Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/437

 CHAPTER XIII. STATE RIGHTS. (18501860.) WHEN the historian of the United States reaches the year 1850, he finds himself at a point at which it is convenient, at which it is indeed necessary, that he should pause and "look before and after," in order that he may reckon the forces amidst which he stands and scan the whole stage of affairs. The "Compromise of 1850" settled nothing; but it was compounded of every element of the country's politics and may be made to yield upon analysis almost every ingredient of the historian's narrative. Its object was the settlement of all urgent questions. Texas had been admitted to the Union with disputed boundaries which needed to be definitely determined ; territory had been acquired from Mexico, by conquest and purchase, for which it was requisite to provide a government; opinion in one section of the country was demanding that the slave-trade should be excluded from the District of Columbia, the seat of the national government, and slavery itself from the new territory ; opinion in another section was demanding, with an air almost of passion, that the question of slavery in the Territories be left to those who should settle and make States of them, and that property in slaves should everywhere be adequately protected by effective laws for the apprehension and return of fugitive negroes. It was the question of the extension or restriction of slavery that made the adoption of a plan of organisation and government for the new Territory perplexing and difficult, and the determination of the boundary of Texas a matter of critical sectional interest; and yet the rapid growth and development of the country rendered it imperative that action should be taken definitely and at once. Something must be done, and done promptly, to quiet men's minds concerning disturbing questions of policy and to keep parties from going utterly to pieces. That was the object of the " Compromise of 1850." It consisted of a series of measures framed and introduced by a committee of which Henry Clay was chairman, and urged upon Congress with all the art, energy, and persuasiveness of which the aged Kentuckian was so great a master even in those his last days. It was agreed en. xiir.