national reconciliation. He
introduced a bill providing for a series of concessions on both sides.
California was to be admitted as a free State; and New Mexico and Utah
were to be organized as territories, leaving the question of slavery for
future settlement. Slavery was to continue in the District of Columbia,
but the slave trade was to be forbidden there. Texas was to cede to New
Mexico a disputed strip of territory, which presumably would ultimately
become free; and was to be compensated by a large grant from the Federal
territory. A law was to be passed for the return of fugitive slaves by
Federal authority.

Over these measures the debate was long and hot. Clay pleaded that by
his scheme the advantages were fairly balanced between North and South.
He urged that the rising spirit of disunion at the South should be
disarmed by reasonable concessions. He appealed to the North for
concessions and to the South for peace. When Jefferson Davis, Senator
from Mississippi, declared that the plan conceded nothing to the South,
and demanded that the Missouri compromise line be extended to the
Pacific (bisecting California), with the express establishment of
slavery south of that line, Clay declared that no earthly power should
make him vote for the establishment of slavery anywhere where it had had
no previous existence. To do so, he said, would be to incur from future
inhabitants of New Mexico the reproach which Americans justly applied to
their British ancestors for fastening the institution on them. But he
would spare Southern sensibilities by withholding an explicit exclusion
of slavery from New Mexico; Nature and the future would attend to that.
Against any right of secession, against any possibility of peaceful
secession, he declared with strongest emphasis: "War and dissolution of
the Union are identical; they are convertible terms; and such a war!"
Fighting for the extension of slavery, the sympathies of all mankind
would be against the South.

The venerable old man, speaking with all the sincerity and warmth of his
heart and with all the powers of his mind, was heard, says Schurz, by a
great and brilliant audience. His first faltering words were followed by
regained power; the old elevation of sentiment, the sonorous flow of
words, the lofty energy of action, were enhanced by the pathetic sense
that this was the final effort.

More pathetic, tragic even, was the last speech of Calhoun, read for him
while he sat i