them for the first time that they could absolutely consolidate the
Southern vote in Congress in defense of slavery, regardless of
differences on all other issues. But this power was of no avail,
unless they could regain their equality in the Senate which had
been lost by what they considered the mishap of California's
admission. While Clay and Benton were in the Senate with their
old reverence for the Union and their desire for the ultimate
extinction of slavery, California could neither be kept out nor
divided on the line of 36 deg. 30'. But the new South, the South of
Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens, of Robert Toombs and
Judah P. Benjamin, of James M. Mason and John C. Breckinridge, had
made new advances, was inspired by new ambitions, and was determined
upon the consolidation of sectional power. The one supreme need
was another slave State. If this could be acquired they felt
assured that so long as the Union should exist no free State could
be admitted without the corresponding admission of another slave
State. They would perhaps have been disappointed. Possibly they
did not give sufficient heed to the influences which were steadily
working against slavery in such States as Delaware and Maryland,
threatening desertion in the rear, while the defenders of slavery
were battling at the front. They argued, however, and not unnaturally,
that prejudice can hold a long contest with principle, and that in
the general uprising of the South the tendency of all their old
allies would be to remain firm. They reckoned that States with
few slaves would continue to stand for Southern institutions as
stubbornly as States with many slaves. In all the States of the
South emancipation had been made difficult, and free negroes were
tolerated, if at all, with great reluctance and with constant
protest.

The struggle for Kansas was therefore to be maintained and possession
secured at all hazards. Although, as the Southern leaders realized,
the free States had flanked them by the admission of California
with an anti-slavery constitution, the Southern acquisition of
Kansas would pierce the very centre of the army of freedom, and
would enable the South thenceforth to dictate terms to the North.
Instead of the line of 36 deg. 30', upon which they had so frequently
offered to compromise, as a permanent continental division, they
would have carried the northern boundary of slave territory to the
40th parallel of latitud