full justice was rendered to the South, all the Southern ports should be closed to the sea-going vessels of the North.”  He arrogantly would deprive the North even of its constitutional rights in reference to the exclusion of slavery from the Territories.  In no way should the North meddle with the slavery question, on penalty of secession; and the sooner this was understood the better.  “We are,” said he, “relatively stronger than we shall be hereafter, politically and morally.”

The great fight arose in 1849.  The people in the Northwestern territories had been encouraged to form governments, and had already tasted the delights of self-rule.  President Polk had recommended the extension of the old Missouri Compromise line of 36 deg. 30’ westward to the Pacific, leaving the territory south of that open to slavery.  This would divide California, and was opposed by all parties.  Calhoun now went so far as to claim the constitutional right to take slaves into any Territory, while Webster argued the power of Congress to rule the Territories until they should become States.  So excited was the discussion that a convention of Southern States was held to frame a separate government for the “United States South.”  The threat of secession was ever their most potent argument.  The contest in Congress centred upon the admission of California as a State and the condition of slavery in the Territories of Utah and New Mexico.

A great crisis had now arrived.  Clay, “the great pacificator,” once more stepped into the arena with a new compromise.  To provide for concessions on either side, he proposed the admission of California (whose new constitution prohibited slavery); the organization of Utah and New Mexico as Territories without mention of slavery (leaving it to the people); the arrangement of the boundary of Texas; the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; and the enactment of a more stringent fugitive-slave law, commanding the assistance of people in the free States to capture runaways, when summoned by the authorities.

The general excitement over the discussion of this bill will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.  The South raged, and the North blazed with indignation,—­especially over the Fugitive-Slave Bill.

Meanwhile Calhoun was dying.  His figure was bent, his voice was feeble, his face was haggard, but his superb intellect still retained its vigor to the last.  Among the multitude of ringing appeals to the reason and moral sense of the North was a newspaper article from The Independent of New York, by a young Congregational minister, Henry Ward Beecher.  It was entitled “Shall we Compromise?” and made clear and plain the issue before the people:  “Slavery is right; Slavery is wrong:  Slavery shall live; Slavery shall die:  are these conflicts to be settled by any mode of parcelling out certain Territories?” This article was read to Calhoun upon his dying bed.  “Who wrote that?” he asked.  The name was given him.  “That man understands the thing.  He has gone to the bottom of it.  He will be heard from again.”  It was what the great Southerner had foreseen and foretold from the first.