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Bulwer's reservation was correct. Thus was left open the troublesome and at times threatening question of the British protectorate over the Mosquito Coast, which long remained to vex American diplomacy.1

1 Senate Exec. Docs., 47 Cong., 1 Sess., VI., No. 194, pp. 1416, 87; Travis, Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, chap. iv. ; cf. Smith, Parties and Slavery (Am. Nation, XVIII.), chap. xviii.

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should be done with the new territorial acquisitions? North and South now began to realize the hopeless incompatibility of their respective industrial and social systems, and any agreement between them became ever more difficult. Since slavery constituted the most essential difference, it was, of course, the point of greatest friction. As the national boundaries expanded westward, the North showed itself increasingly anxious to prevent slavery from extending also. Up to 1850 each addition of territory was made the occasion of an effort to limit the spread of that institution: the Northwest Ordinance excluded it from that part of the old West which lay north of the Ohio River; and that exclusion was repeated in several acts for the organization of territories within the area. After a severe clash between the opposing sections, the Missouri Compromise excluded it also from that part of the Louisiana purchase north of 36° 30' except in the

state of Missouri; and it was excluded by the terms of annexation in 1845 from the territory claimed by Texas north of the same line. Now the question was whether it should be allowed to enter the vast area surrendered by Mexico at the end of the war; and, if so, to what extent.

In New Mexico and California, when the conquest took place, slavery was forbidden by law. Those provinces had not, like Texas, been exempted from the operation of Guerrero's decree of September 15, 1829, abolishing slavery throughout the republic of Mexico,' and in them, therefore, the institution had no legal existence. The promulgation of this decree was by no means in harmony with republican methods, and it seems to have received little attention; but a decree of April 5, 1837, provided that slavery in Mexico should be abolished without exception and with compensation to the owners. As a matter of fact, however, there were practically no negroes anywhere in Mexico, and chattel slavery had little chance in the economic contest with the Mexican

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system of peonage. So far, therefore, as negro slavery was concerned, New Mexico and California were, at the time when they were occupied by the United States troops, both legally and actually free soil.

The effect of the conquest on the status of the

1 See p. 27, above.

2 Bancroft, Mexico, V., 80 3 Dublán y Lozano, Legislación Mexicana, III., 352.

government, and especially of slavery, in the territory occupied was by no means clear. As soon as the occupation took place temporary governments were organized by direction of the president, who claimed to be acting under authority, not of the Constitution, but of the power conferred by the law of nations on a conqueror. Nevertheless, in a message of December 22, 1846, in response to a resolution of inquiry from the House, he disavowed the acts of General Kearny in setting up a government for New Mexico, so far as they looked towards the establishment of a permanent territorial organization. While, however, the executive could not establish permanent governments for the conquered territory, Congress could; and Polk vainly recommended in his message of December 6, 1847, that it should do so without waiting for the treaty. When the treaty was concluded, the effect of it, as the president interpreted it, was to extend the Constitution and laws of the United States over California and New Mexico, so that the local organization set up by executive authority became simply a de facto government, which was allowed to stand till Congress should provide otherwise, because there seemed to be no more reasonable or safer alternative.3

The question as to the status of slavery in the

1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, IV., 494.
2 Ibid., 506; Polk, MS. Diary, December 19, 1846.
Richardson, Messages and Papers, IV., 638.

territory acquired by the treaty was still more complicated. Calhoun claimed that Congress had no right nor constitutional power to discriminate between the states by passing a law which would "directly, or by its effects, deprive the citizens of any of the states of this Union from emigrating, with their property, into any of the territories of the United States." On the other hand, it was contended that by Mexican law, valid so far as not in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States, slavery was already abolished in New Mexico and California. Unless, therefore, the Constitution operated of itself to secure the right of property in slaves in the acquired territory, slavery could not exist there except by an act of Congress. The right to hold slaves had, however, been founded by judicial decisions primarily on. state or local law and custom rather than the Constitution or federal statutes.3

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As soon as the progress of the war brought in sight the possibility of new territorial acquisitions in the southwest, the question as to the legal status and prospective existence of slavery therein arose at once. Many political leaders in the free states desired first to make certain that slavery would be permanently excluded from the territory, if ac

1 Cong. Globe, 29 Cong., 2 Sess., 455.

2 Ibid., 31 Cong., 1 Sess., 342.

'Walker (Miss.), 85; Martin (La.), N. S., 402; 2 Marshall (Ky.), 470; 16 Peters, 611.

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