Calhoun, the arch-annexationist, struggled desperately to avert the war. He saw as no other Southern leader saw its tremendous significance in the conflict between the two halves of the Union for the political balance. The admission of Texas had made an adjustment of this balance in favor of the South. Calhoun's plan was to conciliate Mexico, to sweep with our diplomatic broom the gathering war-clouds from the national firmament. War, he knew, would imperil the freshly fortified position of his section--war which meant at its close the acquisition of new national territory, with which the North would insist upon retrieving its reverse in the controversy over Texas. War, therefore, the great nullifier resolved against. He cried halt to his army, but the army heard not his voice, heeded not his orders, in the wild uproar and clamor which arose at the sight of helpless Mexico, and the temptation of adding fresh slave soil to the United States South, through her spoliation; Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out of hostilities between the two republics an impenetrable curtain had shut from his eyes the future. The great plot for maintaining the political domination of the South had miscarried. New national territory had become inevitable with the firing of the first gun. Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to postpone the evil day for the South by proposing a military policy of "masterly inactivity" whereby time might be gained for his side to prepare to meet the blow when it fell. But his "masterly inactivity" policy was swept aside by the momentum of the national passion which the war had aroused. California and New Mexico became the strategic points of the slavery struggle at the close of the war. To open both to the immigration of slave-labor was thenceforth the grand design of the South. Over Oregon occurred a fierce preliminary trial of strength between the sections. The South was thrown in the contest, and the anti-slavery principle of the Ordinance of 1787 applied to the Territory. Calhoun, who was apparently of the mind that as Oregon went so would go California and New Mexico, was violently agitated by this reverse. "The great strife between the North and the South is ended," he passionately declared. Immediately the charge was made and widely circulated through the slave States that the stronger was oppressing the weaker section, wresting from it its just share in the common fruits of common victories. For had not California and New Mexico been won by the bravery and blood of the South as of the North, and how then was the North to deprive the South of its joint ownership of them without destroying the federal equality of the two halves of the Union? What was it but to subvert the Union existing among the States?