South--a growing, increasing, swelling power, that will be able to
speak the law to this nation, and to execute the law as spoken. That
power is the country known as the great West--the Valley of the
Mississippi, one and indivisible from the gulf to the great lakes, and
stretching, on the one side and the other, to the extreme sources of
the Ohio and Missouri--from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains.
There, Sir, is the hope of this nation--the resting place of the power
that is not only to control, but to save, the Union. We furnish the
water that makes the Mississippi, and we intend to follow, navigate,
and use it until it loses itself in the briny ocean. So with the St.
Lawrence. We intend to keep open and enjoy both of these great outlets
to the ocean, and all between them we intend to take under our
especial protection, and keep and preserve as one free, happy, and
united people. This is the mission of the great Mississippi Valley,
the heart and soul of the nation and the continent."[345]

Meantime Congress was endeavoring to avert the clash of sections by
other measures of accommodation. The veteran Clay, in his favorite
role of peacemaker, had drafted a series of resolutions as a sort of
legislative programme; and with his old-time vigor, was pleading for
mutual forbearance. All wounds might be healed, he believed, by
admitting California with her free constitution; by organizing
territorial governments without any restriction as to slavery, in the
region acquired from Mexico; by settling the Texas boundary and the
Texas debt on a fair basis; by prohibiting the slave trade, but not
slavery, in the District of Columbia; and by providing more carefully
for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Clay, Calhoun, and Webster had
spoken with all the weight of their years upon these propositions,
before Douglas was free to address the Senate.

It was characteristic of Douglas that he chose to speak on the
concrete question raised by the application of California for
admission into the Union. His opening words betrayed no elevation of
feeling, no alarmed patriotism transcending party lines, no great
moral uplift. He made no direct reference to the state of the public
mind. Clay began with an invocation; Webster pleaded for a hearing,
not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American
and as a Senator, with the preservation of the Union as his theme;
Douglas sprang at once to the defense of his party. W