The time has not yet arrived for a calm and dispassionate review of the acts and actors of that period and the events of the immediately succeeding years; but the incidents that took place and the experience so dearly purchased should not be perverted, misunderstood, or wholly forgotten. The compromises of 1850, instead of adjusting differences and making the people of one mind on political questions, actually caused in their practical results the alienation of life-long party friends, led to new associations among old opponents, and created organizations that partook more of a sectional character than of honest constitutional differences on fundamental questions relative to the powers and authority of the Government, such as had previously divided the people. The facility with which old political opponents came together in the compromise measures of 1850, and abandoned principles and doctrines for which they had battled through their whole lives, begot popular distrust. Confidence in the sincerity of the men who so readily made sacrifices of principles was forfeited or greatly impaired. The Whig party dwindled under it, and as an organization shortly went out of existence. A large portion of its members, disgusted with what they considered the insincerity if not faithlessness of their leaders, yet unwilling to attach themselves to the Democratic party, which had coalesced in the movement, gathered together in a secret organization, styling themselves "Know Nothings." Democrats in some quarters, scarcely less dissatisfied with the compromises, joined the Know Nothing order, and in one or two annual elections this strange combination, without avowed principles or purpose, save that of the defeat and overthrow of politicians, who were once their trusted favorites, was successful. In this demoralized condition of affairs, the Democrats by the accession of Whigs in the Southern States obtained possession of the Government and maintained their ascendancy through the Pierce administration; and, in a contest quite as much sectional as political, elected Buchanan in 1856.