Looking into the future, the Southern men took alarm lest the
equality of their section should be lost in the Senate, and their
long control of the Federal Government ended. Even with Texas
added to the Union, this equality was barely maintained, for
Wisconsin was already seeking admission; and the clause in the
articles of annexation providing that four new States might be
carved out of the territory of Texas whenever she asked it, gave
no promise of speedy help to the South. Its operation would, in
any event, be distant, and subject to contingencies which could
not be accurately measured. There was not another foot of territory
south of 36 deg. 30', save that which was devoted to the Indians by
solemn compact, from which another slave State could be formed.
North of 36 deg. 30' the Missouri Compromise had dedicated the entire
country to freedom. In extent it was, to the Southern view,
alarmingly great, including at least a million square miles of
territory. Except along its river boundaries it was little known.
Its value was underrated, and a large portion of it was designated
on our maps as the Great American Desert. At the time Texas was
annexed, and for several years afterwards, not a single foot of
that vast area was organized under any form of civil government.
Had the Southern statesmen foreseen the immense wealth, population,
and value of this imperial domain in the five great States and four
Territories into which it is to-day divided, they would have
abandoned the struggle for equality. But the most that was hoped,
even in the North, within any near period, was one State north of
Iowa, one west of Missouri, and one from the Oregon country. The
remainder, in the popular judgment, was divided among mountain
gorges, the arid plains of the middle, and the uninviting region
in the north, which the French _voyaguers_ had classed under the
comprehensive and significant title of _mauvaises terres_. With
only three States anticipated from the great area of the north-west,
it was the evident expectation of the Southern men who then had
control of the government, that, if war with Mexico should ensue,
the result would inevitably be the acquisition of sufficient
territory to form slave States south of the line of the Missouri
Compromise as rapidly as free States could be formed north of it;
and that in this way the ancient equality between North and South
could be maintained.