many felt that Taylor had not
been generously treated by the government, and this sentiment had much
to do with his nomination and election.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT.

The "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and freedom could not be
postponed, and when, on the 13th of February, 1850, the President sent
to Congress the petition of California for admission as a State, the
quarrel broke out afresh. The peculiar character of the problem has
already been stated. A part of California lay north and a part south of
36 deg. 30', the dividing line between slavery and freedom as defined by
the Missouri Compromise, thirty years, before. Congress, therefore, had
not the power to exclude slavery, and the question had to be decided by
the people themselves. They had already done so by inserting a clause in
the Constitution which prohibited slavery.

There were violent scenes on the floor of Congress. General Foote, of
Mississippi, was on the point of discharging a pistol at Colonel Benton,
of Missouri, when bystanders seized his arm and prevented. Weapons were
frequently drawn, and nearly every member went about armed and ready for
a deadly affray. The South threatened to secede from the Union, and we
stood on the brink of civil war.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850.

It was at this fearful juncture that Henry Clay, now an old man,
submitted to the Senate his famous "Omnibus Bill," so called because of
its many features, which proposed a series of compromises as follows:
the admission of California as a State, with the Constitution adopted by
her people (which prohibited slavery); the establishment of territorial
governments over all the other newly acquired Territories, with no
reference to slavery; the abolishment of all traffic in slaves in the
District of Columbia, but declaring it inexpedient to abolish slavery
there without the consent of the inhabitants and also of Maryland; the
assumption of the debts of Texas; while all fugitive slaves in the free
States should be liable to arrest and return to slavery.

John C. Calhoun, the Southern leader, was earnestly opposed to the
compromise, but he was ill and within a few weeks of death, and his
argument was read in the Senate by Senator Mason. Daniel Webster
supported the measure with all his logic and eloquence, and it was his
aid extended to Clay that brought about the passage of the bill, all the
sections becoming laws in September, 1850, and California, conquered
from