New Mexico, a Territory already organized, would lie between these new
Territories and slave institutions, so that by no possibility could
they in the ordinary course of events become slave States.

"On the 7th of March, 1850, when Mr. Webster from the Senate chamber
appealed to the North to 'conquer its prejudices' and rely on the laws
of God and Nature to prevent the extension of the institution of human
bondage, the two great forces of Liberty and Slavery were in deadly and
irrepressible conflict,--with all the powers of the Government on the
side of Slavery. That struggle reached its last peaceable stage in the
triumph of Freedom in Kansas and the election of Lincoln to the
Presidency."

Mr. Grow mistakes the relative positions of the slavery question in
1850 and 1861. When Mr. Webster was willing to waive the anti-slavery
clause in the bill organizing the Territories of New Mexico and Utah,
all the Territories to the North were already protected from slavery
by the general prohibition of the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and by
the specific prohibition in the Oregon bill of 1848. To Mr. Webster's
view, in 1850 Kansas was as secure against the introduction of slavery
as it was to Mr. Grow's view in 1861 after Mr. Lincoln was chosen
President and the Free State men had won their victory on the soil of
the Territory. Mr. Webster saw before him therefore a long procession
of States in the North-West whose free institutions were assured by the
absolute inhibition of Slavery. He was in the midst of a heated and
hated controversy over two Territories adapted only to mining and
grazing and never likely to attract slave labor. Neither he nor any
other person at that time imagined the possibility of repealing the
Missouri Compromise; and therefore when all the territory north of
36 deg. 30' was secured by a prohibition as absolute as Congress could make
it, Mr. Webster did not consider it necessary to wage a bitter contest
and possibly endanger the Union of the States merely to secure a
prohibition of slavery in two Territories where he believed the
institution could not go. Precisely in the same way Mr. Grow did not
believe that slavery would go into Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada, and
he was therefore willing to waive the anti-slavery clause rather than
add to the danger of disunion by insisting on it.

The same motives that inspired Mr. Webster in 1850, inspired Mr.
Seward, Mr. Wade, and Mr. Grow in 1861. It is sel