for distributing its assets and liabilities. At one period during the Missouri struggle, the Southern members seriously contemplated withdrawing from Congress in a body; and John Randolph, although he had not been for some time on speaking terms with Clay, one evening approached him, saying: “Mr. Speaker, I wish you would leave the chair. I will follow you to Kentucky, or anywhere else in the world.” “That is a very serious proposition,” answered Clay, “which we have not now time to discuss. But if you will come into the Speaker's room to-morrow morning, before the House assembles, we will discuss it together.” They met. Clay strongly advised against anything like secession, and in favor of a compromise, while Randolph was for immediate and decisive action. The slave-holders, he said, had the right on their side; matters must come to an extremity, and there could be no more suitable occasion to bring them to that issue.
The secession of the Southern delegations from Congress did indeed not come to pass; it was prevented by the compromise. But Clay himself, when the excitement was at its height, gloomily expressed his apprehension that in a few years the Union would be divided into three confederations, — a Southern, an Eastern, and a Western.
While thus the thought of dissolving the Union occurred readily to the Southern mind, the thought of maintaining the government and preserving the Union by means of force hardly occurred to any-
