The Life of Stephen A. Douglas | Page 9

gave enduring
fame to the commanding generals and shed a real luster over the lives
of thousands of men.
The material results were stupendous. We acquired nearly twelve
hundred thousand square miles of territory--a region one-third larger
than the area of the United States at the close of the Revolution. The
extravagant dream of making the Pacific the western boundary of the
Republic was realized and no one seriously doubted that this vast
domain was surrendered to slavery.

Chapter IV.
The Compromise of 1850.

Douglas served two terms in the House and was again elected in 1846,
but in January following was chosen Senator, taking his seat on March
4th, 1847. In April following he married Martha Denny Martin,
daughter of a wealthy North Carolina planter and slave-owner.
The Senate, during the early years of his service, was in its intellectual
gifts altogether the most extraordinary body ever assembled in the
United States. Rarely, if ever, in the history of the world, have so many
men of remarkable endowment, high training and masterful energy

been gathered in a single assembly. It was the period when the
generation of Webster, Clay and Calhoun overlapped that of Seward,
Chase and Sumner, when the men who had set at the feet of the
Revolutionary Fathers and had striven to settle the interpretation of the
Constitution met the men who were destined to guide the Nation
through the Civil War and settle the perplexing questions arising from
it.
Webster was now an old man, his face deep lined with care,
disappointment and dissipation. Though sixty-eight years old and the
greatest orator of the century, his heart was still consumed with
unquenchable thirst of the honor of succeeding John Tyler and James K.
Polk. Calhoun, now sixty-five years old, a ghastly physical wreck, still
represented South Carolina and dismally speculated on the prospect of
surviving the outgrown Union. Cass, equal in years with Calhoun, still
held his seat in the Senate and cherished the delusive hope of yet
reaching the Presidency. Benton was closing his fifth and last term in
the Senate, and Clay, the knightly leader of the trimming Whigs,
though now in temporary retirement, was soon to return and resume his
old leadership.
Within the first four years of Douglas' service, Salmon P. Chase,
William H. Seward and Charles Sumner made their appearance in the
Senate. A new generation of giants seemed providentially supplied as
the old neared the end of their service. Douglas, though serving with
both these groups of statesmen, belonged to neither. Running his career
side by side with the later school of political leaders and sharing in the
great struggles on which their fame, in large part, rests, his character
and ideals were those of the older generation.
The questions confronting Congress were of transcendent interest and
incalculable importance. A sudden and astounding expansion had
occurred, calling for the highest, wisest and most disinterested
statesmanship in providing governments for the newly acquired domain.
A million and a half miles of new territory, extending through sixteen
degrees of latitude, was now to be organized; the future destiny of this
vast territory, and indirectly that of free institutions generally, was
supposed to depend on the decision of Congress. Above all, the fate of
the American apple of discord, human slavery, was understood to be
involved in the construction of territorial and State governments for

these new possessions. It was deemed by the South indispensable to the
safety and permanence of slavery to plant it in them.
For that half-disguised purpose they had been acquired at great expense
of blood and money. New States, it was hoped, might now be created
south of the line below which slavery flourished, balancing those to be
admitted from the growing Northwest. Thus far the adventurous West
had powerfully supported the South in its schemes of conquest, but had
no sympathy with slavery. The old North, thought ready to submit to its
continued existence in the States where already established, was
implacably hostile to its further spread.
It was not a question of ethics or of sober statesmanship, but one of
practical politics, that divided the North and the South at this period.
Each hoped to secure for itself the alliance and sympathy of the new
States thereafter admitted. Each applied itself to the task of shaping the
Territories and moulding the future States to serve its ulterior views.
When Congress attempted to organize territorial governments, the
people of the North insisted on the exclusion of slavery from Oregon
and the territory acquired from Mexico. The people of the South made
no resistance to its exclusion from Oregon. It was already excluded by
"the ordinance of Nature or the will of God." But that the vast territory
torn from Mexico, acquired by the common blood and