mountains. In the contest for speakership, only 20 scattering votes out of 221 in the House of Representatives had indicated the presence of any decided aggressive anti-slavery sentiment in Congress. But now, within a month afterward, the Congress and the country were again arrayed sectionally into Northern and Southern opponents. Henry Clay, as the recognized representative of conservative sentiment a Southerner from the middle western border State of Kentucky came forward promptly in January, 1850, to offer terms of settlement. His warmly expressed patriotic purpose was to effect "an amicable arrangement of all questions in con troversy between the free and slave States growing out of the subject of slavery." Moved by this spirit, the great Kentucky statesman presented in January, 1850, a series of resolutions covering the admission of California, territorial government for the territories acquired from Mexico; the Texas boundary the appropriation of ten millions to Texas for payment of its debt; the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and a law for rendition of fugitive slaves.
Mr. Clay’s plan of settlement differed from that of Taylor, and his administration actively opposed it. Benton vigorously assailed the scheme. Calhoun at first opposed the plan of Clay and was supported in the opposition by Seward, the leader of the administration. Mr. Calhoun, in the course of an elaborate speech, said: "How can the Union be saved? There is but one way by which it can with any certainty, and that is by a full and final settlement on the principle of justice of all the questions at issue between the two sections." Mr. Webster made his great Union speech on the 7th of March, 1850, taking ground against Congressional restriction as to slavery in the territories, thereby offending a large portion of his constituency. Mr. Toombs, replying to the charge that the Southern members opposed the admission of California because its constitu-
