Here was where the break came, when the Act was being tried out in practical operation. The Southern members thought that Douglas represented their view. Mr. Davis, Secretary of War at the time of its introduction, distinctly declares, that, at Douglas’s request, he obtained the interview between Douglas’s committee and the President on Sunday, January 22, 1854, by which the President’s approval was secured, and he avers, that from the terms of the bill and arguments used in its support, he thought its purpose was to open the territory “to the people of all the States with every species of property recognized by any of them.”[155] But Douglas was not simply leading the Southern minority. He was endeavoring to formulate a policy by means of which he could yoke both sections to his triumphal car, and he was just as ready to use the Southerners, as they were to use him. When the Southerners found out how he proposed to over-reach them, Alexander H. Stephens still clung to him; but Toombs, less faithful, vociferated that he “didn’t have a leg to stand upon.” The truth was, compromise upon compromise had so involved the question, that it was almost impossible to disentangle it without the use of the sword. In 1787 there had been a compromise, by which slavery and the slave trade had been both recognized; and over the Missouri question in 1820, the Southern States had had a perfect constitutional right to dissolve the Union; but again compromise had been accepted. The admission of California and the law of 1850 was a distinct breach of the second compromise and the right to secede was just as clear, as it had been in 1820; but the expediency of such action was nothing like as clear. There was no great and towering personality around which men could gather. Rhett’s resolution in Congress in 1838 was the logical result of Calhoun’s teaching since 1833; but Calhoun was not ready to act. If ever secession was a practical policy it was in 1838 as presented by Rhett in Congress.[156] In South Carolina in 1850, Calhoun was dead, and there was the view of Rhett and the view of Cheves. In Georgia there was the view of Cobb and the view of Toombs, and the view of Hill and the view of Stephens. Of the man who did more than any other to arrest secession in 1850, we know least, and what we do know does not help us to any great extent to understand him. What policy Howell Cobb represented is not very clear. He was strong enough to be denounced as a traitor by those who could not drive him from their path, and somewhat in the same way that Hayne was taken out of national politics, when State politics required a man of unusual force, Cobb stepped down in 1852 from the high station of Speaker of the House of Representatives, to become Governor of Georgia; while in the last four years before secession, he was silenced by his position in Buchanan’s Cabinet.