and perfidy of the slave power, and all such false twaddle, that can now serve no purpose whatever except to offend good men and women and their children without cause. CHAPTER X SLAVERY AT LAST IMPELLED INTO A DEFENSIVE AGGRESSIVE Until the crisis of 1850, slavery had never changed from purely defensive tactics. This year made it seem that the north had fully resolved that slavery should never be allowed another inch of new territory; and also was very near, and was rapidly coming nearer to, the point of practically preventing the enforcement of the fugitive slave law. We have explained how slave property could not live unless it found new virgin soil in the Territories; and we have also explained what a deadly blow it would receive, in the refusal to restore fugitives. This refusal would be really indirect abolition. Read the masterly sketch by Calhoun, in his speech March 4, 1850, of the conquering advance of the anti-slavery party, until now--to use his language--"the equilibrium between the two sections ... had been destroyed;" and he demonstrates that the actual exercise of the entire national political power must soon be in the hands of the free-labor section. The south instinctively felt that the time for her old tactics was over, and that she must do more than merely fend off the blows of abolition. And, as we will tell in the next chapter, she found her new leader in Toombs. Nullification as advocated by Calhoun was the extreme energy of the pure defensive of the south. His proposed dual executive amendment was merely that nullification be made a right granted to the federal government instead of remaining one reserved to the States. Toombs had grown up in the school of William H. Crawford. George R. Gilmer, a follower of Crawford, tells of the latter: "He was violently opposed to the nullification movement, considering it but an ebullition excited by Mr. Calhoun's overleaping, ambition."[96] Toombs scouted nullification. Under his lead his State, in 1850, adopted the Georgia Platform quoted above. This platform was considerate and resolute preparation for the southern offensive. Next the south assumes initiative. Extension of slave-territory is so great an economical _sine qua non_ that she attacks its barriers. Using her control of the then dominant democratic party she got the Missouri compromise repealed. Her main purpose in this was to wrench from the anti-slavery men the weapon of congressional restriction, then deemed by them the most powerful of all in their armory. She also contemplated extorting a concession of all lands in the Territories which could be profitably cultivated by slaves from the north, alarmed into apprehending that otherwise slavery might be carried above 36.30'.