That object was still supreme in the minds of the great majority, North and South alike. It was felt on both sides--in spite of personal convictions, personal interests, and the irritating friction of political agitation--that after all, the cause of human liberty, human progress, and the system of self-government among men was dependent upon the perpetuity of the union of these states. It was felt that the enslavement of the negro, now that the Constitution, the statute law, and the public sentiment of the country had robbed it of its most repugnant feature--the African slave-trade--was a matter of minor consequence in comparison with the perpetuity of the only government on God's earth which had ever rested its right to be upon the twin theories of unalienable rights and the consent of the governed. To the two disunion parties, the one aggressively active at the North in behalf of abolition and the other equally aggressive at the South in behalf of slavery, these compromise measures were intensely offensive. But to the great majority of the American people their passage seemed imperatively necessary to the preservation of the Republic, and this sentiment found expression in the action of both houses of Congress upon them. All of them were enacted by decisive majorities and all by the votes of statesmen from North and South, acting together and putting aside their sectional prejudices in behalf of the Union. The bill for the admission of California as a free state, against which the strongest opposition was made from the South, had thirty-four senators in its favor against only eighteen in opposition, four of the votes in behalf of it being cast by the four great Southern leaders, Bell of Tennessee, Houston of Texas, Benton of Missouri, and Underwood of Kentucky--a list to which Mr. Clay, as the author and sponsor of the bill must be added as a king of men. In the House,--more directly representative of popular sentiment--the vote in favor of the bill was no less than one hundred and fifty, with only fifty-six against it. This was the bill most offensive to the South and so the vote upon it reflected the strength of the Southern desire for the perpetuity of the Union. On the other hand the Northern desire for the accomplishment of that end was reflected in the vote upon the Fugitive Slave Law which constituted a part of Clay's compromise scheme,--a part of it intended to offset to the South the admission of the whole of the present state of California as a free state. This Fugitive Slave Act was passed by a vote of twenty-seven to twelve in the Senate, and by a vote of one hundred nine to seventy-six in the House. Three Northern senators voted for it and one other, Mr. Dickinson of New York--who wished to vote for it, was paired with his colleague Mr. Seward. In the House thirty-two members from Northern states voted in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law.