Demonstrating the level of tension on the Senate floor, Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote, at one point in the deliberations, pulled a pistol against Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton. "Stand out of the way, and let the assassin fire!" Benton bellowed at the senators separating them, but Foote was quickly disarmed and order restored in the chamber. By July, the omnibus bill had stalled and an exhausted Clay, who had spoken some seventy times for the compromise, left on vacation. During his absence, the young Illinois Democrat Stephen A. Douglas took the unwieldy bill apart and won passage of its individual provisions. By September, the Compromise was completed and the Union saved--for ten years more.
For further reading:
Hamilton, Holman. Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978)