waters.  His powerful oratory so often saved the country from dissension that he was termed the Great Pacificator.  The gifted triumver, Henry Clay from Kentucky, Daniel Webster from Massachusetts, and John C. Calhoun from South Carolina, had labored through years to reconcile the national vexed questions.  All three died in the early fifties, and remembering the results of their mighty genius, there were many to say, ten years after that if they had lived there would have been no war, save perhaps another war of words in Congress.  But their patriotic heads were laid low, and there were none to take their places.  The two sources of dissension, slavery and the tariff, were always on hand to make a stormy session, so that a detailed history of the wrangling among the North, South and West would be a tedious transcription.  What suited one section was adverse to the best interests of the others.  The South abided strictly by the wording of the Constitution.  The North was ever ready to put a liberal construction on its meaning, and naturally they took issue.

In 1824 the Tariff question became so untenable that some of the Southern States rebelled outright, and protested through their legislatures against the measure as unconstitutional.  Some favored secession; others advocated nullification, and this was what was done.  They nullified the law and refused to stand by it.  Clamor for State rights was heard on every side.  But they did not take this step till they had waited two or three years for Congress to give relief by reducing the tariff.  In 1832 the crisis came; nullification was pronounced by South Carolina, and she forbade the collection of tariff duties in her own State.  She also declared that if the United States used force, she would withdraw from the Union and organize a separate government.  Andrew Jackson, who was President, determined to enforce the tariff law in the State, and asked Congress for the power to use the army to sustain the law.  Volunteers had offered in South Carolina, and the country stood aghast at the prospect of civil war.  Here again Henry Clay’s eloquence saved the day.  He proposed the measure of gradually reducing the tariff through a period of ten years till it would provide only for the expenses of the government.  This removed the cause of trouble, so South Carolina rescinded her act of nullification.

The South had continually yielded up portions of her immense territory to the Union, and thus far there had been an equal balance of power in the legislative voting of the two sections.  The annexation of Texas raised a stormy conflict.  The South hoped for a division of this large tract into five slave states.  The North, as usual, wished to obtain the lion’s share.  In 1835 Arkansas was admitted a slave State.  In 1836 Michigan came in with free labor.  After the Mexican War the retrospect showed that since the Declaration of Independence the North had possessed herself of nearly three-fourths