No man could have been less a politician than "Old Rough and Ready," for he had not cast a vote in forty years. Daniel Webster characterized him as an "ignorant frontier colonel," and did not conceal his disgust over his nomination by the great party of which the New England orator was the leader. It was Taylor's brilliant services in Mexico, that made him popular above all others with the masses, who are the ones that make and unmake presidents. Besides, a great many felt that Taylor had not been generously treated by the government, and this sentiment had much to do with his nomination and election. THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. The "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and freedom could not be postponed, and when, on the 13th of February, 1850, the President sent to Congress the petition of California for admission as a State, the quarrel broke out afresh. The peculiar character of the problem has already been stated. A part of California lay north and a part south of 36 deg. 30', the dividing line between slavery and freedom as defined by the Missouri Compromise, thirty years, before. Congress, therefore, had not the power to exclude slavery, and the question had to be decided by the people themselves. They had already done so by inserting a clause in the Constitution which prohibited slavery. There were violent scenes on the floor of Congress. General Foote, of Mississippi, was on the point of discharging a pistol at Colonel Benton, of Missouri, when bystanders seized his arm and prevented. Weapons were frequently drawn, and nearly every member went about armed and ready for a deadly affray. The South threatened to secede from the Union, and we stood on the brink of civil war. THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. It was at this fearful juncture that Henry Clay, now an old man, submitted to the Senate his famous "Omnibus Bill," so called because of its many features, which proposed a series of compromises as follows: the admission of California as a State, with the Constitution adopted by her people (which prohibited slavery); the establishment of territorial governments over all the other newly acquired Territories, with no reference to slavery; the abolishment of all traffic in slaves in the District of Columbia, but declaring it inexpedient to abolish slavery there without the consent of the inhabitants and also of Maryland; the assumption of the debts of Texas; while all fugitive slaves in the free States should be liable to arrest and return to slavery.