The headlong haste of both sections was in the year 1850 halted for a time by the sage counsels of such leaders as Clay, in the South, even Webster, in the North. The South claimed, after the close of the Mexican War and the accession of the enormous Spanish territories to the southwest, that the accepted line of compromise established in 1820, by which slavery might not pass north of the parallel of latitude thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, should be extended westward quite to the Pacific Ocean. She grumbled that, although she had helped fight for and pay for this territory, she could not control it, and could not move into it legally the slaves which then made the most valued part of a southern man's property. As against this feeling, the united politicians had thrown to the hot-headed Southerners a sop in the form of the Fugitive Slave Act. The right for a southern owner to follow and claim his slave in any northern state was granted under the Constitution of the United States. Under the compromise of 1850, it was extended and confirmed. The abolitionists of the North rose in arms against this part of the great compromise measure; a law which, though constitutional, seemed to them nefarious and infamous. The leaders in Congress, both Whig and Democrat, feared now, therefore, nothing in the world so much as the outbreak of a new political party, which might disorganize this nicely adjusted compromise, put an end to what all politicians were fond of calling the "finality" of the arrangement, and so bring on, if not an encounter of armed forces, if not a rupture of the Union, at least what to them seemed almost as bad, the disintegration of the two great parties of the day, the Whigs and Democrats. If compromise showed in this meeting of men from different sections, it was, therefore, but a matter in tune with the time. Party was at that day not a matter of geography. There existed then, however, as there exists to-day, the great dividing line between those who are in and those who are out. Obviously now, although they represented different sections of the country, these men likewise represented the party which, under the adjusted vote of the day, could be called fortunate enough to dwell within the gates of Washington and not in the outer darkness of political defeat. The dark-browed man at the leader's right presently began to speak. His voice, deep and clear as that of a great bronze bell, was slow and deliberate, as fittingly voicing an accurate mind.