclamation that the
Union, though not in form, was, nevertheless, in fact dissolved. And
possibly they were right. The line of cleavage had at the date of
Calhoun's announcement passed entirely through the grand strata of
national life, industrial, moral, political, and religious. There
remained indeed but a single bond of connection between the
slave-holding and the non-slave-holding Stat