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of
Texas and the war with
Mexico, were the direct results of the policy of the pro-slavery party to increase its influence and its territory.
In 1849 the
State of California knocked at the door of the
Union for admission as a free State.
This was bitterly opposed by the slaveholders of the
South, who saw in it a menace to the slave-power from the fact that no slave State was seeking admission at the same time.
Both North and South the feeling ran so high as to threaten the dismemberment of the
Union, and the scenes of violence and bloodshed which were to come eleven years afterwards.
It was to preserve the
Union and avert the danger of the hour that
Henry Clay brought forward his celebrated compromise measures in the winter of 1850.
To conciliate the
North,
California was to be admitted as a free State.
To pacify the slaveholders of the
South, more stringent laws were to be enacted “concerning persons bound to service in one State and escaping into another.”
The 7th of March, 1850, Daniel Webster made his celebrated speech, in which he defended this compromise, and the abolitionists of the North were filled with indignation, which found its most fitting expression in Whittier's “Ichabod:” “So fallen, so lost, the glory from his gray hairs gone.” . . . “When honor dies the man is dead.”
It was in the midst of this excitement that Mrs. Stowe, with her children and her modest hopes for the future, arrived at the house of her brother, Dr. Edward Beecher.
Dr. Beecher had been the intimate friend and supporter of Lovejoy, who had been murdered by the
