d delivered his
great speech. Mr. Clay, addressing me in the friendly manner
which he had always employed since I was a schoolboy in
Lexington, asked me what I thought of the speech. I liked it
better than he did. He then suggested that I should "join the
compromise men," saying that it was a measure which he thought
would probably give peace to the country for thirty years--the
period that had elapsed since the adoption of the compromise of
1820. Then, turning to Mr. Berrien, he said, "You and I will be
under ground before that time, but our young friend here may
have trouble to meet." I somewhat impatiently declared my
unwillingness to transfer to posterity a trial which they would
be relatively less able to meet than we were, and passed on my
way.

[Footnote 9: The vote in the Senate on the proposition to continue the
line of the Missouri Compromise through the newly acquired territory to
the Pacific was twenty-four yeas, to thirty-two nays. Reckoning Delaware
and Missouri as Southern States, the vote of the two sections was
exactly equal. The yeas were _all_ cast by Southern Senators; the nays
were all Northern, except two from Delaware, one from Missouri, and one
from Kentucky.]

CHAPTER III.

Reelection to the Senate.--Political Controversies in
Mississippi.--Action of the Democratic State Convention.--Defeat
of the State-Rights Party.--Withdrawal of General Quitman and
Nomination of the Author as Candidate for the Office of
Governor.--The Canvass and its Result.--Retirement to Private
Life.

I had been reelected by the Legislature of Mississippi as my own
successor, and entered upon a new term of service in the Senate on March
4, 1851.

On my return to Mississippi in 1851, the subject chiefly agitating the
public mind was that of the "compromise" measures of the previous year.
Consequent upon these was a proposition for a convention of delegates,
from the people of the Southern States respectively, to consider what
steps ought to be taken for their future peace and safety, and the
preservation of their constitutional rights. There was diversity of
opinion with regard to the merits of the measures referred to, but the
disagreement no longer followed the usual lines of party division. They
who saw in those measures the forerunner of disaster to the South had no
settled policy beyond a convention, the object of which should