Thus far, most of the political victories had been with the slave-power, and the South became correspondently arrogant and defiant.  The war of ideas against Southern interests now raged with ominous and increasing force in all the Northern States.  Public opinion became more and more inflamed.  Passions became excited in cities and towns and villages which had been dormant since the Constitution had been adopted.  The decree of the North went forth that there should be no more accession of slave territory; and, more than this, the population spread with unexampled rapidity toward the Pacific Ocean in consequence of the discovery of gold in California, in 1848, and attracted by the fertile soil of Oregon.  Immigrants from all nations came to seek their fortunes in territories north of 36 deg.30’.

What Calhoun had anticipated in 1836, when he cast his eyes on Texas, did not take place.  Slave territory indeed was increased, but free territory increased still more rapidly.  The North was becoming richer and richer, and the South scarcely held its own.  The balance which he thought would be in favor of the South, he now saw inclining to the North.  Northern States became more numerous than Southern ones, and more populous, more wealthy, and more intelligent.  The political power of the Union, when Mr. Polk closed his inglorious administration, was perceptibly with the North, and not political power only, but moral power.  The great West was the soil of freemen.

But the haughty and defiant spirit of Calhoun was not broken.  He prophesied woes.  He became sad and dejected, but more and more uncompromising, more and more dictatorial.  He would not yield.  “If we yield an inch,” said he, “we are lost.”  The slightest concession, in his eyes, would be fatal.  When he declared his nullification doctrines it was because he thought that State rights were invaded by hostile tariffs.  But after the Mexican War slavery was to him a matter of life and death.  He made many excellent and powerful speeches, which tasked the intellect of Webster to refute; but, whatever the subject, it was seen only through his Southern spectacles, and argued from partisan grounds and with partisan zeal.  Everything he uttered was with a view of consolidating the South, and preparing it for disunion and secession, as the only way to preserve the beloved institution.  In his eyes, slavery and the Union could not co-exist.  This he saw plainly, but if either must perish it should be the Union; and this doctrine he so constantly reiterated that he won over to it nearly the entire South.  But in consolidating the South, he also consolidated the North.  He forced on the issue, believing that even yet the South, united with Northern allies, was the stronger, and that it could establish its independence on a slavery basis.  The Union was no union at all, and its Constitution was a worthless parchment.  “He proposed a convention of the Southern States which should agree that, until