The settlement of the West had followed parallels of latitude. The men of the Lake Plains were transplanted New Englanders, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians; the men of the Gulf Plains came from south of Mason and Dixon's line,--pioneers both, aggressive, bold in initiative, but alienated by circumstances of tremendous economic significance. If ever North should be arrayed against South, the makeweight in the balance would be these pioneers of the Northwest and Southwest. It was no mean conception to plan for the "man of commerce" who would cross from one region to the other, with his "assorted cargo,"[344] for in that cargo were the destinies of two sections and his greatest commerce was to consist in the exchange of imponderable ideas. The ideal which inspired Douglas never found nobler expression, than in these words with which he replied to Webster's slighting reference to the West: "There is a power in this nation greater than either the North or the South--a growing, increasing, swelling power, that will be able to speak the law to this nation, and to execute the law as spoken. That power is the country known as the great West--the Valley of the Mississippi, one and indivisible from the gulf to the great lakes, and stretching, on the one side and the other, to the extreme sources of the Ohio and Missouri--from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains. There, Sir, is the hope of this nation--the resting place of the power that is not only to control, but to save, the Union. We furnish the water that makes the Mississippi, and we intend to follow, navigate, and use it until it loses itself in the briny ocean. So with the St. Lawrence. We intend to keep open and enjoy both of these great outlets to the ocean, and all between them we intend to take under our especial protection, and keep and preserve as one free, happy, and united people. This is the mission of the great Mississippi Valley, the heart and soul of the nation and the continent."[345] Meantime Congress was endeavoring to avert the clash of sections by other measures of accommodation. The veteran Clay, in his favorite role of peacemaker, had drafted a series of resolutions as a sort of legislative programme; and with his old-time vigor, was pleading for mutual forbearance. All wounds might be healed, he believed, by admitting California with her free constitution; by organizing territorial governments without any restriction as to slavery, in the region acquired from Mexico; by settling the Texas boundary and the Texas debt on a fair basis; by prohibiting the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia; and by providing more carefully for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Clay, Calhoun, and Webster had spoken with all the weight of their years upon these propositions, before Douglas was free to address the Senate.