While Clay and Benton were in the Senate with their old reverence for the Union and their desire for the ultimate extinction of slavery, California could neither be kept out nor divided on the line of 36 deg.

30'.

But the new South, the South of Jefferson Davis and Alexander H.Stephens, of Robert Toombs and Judah P.Benjamin, of James M.Mason and John C.Breckinridge, had made new advances, was inspired by new ambitions, and was determined upon the consolidation of sectional power.

The one supreme need was another slave State.

If this could be acquired they felt assured that so long as the Union should exist no free State could be admitted without the corresponding admission of another slave State.