it than the thirty-first Congress of the United States. An immense area
of unsettled public domain had been wrested from Mexico. The Territories
of California, Utah, and New Mexico, amounting to several hundred
thousand square miles, remained undisposed of. They comprised what Mr.
Calhoun had termed the "Forbidden Fruit," and the trouble which
beclouded their annexation threatened to surpass the storms of conquest.

Congress felt that it was absolutely without light to guide it. It had
declined to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean.
Henry Clay had pronounced such division of public domain between the
sections a "Utopian dream," and Zachary Taylor had condemned the
principle in the only message he ever delivered to Congress. What Mr.
Lincoln afterward embodied in his famous expression that the Union could
never exist "half slave, half free," had been actually anticipated. The
whole territorial question came up as a new problem. But if the crisis
was now momentous the body of statesmen which considered it was a great
one. The men and the hour seemed to meet in that supreme moment. The
Senate consisted of sixty members, and for the last time that great trio
of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster met upon its floor. Commencing their
careers a generation before; with eventful lives and illustrious
performance, they lingered one moment in this arena before passing
forever from the scenes of their earthly efforts. All three had given up
ambition for the Presidency, none of them had commenced to break in
mental power, and each one was animated by patriotism to serve and save
his country. William H. Seward had entered the Senate from New York;
James M. Mason and Robert M. T. Hunter represented Virginia; Wm. C.
Dawson had joined Mr. Berrien from Georgia; Salmon P. Chase appeared
from Ohio; Jefferson Davis and Henry S. Foote illustrated Mississippi;
Stephen A. Douglas had been promoted from the House in Illinois, and
Samuel Houston was there from Texas. The House was unusually strong and
divided with the Senate the stormy scenes and surpassing struggles over
the compromise measures of 1850. It was the time of breaking up of party
lines, and many believed that the hour of disunion had arrived.

The Whig caucus, which assembled to nominate a candidate for Speaker of
the House, sustained a serious split. Robert Toombs offered a resolution
that Congress should place no restriction upon slavery in the
Territories. The No