Yet the year of 1850, that time when forced and formal peace began
to mask the attitude of sections already arrayed for a later war,
might have been called as important as any in our history.
The ranks of these men at the table, too, might have been called
arranged as though by some shrewd compromise. Even a careless eye
or ear might have declared both sections, North and South, to have
been represented here. Grave men they were, and accustomed to
think, and they reflected, thus early in Millard Fillmore's
administration, the evenly balanced political powers of the time.
The headlong haste of both sections was in the year 1850 halted for
a time by the sage counsels of such leaders as Clay, in the South,
even Webster, in the North. The South claimed, after the close of
the Mexican War and the accession of the enormous Spanish
territories to the southwest, that the accepted line of compromise
established in 1820, by which slavery might not pass north of the
parallel of latitude thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, should be
extended westward quite to the Pacific Ocean.
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