Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/384

374 the District of Columbia “without the consent and petition of the slave-holders thereof,” any act suppressing the slave-trade between the Slave States, any refusal to admit as a state any territory because of the existence of slavery therein, any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into New Mexico and Utah, and any act repealing or materially modifying the fugitive-slave law — would be resisted by the State of Georgia, “even, as a last resort, to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union.” This was indeed Unionism of the conditional species, and a keen observer would easily discern beneath it all a profound distrust and disquietude as to the future, apt to yield in any exciting crisis to the appeals of the determined minority of disunionists, who, after all, judged correctly of the demands which slavery must of necessity ultimately make.

But for the time being a large majority of the Southern people were evidently averse to a violent rupture. Some of the most influential public men of the South, who had vociferously threatened disunion while the compromise measures were pending, such as Alexander H. Stephens, Toombs, Cobb, Clemens, and others, now busied themselves to quiet the fears of their constituents, representing the compromise as a victory of Southern firmness, and as an assurance of future peace and harmony.

At the North, too, the compromise seemed to be acquiesced in by an overwhelming majority of the people as a permanent settlement; and there might