vol. i, p. 350.

(63) Trist's letter to Buchanan, Secretary of State, Von Holst,
vol. iii., p. 334.

(64) Historical Ex., etc., _Dred Scott Case_, pp. 151-9. This is
the first Congress where its sessions were continued after twelve
o'clock midnight, of March 3d, in the odd years. _Ibid_., pp. 136-9.

(65) _Hist. of Mexican War_ (Wilcox), p. 223.

XVI
COMPROMISE MEASURES--1850

The slavery agitation first began in 1832 on a false tariff issue,
and precipitated upon the country in 1835, on the lines of
nullification and disunion, and was again revived at the close of
the Mexican War, and continued violently through 1849 and 1850.
The year 1850 will be ever memorable in the history of the United
States as a year wherein all the baleful seeds of disunion were
sown, which grew, to ripen, a little more than ten years later,
into _disunion_ in fact. Prophetically, a leading South Carolina
paper in its New Year-Day edition, said:

"When the future historian shall address himself to the task of
portraying the rise, progress, and decline of the American union,
the year _1850_ will arrest his attention, as denoting and presenting
the first marshalling and arraying of those hostile forces and
opposing elements which resulted in dissolution."

At the close of Polk's administration an inflammatory address,
drawn and signed by Calhoun and forty-one other members of Congress
from the slave States, was issued, filled with unfounded charges
against the North, professing to be a warning to the South that a
purpose existed to abolish slavery and bring on a conflict between
the white and black races, and to San Domingoize the South, which
could only be avoided, the address states:

"By fleeing the homes of ourselves and ancestors, and by abandoning
our country to our slaves, to become the permanent abode of disorder,
anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness."

This manifesto did not go quite to the extent of declaring for a
dissolution of the Union, but it appealed to the South to become
united, saying, if the North did not yield to its demands, the
South would be the assailed, and

"Would stand justified by all laws, human and divine, in repelling
a blow so dangerous, without looking to consequences, and to resort
to all means necessary for that purpose."(66)

The _Southern Press_ was set up in Washington to inculcate the
advantages of disunion, and to inflame the South against the North.
It portrayed the advantag