Henry Clay, in his seventy-third year, spoke for two days in favor of compromise and peace, picturing the frightful war that must result from a failure to agree. John C. Calhoun, pale, haggard and dying, rose from his sick bed, staggered into the Senate on the arms of friends and, being too weak to speak, sat there while his plea for the rights of the South was read. Then he went back to his bed to die a few days later, groaning, “The South! The poor South! God knows what will become of her.” Daniel Webster, too, raised his voice for compromise in one of his noblest orations. William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase bitterly opposed any compromise on the basis of the Fugitive Slave Law. So fierce did the debate become that Senator Benton drew a pistol on Senator Foote. Yet in the end, the compromise was adopted and the Fugitive Slave Law was passed. Then, in 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois, introduced a bill providing a government for the immense country now included in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and portions of Wyoming and Colorado--a country larger than all the existing free States. All this region was in the area from which slavery was forever prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. Yet Douglas’ bill provided that whenever any part of the territory should be admitted to the Union the question of slavery or free-soil should be decided by its inhabitants. This was the famous “squatter sovereignty” idea, a virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise. After a desperate fight in Congress, Douglas carried his bill. It was a startling step and a direct bid for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. By this act Douglas made himself one of the most conspicuous men in the country. Hell seemed to break loose after President Pierce signed this bill. It became impossible to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. The anti-slavery agitation in the North broke out with indescribable fury. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published. The abolitionists were almost insane with anger and indignation. Douglas was denounced as a scoundrel who had sold himself to the slaveholders for the sake of his Presidential ambitions. Lincoln was a well-supported candidate for the United States Senate in 1854, but he gave up his chance and threw his strength to Lyman Trumbull, a weaker candidate, rather than risk the election of a pro-slavery Senator. Miss Tarbell gives this picture of Lincoln by his friend, Judge Dickey: “After a while we went upstairs to bed. There were two beds in our room, and I remember that Lincoln sat up in his nightshirt on the edge of the bed arguing the point with me. At last we went to sleep. Early in the morning I woke up, and there was Lincoln half sitting up in bed. ‘Dickey,’ he said, ‘I tell you this nation cannot exist half slave and half free.’ ‘Oh, Lincoln,’ said I, ‘go to sleep.’”