The war was a romantic military excursion through the heart of Mexico. There were battles between the triumphant invaders and the demoralized natives, which were believed entitled to rank among the supreme achievements of genius and courage. Americans had not yet acquired that deep knowledge of carnage, those stern conceptions of war, which they were destined soon to gain. Military glory and imperial conquest have rarely been so cheaply won. The war gave enduring fame to the commanding generals and shed a real luster over the lives of thousands of men. The material results were stupendous. We acquired nearly twelve hundred thousand square miles of territory--a region one-third larger than the area of the United States at the close of the Revolution. The extravagant dream of making the Pacific the western boundary of the Republic was realized and no one seriously doubted that this vast domain was surrendered to slavery. Chapter IV. The Compromise of 1850. Douglas served two terms in the House and was again elected in 1846, but in January following was chosen Senator, taking his seat on March 4th, 1847. In April following he married Martha Denny Martin, daughter of a wealthy North Carolina planter and slave-owner. The Senate, during the early years of his service, was in its intellectual gifts altogether the most extraordinary body ever assembled in the United States. Rarely, if ever, in the history of the world, have so many men of remarkable endowment, high training and masterful energy been gathered in a single assembly. It was the period when the generation of Webster, Clay and Calhoun overlapped that of Seward, Chase and Sumner, when the men who had set at the feet of the Revolutionary Fathers and had striven to settle the interpretation of the Constitution met the men who were destined to guide the Nation through the Civil War and settle the perplexing questions arising from it. Webster was now an old man, his face deep lined with care, disappointment and dissipation. Though sixty-eight years old and the greatest orator of the century, his heart was still consumed with unquenchable thirst of the honor of succeeding John Tyler and James K. Polk. Calhoun, now sixty-five years old, a ghastly physical wreck, still represented South Carolina and dismally speculated on the prospect of surviving the outgrown Union. Cass, equal in years with Calhoun, still held his seat in the Senate and cherished the delusive hope of yet reaching the Presidency. Benton was closing his fifth and last term in the Senate, and Clay, the knightly leader of the trimming Whigs, though now in temporary retirement, was soon to return and resume his old leadership.