Thoughtful men, wise in the administration of government, skilled in the management of parties, would have found in these figures food for reflection and abundant reason for hoisting cautionary signals along the shores of the political sea.

The Democratic leaders were not, however, disturbed by facts or figures, but were rather made stronger in the confidence of their own strength.

They beheld the country prosperous in all its material interests, and they saw the mass of the people content in both sections with the settlement of the slavery question.

Since the Compromise measures were enacted in 1850, and especially since the two political parties had pledged themselves in 1852 to accept those measures as a finality, the slavery agitation had to a very large extent subsided.

Disturbance was not indeed infrequently caused by the summary arrest of fugitive slaves in various parts of the North, under the stringent and harsh provisions of the new law on that subject.