Such was the acute situation in December, 1849, and the men, scenes and debates which attended the solution of this grave crisis present a remarkable and dramatic picture. All eyes now turned to Mr. Clay, the great Compromisor, then in his seventy-third year. In January, 1850, he began his efforts to bring about what proved to be the last compromise between the North and the South. Four great speeches were delivered on the resolutions introduced by him. Mr. Clay, so feeble that he had to be assisted up the Capitol steps, spoke early in February. On March 4th Mr. Calhoun, too weak to speak himself, had his speech, full of antagonism and foreboding, read by a colleague. Three days after Calhoun's speech, Webster delivered his famous "Seventh of March" speech, in which he sacrificed the support of thousands of friends, and demoralized the entire North by condemning the Abolitionists and advocating the passage of the Compromise measures. On March 11th Mr. Seward delivered his "Higher Law" speech, denouncing the Compromise. The great triumvirate, Clay, Calhoun and Webster, appeared in this debate for the last time before the American public. Calhoun died on the last day of March. Late in '51 Clay resigned his seat in the Senate and died at Washington, June 29, 1852. Webster took the office of Secretary of State, received a few votes in the Whig Convention and refused to support General Scott in the election of 1852, and died broken-hearted October 24, 1852. The Compromise of 1850, as finally agreed on, provided that Utah and New Mexico should be organized into territories without reference to slavery; California to be admitted as a free State; $10,000,000.00 to be paid Texas for her claim to New Mexico; a new Fugitive Slave Law; and the slave trade to be abolished in the District of Columbia. The compromise was viewed with great indignation by the North, and was in many respects extremely unsatisfactory to the South, who was now certain that her plan of extension of slave area was lost. The political leaders of both parties now argued and pretended that the slavery question was absolutely settled, inasmuch as there was no further territory to be partitioned, and that Clay's Compromise had included all possible phases of the subject. But it was apparent to those who looked beneath the surface that the situation was not settled at all; nobody in the North, however, looked for such a startling and rash course as was adopted by the South in 1854, and which resulted, in that year, in the formation of the Republican Party. CHAPTER VIII. BIRTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.