of slavery for that region at least.  Further, the South called for a Fugitive Slave Law sufficiently stringent to be serviceable.  Also, in encountering the Wilmot proviso, Southern statesmen had asserted the doctrine, far-reaching and subversive of established ideas and of enacted laws, that Congress could not constitutionally interfere with the property-rights of citizens of the United States in the Territories, and that slaves were property.  Amid such a confused and violent hurly-burly the perplexed body of order-loving citizens were, with reason, seriously alarmed.

To the great relief of these people and to the equal disgust of the extremist politicians, Henry Clay, the “great compromiser,” was now announced to appear once more in the role which all felt that he alone could play.  He came with much dramatic effect; an aged and broken man, he emerged from the retirement in which he seemed to have sought a brief rest before death should lay him low, and it was with an impressive air of sadness and of earnestness that he devoted the last remnants of his failing strength to save a country which he had served so long.  His friends feared that he might not survive even a few months to reach the end of his patriotic task.  On January 29, 1850, he laid before the Senate his “comprehensive scheme of adjustment.”  But it came not as oil upon the angry waters; every one was offended by one or another part of it, and at once there opened a war of debate which is among the most noteworthy and momentous in American history.  Great men who belonged to the past and great men who were to belong to the future shared in the exciting controversies, which were prolonged over a period of more than half a year.  Clay was constantly on his feet, doing battle with a voice which gained rather than lost force from its pathetic feebleness.  “I am here,” he solemnly said, “expecting soon to go hence, and owing no responsibility but to my own conscience and to God.”  Jefferson Davis spoke for the extension westward of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, with a proviso positively establishing slavery south of that line.  Calhoun, from the edge of the grave, into which only a few weeks later he was to fall, once more faced his old adversaries.  On March 4 he sat beside Mason of Virginia, while that gentleman read for him to a hushed audience the speech which he himself was too weak to deliver.  Three days later Webster uttered that speech which made the seventh day of March almost as famous in the history of the United States as the Ides of the same month had been in that of Rome.  In the eyes of the anti-slavery men of New England the fall of Webster was hardly less momentous than the fall of Caesar had appeared in the Eternal City.  Seward also spoke a noteworthy speech, bringing upon himself infinite abuse by his bold phrase, a higher law than the Constitution.  Salmon P. Chase followed upon the same side, in an exalted and prophetic strain.  In that momentous session every man gave out what he felt to be his best, while anxious and excited millions devoured every word which the newspapers reported to them.