blem. On January 29, 1850, Clay
offered to the Senate a compromise granting concessions to both sides;
and a few days later, in a powerful oration, he made a passionate appeal
for a union of hearts through mutual sacrifices. Calhoun relentlessly
demanded the full measure of justice for the South: equal rights in the
territories bought by common blood; the return of runaway slaves as
required by the Constitution; the suppression of the abolitionists; and
the restoration of the balance of power between the North and the South.
Webster, in his notable "Seventh of March speech," condemned the Wilmot
Proviso, advocated a strict enforcement of the fugitive slave law,
denounced the abolitionists, and made a final plea for the Constitution,
union, and liberty. This was the address which called forth from
Whittier the poem, "Ichabod," deploring the fall of the mighty one whom
he thought lost to all sense of faith and honor.

=The Terms of the Compromise of 1850.=--When the debates were closed,
the results were totaled in a series of compromise measures, all of
which were signed in September, 1850, by the new President, Millard
Fillmore, who had taken office two months before on the death of Zachary
Taylor. By these acts the boundaries of Texas were adjusted and the
territory of New Mexico created, subject to the provision that all or
any part of it might be admitted to the union "with or without slavery
as their constitution may provide at the time of their admission." The
Territory of Utah was similarly organized with the same conditions as to
slavery, thus repudiating the Wilmot Proviso without guaranteeing
slavery to the planters. California was admitted as a free state under a
constitution in which the people of the territory had themselves
prohibited slavery.

The slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, but slavery
itself existed as before at the capital of the nation. This concession
to anti-slavery sentiment was more than offset by a fugitive slave law,
drastic in spirit and in letter. It placed the enforcement of its terms
in the hands of federal officers appointed from Washington and so
removed it from the control of authorities locally elected. It provided
that masters or their agents, on filing claims in due form, might
summarily remove their escaped slaves without affording their "alleged
fugitives" the right of trial by jury, the right to witness, the right
to offer any testimony in evidence. Finally