can consult the record of the debates and decide for themselves who won. 14' The Senate was
crowded and enthralled throughout and the spittoons had never been in such continuous use. But
it is one of the sad things about congressional or parliamentary democracy that great speeches
rarely make much difference to historical outcomes.
What the debates did make clear, however, was that secession by the South, if it did not get its
way in making slavery safe for ever,' was a real possibility, and that it would not and could not be bloodless. That helped to smooth the road to compromise, which was piloted by old Clay, much assisted by a young Democratic senator, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois (1813-61). Clay had originally hoped to get all the issues tied up together in one gigantic compromise, what he called an Omnibus Bill. The Senate would not wear it. Then Douglas divided it up into its five component bits, and got them all through separately. Senator Benton explained this by saying that the componentswere like cats and dogs that had been tied together by their tails for four
months, scratching and biting, but being loose again, everyone ran off to his own hole and was
quiet.' Possibly: there are many irrational and, in the end, inexplicable aspects to the whole
controversy over slavery, and between North and South, which baffle historians, as they baffled
most people in the middle at the time. The upshot is that Clay carried his last great Compromise
in early September and on the 20th of the month Fillmore signed the five Bills into law.
In the Compromise, the most important sop to the South was a new Fugitive Slave Law. This
made the capture and return of escaped slaves a matter for federal law and rendered it
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for Northern states to evade their responsibilities under
the Constitution. Second, to balance matters a bit, the anti-slavery lobby in the North was given
the minor sop of the District of Columbia becoming an area where slave-trading was made
unlawful. It was still possible to keep slaves in Washington, but not to buy or sell them there or
hold them for sale elsewhere. If you marched slaves through the street in chains-a common sight
up to now, which grievously shocked sensitive Northerners and all foreigners-you were inviting
arrest. Third and fourth, both New Mexico and Utah became territories and the acts making them
such left their slave- or free-state future vague, beyond insisting that their legislatures were to
possess authority over ,all rightful subjects of legislation,' subject to appeal to federal courts.
Finally, California entered the Union as a free state. This ended the Senate slave/free balance and
ensured that in future Congress would have an anti-slavery majority in both Houses.
The crisis between North and South, having seethed and bubbled for months, suddenly went off
the boil, just as it had done after the confrontation of 1819-20. Men on both sides, and still more
women, relaxed as the horrific shadow of civil war suddenly disappeared, and they could get on
with other things. And there was so much to do in mid-I9th-century America, so many blessings
to rejoice in and opportunities to seize! America was becoming not merely a wealthy country but
in a growing number of ways a civilized and sophisticated one. The year 1850 is remarkable not
merely for the apogee of Congressional oratory but for the long-delayed but sure and true
beginnings of a great national literature. Considering how assertive politically America was,
even in the mid-i8th century, it was remarkably slow to assert itself culturally. Speech is a very
democratic force: it is the demotic which penetrates upwards into the hieratic, not the other way
round. `Americanisms' had been appearing since the mid-17th century in the way ordinary
people spoke, though the term was not coined until 1802, by a Scots immigrant, on the analogy
of Scotticism. But Independence was declared, and the Constitution written, debated, approved,