By a singular coincidence the Thirty-first Congress, which met December, 1849, embraced among its members Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Cass, Corwin, Seward, Salmon P. Chase, John P. Hale, Hamlin of Maine, James M. Mason, Douglas of Illinois, Foote and Davis of Mississippi, of the Senate; and Joshua R. Giddings, Horace Mann, Wilmot of Pennsylvania, Robert C. Schenck, Robert C. Winthrop, Alexander H. Stephens, and Thaddeus Stevens, of the House. To avert the impending storm of slavery agitation then threatening disunion, Clay, by a set of resolutions, with a view to a "_lasting compromise_," on January 29, 1850, proposed in the Senate a general plan of compromise and a committee of thirteen to report a bill or bills in accordance therewith. His plan was: 1. The admission of California with her free Constitution. 2. Territorial governments for the other territory acquired from Mexico, without any restriction as to slavery. 3. The disputed boundary between Texas and New Mexico to be determined. 4. The _bona fide_ public debt of Texas, contracted prior to annexation, to be paid from duties on foreign imports, upon condition that Texas relinquish her claim to any part of New Mexico. 5. The declaration that it was inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, without the consent of Maryland and the people of the District, and without compensation to owners of slaves. 6. The prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. 7. A more effectual provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves. 8. A declaration that Congress has no power to interfere with the slave trade between States. These resolutions and the plan embodied led to a most noteworthy discussion, chiefly participated in by Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, Seward, and Foote. The debate was opened by Clay. He favored the admission of California with her already formed free State Constitution, but he exclaimed: "I shall go with the Senator from the South who goes farthest in making penal laws and imposing the heaviest sanctions for the recovery of fugitive slaves and the restoration of them by their owners." He, however, tried to hold the olive branch to both the North and the South, and pleaded for the Union. He pathetically pleaded for mutual concessions, and deprecated, what he then apprehended, _war_ between the sections, exclaiming: "War and dissolution of the Union are identical." After prophesying that if a war came it would be more ferocious, bloody, implacable, and exterminating than were the wars of Greece, the Commoners of England, or the Revolutions of France, Senator Clay predicted that it would be "not of two or three years' duration, but a war of interminable duration, during which some Philip or Alexander, some Caesar or Napoleon, would arise and cut the Gordian knot and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the several portions of this common empire."