In the growing exigency of the slave industrial system, under these circumstances, the reparation of this blunder was deemed urgent, and so, in casting about to find some solution of its problem, the attempted abrogation of the compromise law itself not being considered wise by Calhoun, the slave power fell upon Texas, struggling for independence. An agitation was consequently started to correct the error of the Missouri compromise by the annexation of a region of country described in the graphic language of Webster to be so vast that "a bird could not fly over it in a week." What the South had lost by the blunder of the slave wall of 36° 30' was then expected, barring accidents of course, to be restored to it in the new slave States, and in the large augmentation of slave representation in the general government, which would eventually ensue from the act of annexation. But the accident of the Mexican war wrecked completely the deep scheme of the Texan plotters, and neutralized the political advantage which had accrued to the slave power in the admission of Texas into the Union by the acquisition of California and New Mexico at the close of that war. It was a checkmate by destiny. Chance had at a critical moment aligned itself definitely on the side of modern industrialism in the American republic and given a decisive turn to the long contest with its slave rival. With the admission of California as a free State the political balance between our two opposing systems of labor was irreparably destroyed. For, while the South possessed Texas, and an expectation of acquiring new slave States therefrom, this expectation amounted practically to a bare possibility. For it was found, owing to the inferior colonizing resources of the slave system, far easier to annex this immense domain than to people it, or to organize out of it States for emergent needs. On the other hand, the superior colonizing ability of free labor, taken in conjunction with all that vast, unoccupied territory belonging to it and inviting settlement, promised, in the ordinary course of events, to increase and confirm this preponderance of political power, and so to seal the fate of slavery. Nor do I forget in this connection that the bill, which organized into territories Utah and New Mexico, was, in deference to Southern demand, purged of the Wilmot _proviso_. But this concession on the part of Northern politicians had no real value to the South, for, as Webster pointed out at the time, slave labor was effectually interdicted from competing with free labor for the possession of this land by a power higher than the Wilmot _proviso_, viz., by a law of nature. The failure, however, to re-enact this decree of nature in 1850 prepared the way for the demolition of the slave wall four years later, and thus operated to hasten the grand catastrophe.