Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/400

390 exclude slavery from the territories, in order to pacify the South, they concluded that the South might have obtained much more if it had threatened more, and that the North, for the purpose of preserving peace and of making money, would yield anything and everything if the South only put on a bolder front.

Clay had gradually learned to understand the South well. He knew that the hotspurs were terribly in earnest, and that, in spite of the old attachment to the Union still existing, “the bold, the daring, and the violent,” as he wrote to S. A. Allibone in June, 1851, might eventually “get the control and push their measures to a fatal extreme.” What he did not appreciate was the character of that “sentiment” which he had asked the Northern people to sacrifice in order to soothe the feelings of the South. He failed to feel that the natural impulses of generosity and the moral pride of the Northern people would inevitably rebel against the fugitive-slave law; and he did not see that, by leaving the question of slavery in the territories unsettled, the compromise had only for a short time adjourned the final struggle which he endeavored to avert.

Although his health was not perceptibly improved when the opening session of the thirty-second Congress approached, he went to Washington hoping to take an active part in its deliberations. But it was not to be. Only once did he feel strong enough to go to the Senate Chamber.