itted as free states, the South became more anxious about maintaining its position as an equal in the Union. Southerners thus strongly supported the annexation of Texas (certain to be a slave state) and the Mexican War and even agitated for the annexation of Cuba. The Compromise of 1850 marked the end of the period that might be called the era of compromise. The deaths in 1852 of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster left no leader of national stature, but only sectional spokesmen, such as W. H. Seward, Charles Sumner, and Salmon P. Chase in the North and Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs in the South. Robert Toombs, for example, stated that northerners tried to fix national degradation upon half the states of this Confederacy, adding that he is for disunion. (Congressman Robert Toombs of Georgia, Response on the floor of the House to northern efforts to keep slavery out of the territories, December 13, 1849) Daniel Webster, from the northern side, supported the Compromise of 1850, criticizing the abolition societies: Their operations of the last twenty years have produced nothing good or valuable, ** they [with sending incendiary publications into the slave states] created agitation in the North against Southern slavery. (Daniel Webster, Speech in the Senate supporting the Compromise of 1850, March 7, 1850) With the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the consequent struggle over bleeding Kansas the factions first resorted to shooting. The South was ever alert to protect its peculiar institution, The bill does equal and exact justice to the whole Union, and every part of it; it violates the rights of no state or territory. (Speech of Stephen Douglas defending the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854), although many Southerners recognized slavery as an archaism in a supposedly enlightened age. Abraham Lincoln, who was Douglass opponent, favored prohibiting slavery in all new territories, hoping thereby that the institut...
