of slavery within their boundaries, forbade the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and set the odious machinery of the Fugitive Slave law in operation throughout the North. The consideration Freedom received for these concessions was the admission of California to the Union (it was evident that nothing but invasion and conquest could ever make it a slave State) and the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, amounting to a removal of the auction blocks of slave dealers from the shadow of the Capitol to the narrow streets of decaying Alexandria. The opiate of compromise sufficed to keep still dormant the conscience of the North, and the national acquiescence in this adjustment was emphatic. The Whig and the Democratic parties in 1852 both formally accepted in their platforms the legislation of 1850 as a decisive and just settlement of the slavery question, and they polled almost 3,000,000 votes, while for the Free Soil ticket, representing hostility to slavery extension and to pro-slavery compromises, but 155,000 votes were cast. The victory of the Democrats, who embodied in much the fullest degree the spirit of concession to Southern demands, was an overwhelming one. They carried 27 out of the 31 States, and had 254 electoral votes out of 296, with a clear popular majority over the entire opposition. In the Senate they had 14 majority out of a membership of 62, and in the House a majority of 84 in a total membership of 234. The condition of public sentiment then is thus described by the most accurate and graphic historian of that era: