The feeling in all sections became intense on the issue thus presented, and it proved a sword which cleft asunder political associations that had been close and intimate for a lifetime.

Both the old parties were largely represented on each side of the question.

The Northern Whigs, at the outset, generally sustained the proviso, and the Northern Democrats divided, with the majority against it.

In the slave States both parties were against it, only two men south of Mason and Dixon's line voting for free soil,--John M.Clayton of Delaware in the Senate, and Henry Grider of Kentucky in the House.
Mr.Grider re-entered Congress as a Republican after the war.
Among the conspicuous Whigs who voted for the proviso were Joseph R.Ingersoll and James Pollock of Pennsylvania, Washington Hunt of New York, Robert C.Winthrop of Massachusetts, Robert C.Schenck of Ohio, and Truman Smith of Connecticut.

Among the Democrats were Hannibal Hamlin, and all his colleagues from Maine, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, Preston King of New York, John Wentworth of Illinois, Allen G.Thurman of Ohio, and Robert McClelland of Michigan, afterwards Secretary of the Interior under President Pierce.
Mr.Webster voted for the proviso, but with gloomy apprehensions.
He could "see little of the future, and that little gave him no satisfaction." He spoke with portentous gravity, and arrested the attention of the country by the solemnity of his closing words: "All I can scan is contention, strife, and agitation.