We have a winner! There is no question about this one. It's an f'ing tragedy he was never elected. As it is, without him, the compromise of 1850 might not have happened, and if the South had seceded at that time, it would have been successful. The delay of a decade tipped the balance of power decisively to the North. Percentage wise, the highest immigration decade in the US was the 1850's, and almost all of that immigration was to the North, as it began to rapidly industrialize. That was when the Hudson Valley industrialized I might add, and became perhaps the most important node of munitions making in the North.
