Henry Clay, from his
place in the United States Senate, introduced the historic resolutions
which bear his name, proposing an amicable adjustment of all questions
growing out of the subject of slavery. This series of compromises was
to admit California, establish territorial governments in the regions
acquired from Mexico without provision for or against slavery, pay the
debt and fix the western boundary of Texas, declare it inexpedient to
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, deny the right of
Congress to obstruct the slave trade between States, and to enact a
more stringent fugitive slave law. It was in January, 1850, that Clay
opened the memorable debate upon these resolutions, which continued
eight months and included Webster's great speech of the 7th of March.
When the debate ended in September Zachary Taylor was dead, Millard
Fillmore was President, a new Cabinet had been appointed, slavery
remained undisturbed in the District of Columbia, Mexico and Utah had
become territories open to slave-holders, and a new fugitive slave
law bore the approval of the new Chief Executive. During these months
the whole country had been absorbed in events at Washington. Private
letters, newspapers, public meetings, and state legislatures echoed
the speeches of the three distinguished Senators who had long been in
the public eye, and who, it was asserted at the time, were closing
their life work in saving the Union.

In this discussion, Daniel S. Dickinson favoured compromise; William
H. Seward stood firmly for his anti-slavery convictions. The latter
spoke on the 11th of March. He opposed the fugitive slave law because
"we cannot be true Christians or real freemen if we impose on another
a chain that we defy all human power to lay on ourselves;"[397] he
declared for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
"and if I shall be asked what I did to embellish the capital of my
country, I will point to her freemen and say--these are the monuments
of my munificence;" he antagonised the right to take slaves into new
territories, affirming that the Constitution devoted the domain to
union, to justice, and to liberty. "But there is a higher law than the
Constitution," he said, "which regulates our authority over the
domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes." In treating of
threats of disunion he looked with a prophet's eye fourteen years into
the future. That vision revealed border warfare, kindred converted
i