He belonged to a class of men that had been recently and rapidly growing in the South,--men avowedly and aggressively pro-slavery.

Mr.Dixon was the first to strike an open blow against the Missouri Compromise.
Mr.Clay had been honorably identified with the pacific work of 1820, and throughout his life believed that it had been effectual in allaying the strife which in his judgment had endangered the Union.

It was an alarming fact that his own successor in the Senate -- less than two years after Mr.Clay's death--was the first to assail his work and to re-open a controversy which was not to cease till a continent was drenched in blood.

Mr.Dixon made no concealment of his motive and his purpose, declaring that he wished the restriction removed because he was a pro-slavery man.

He gave notice early in January, 1854, that when the bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska should come before the Senate, he would move that "the Missouri Compromise be repealed, and that the citizens of the several States shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories." It was very soon found that this was not a capricious movement by Mr.Dixon alone, but that behind him there was a settled determination on the part of the pro-slavery men to break down the ancient barrier and to remove the honored landmark of 1820.
The Senate had a large Democratic majority, and there was probably not one among them all who had not in the Presidential contest of 1852 publicly and solemnly vowed that the Compromise measures of 1850 were a final settlement of the slavery question, not in any event, nor upon any pretext, to be disturbed.