Henry Clay tried again, as he had tried twice before--in 1820 and in 1833--to pour oil upon the troubled waters. Although he was now an old man of seventy-two and in poor health, he spoke seventy times in his powerful, persuasive way, to bring about the Compromise of 1850, which he hoped would establish harmony between the North and the South and save the Union. On one occasion when he was to speak he had to enter the Capitol leaning upon the arm of a friend, because he was too weak to climb the steps alone. After entering the Senate Chamber that day, the great speech he made was so long that his friends, fearing fatal results, urged him to stop. But he refused. Later he said that he did not dare to stop for fear he should never be able to begin again. [Illustration: Henry Clay Addressing the United States Senate in 1850.] Calhoun was no less ready to do all he could. Early in March, 1850, the white-haired man, now in his sixty-eighth year and, like Clay, struggling with illness, went to the Senate Chamber, swathed in flannels, to make his last appeal in behalf of the slaveholders. The powerful speech he made, which was intended as a warning to the North, expressed the deep and sincere conviction of the aged statesman that the break-up of the Union was at hand. He made a strong plea that the agitation against slavery should stop, and that the South, which, he said, was the weaker section, should be treated fairly by her stronger antagonist, the North. Having made this last supreme effort in defense of the section which he loved as he loved his own life, the pro-slavery veteran, supported by two of his friends, passed out of the Senate Chamber. But in spite of Calhoun's opposition, the Compromise of 1850 passed. "Let California come in as a free State," it said. This pleased the North. "Let the people in all the rest of the territory which we got from Mexico decide for themselves whether they shall have slavery or freedom." This pleased the South. It also adopted the Fugitive Slave Law, which said: "When slaves run away from the South into the Northern States, they shall be returned to their masters; and when Northern people are called upon to help to capture them, they shall do so." A month after his speech on this compromise Calhoun died. The last twenty years of his life had been largely devoted to trying to secure what he regarded as the rights of the slaveholders and of the whole South. He was honest in his views. He was also sincere in his convictions that the South was not receiving fair treatment from the North.