another fanatical minority opinion in the
North? Did the Compromise of 1850
settle "the angry issue" of slavery in the
territories or did the compromisers help
to create dangerously ambiguous and
conflicting ideas about the meaning of
the territorial settlement which planted
the seeds that were to bear bitter fruit in
the reopening of the territorial question
in 1854?

Applying the analytic categories of
Dorothy Fosdick, the historian may also
ask: Who of the proposers of policy and
makers of political decisions in 1849-
1850 were attempting to apply an "ab-
solute ethic" to politics? Was Seward, for
example, an exponent of ethical absolut-
ism as Webster seemed to suggest, or
does not his insistence that democratic
policy should always seek the alternative
which moves toward the higher good
put him in the class that Dorothy Fos-
dick calls "neo-Machiavellian"? How
should Webster, Clay, and Calhoun be
classified in this kind of analysis of
political strategies? Is it possible to char-
acterize Stephen A. Douglas as anything
other than a "pure Machiavellian"?

The readings in this volume can pro-
vide only tentative answers for many
of these questions. Indeed, it is not only
the student with a bookkeeping mind
who may discover that he will emerge
from this experience with more questions
than answers. If so, the never-ending
process of human inquiry will be served
well and a few may even be provoked
to try to add more to our historical
knowledge of the Compromise of 1850.
Others may find lessons in the human
thoughts and actions of 1850 which may
be instructive for present day problems of
the American political community, some
of which still involve deeply rooted dif-
ferences of habit and thought in the
South.

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