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204 T. W. Davenport. asseveration of Northern men, however earnest, but in keep- ing the balance of power in the United States Senate. Indeed, this was an accompanying idea of the renaissance and the chief inspiriting motive of extension. Failing in their efforts to make a slave State, their seduc- tions were exerted to make it a Democratic State, as the case of California, admitted into the Union in 1850, it being one item of a series constituting the compromise of that year, and of which Mr. Greeley wrote as follows: The net product was a corrupt monstrosity in legislation and morals which even the great name of Henry Clay should not shield from lasting opprobrium." He admitted, however, that it was accepted and ratified by a great majority of the people whether in the North or in the South. They were intent on business— then remarkably prosperous— on planting, building, trading, and getting gain— and they hailed with general joy the announcement that all the differences between the diverse sections had been adjusted and settled. The general joy was not contagious among the anti-slavery people, and at no time were their hopes so low as upon the passage of the compromise of 1850, for it seemed to them as though there could be no limit to Northern subserviency to save the Union. Those of a more optimistic turn of mind could find some consolation in the fact that, though slave-catching had been taken under the strong arm of the Federal Government and all legal barriers to the extension of slavery into the newly ac- quired territories had been removed, yet one more free State had b^en added to the Union. This was evidently a gain, count- ing by States, but when critically examined it afforded no sign of an increase in the altruistic fund or of a moral awaken- ing anywhere, or even of a falling away from the political forces of slavery, for while the inhabitants of the Golden State came knocking at the door of the Union for admission with a free-state Constitution, their senators-elect were na- tional men, already interpreted to mean that upon any ques- tion concerning slavery they were as loyal to the institution as any son of the South. The free State of California, no