The most logical explanation for retrocession was to protect slavery, but the people of Alexandria and the pro-slavery forces in Congress hid their tracks. The two leaders of the legislation in Congress, John Calhoun of South Carolina in the Senate and R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia in the House, were both staunch advocates of slavery. Only four years after Alexandria rejoined Virginia, Congress outlawed the slave trade but not slavery itself in the District of Columbia. In the Compromise of 1850, the last successful attempt to keep the country together before the Civil War, Henry Clay, the
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