When daniel webster declared, after the passage of the compromise of 1850, that the union stood firm, the great orator was engaging in exhortation rather than description. the california compromise, far from soothing sectional passions, inflamed them. many northerners were incensed by the opening of utah and new mexico to slavery and were even more outraged by the fugitive slave in pounding on the union’s door in 1850, california awakened the dogs of division and set them howling all at once. from the compromise of 1850 ran a straight, if tortured, a path to southern secession and civil war. which groups expressed the greatest "sectional passions" as referenced in the passage?