and fierce, in January, 1850, Clay
introduced a bill for harmonizing all interests. As to the disputed
question of slavery in the new territory, he would pacify the North by
admitting California as a free State, and abolishing slavery and the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia; while the South was to be
placated by leaving Utah and New Mexico unrestricted as to slavery, and
by a more efficient law for the pursuit and capture of fugitive slaves.
His speech occupied two days, delivered in great physical exhaustion,
and was "an appeal to the North for concession and to the South for
peace." Like Webster, who followed with his renowned "Seventh-of-March
speech" and who alienated Massachusetts because he did not go far enough
for freedom, Clay showed that there could be no peaceable secession,
that secession meant war, and that it would be war to propagate a wrong,
in which the sympathy of all mankind would be against us.

Calhoun followed, defending the interests of slavery, which he called
"the rights of the South," though too weak to deliver his speech, which
was read for him. He clearly saw the issue,--that slavery was doomed if
the Union were preserved,--and therefore welcomed war before the North
should be prepared for it. It was the South Carolinian's last great
effort in the Senate, for the hand of death was upon him. He realized
that if the South did not resist and put down agitation on the slavery
question, the cause would be lost. It was already virtually lost, since
the conflict between freedom and slavery was manifestly irrepressible,
and would come in spite of concessions, which only put off the evil day.

On the 11th of March Seward, of New York, now becoming prominent in the
Senate, spoke, deprecating all compromise on a matter of principle, and
declaring that there was a "higher law than the Constitution itself." He
therefore would at least prevent the extension of slavery by any means
in the power of Congress, on the ground of moral right, not of political
expediency, undismayed by all the threats of secession. Two weeks
afterward Chase of Ohio took the same ground as Seward. From that time
Seward and Chase supplanted Webster and Clay in the confidence of the
North, on all antislavery questions.

After seven months of acrimonious debate in both houses of Congress and
during a session of extraordinary length, the compromise measures of
Clay were substantially passed,--a truce rather than a peace, which