There were very few secessionists at this time, except in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. President Taylor was so popular at the South, and so avowedly ready to take command himself against rebels, that no army could have been raised to resist him. Webster declared, in February, 1850, that there was no danger of secession; and the same opinion was held by Benton of Missouri, Seward, and other Senators. There was not enough alarm at the North to affect the stock-market. All that the Whigs needed to do for the Union was to sustain it with all the strength which they could use for that purpose at the South. If they had also insisted that California should be admitted unconditionally, they would soon have had support enough from Northern Democrats in Congress. The demand for a national party of freedom was urgent. The Free Soilers were too sectional; but the Whigs had so much influence at the South that they could have checked the extension of slavery without bloodshed; and this would have ensured the progress of emancipation. III. All this might have been done if Clay's hatred of the abolitionists, who had refused to make him President, had not made him try to cripple them by another compromise. He proposed that California should be admitted at once and without slavery; that it should be left to the settlers in Utah and New Mexico to decide whether these territories should ultimately become free or slave States; that Texas should receive a large sum of money, as well as a great tract of land which she had threatened to take from New Mexico by force; and, worst of all, that a new fugitive-slave bill should be passed. The law then on the statute books left the question whether the defendant should be enslaved to be decided by a magistrate elected by the people or appointed by the governor; and the court was so apt to be restricted by local legislation or public opinion, that recovery of fugitives was practically impossible in New England. The new law retained the worst provision of the old one; namely, that no jury could be asked to decide whether the defendant had ever been a slave. The principal change was that the judge was to come into such close relations with the national administration as to be independent of the people of the State. In short, fugitive slaves were to be punished, and disloyal Texans rewarded, in order that California might get her rights.