CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE.

Garrison’s forecast of the future, directly after the annexation of Texas, proved singularly correct.  Never, as at that moment, had the slave-power seemed so secure in its ascendency, yet never, at any previous period, was it so near its downfall.  Freedom had reached that darkest hour just before dawn; and this, events were speedily to make clear.  If the South could have trammeled up the consequences of annexation, secure, indeed, for a season, would it have held its political supremacy in America?  But omnipotent as was the slave-power in the Government, it was not equal to this labor.  In the great game, in which Texas was the stakes, Fate had, unawares, slipped into the seat between the gamesters with hands full of loaded dice.  At the first throw the South got Texas, at the second the war with Mexico fell out, and at the third new national territory lay piled upon the boards.

Calhoun, the arch-annexationist, struggled desperately to avert the war.  He saw as no other Southern leader saw its tremendous significance in the conflict between the two halves of the Union for the political balance.  The admission of Texas had made an adjustment of this balance in favor of the South.  Calhoun’s plan was to conciliate Mexico, to sweep with our diplomatic broom the gathering war-clouds from the national firmament.  War, he knew, would imperil the freshly fortified position of his section—­war which meant at its close the acquisition of new national territory, with which the North would insist upon retrieving its reverse in the controversy over Texas.  War, therefore, the great nullifier resolved against.  He cried halt to his army, but the army heard not his voice, heeded not his orders, in the wild uproar and clamor which arose at the sight of helpless Mexico, and the temptation of adding fresh slave soil to the United States South, through her spoliation; Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out of hostilities between the two republics an impenetrable curtain had shut from his eyes the future.  The great plot for maintaining the political domination of the South had miscarried.  New national territory had become inevitable with the firing of the first gun.  Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to postpone the evil day for the South by proposing a military policy of “masterly inactivity” whereby time might be gained for his side to prepare to meet the blow when it fell.  But his “masterly inactivity” policy was swept aside by the momentum of the national passion which the war had aroused.