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Carolina boldly proclaimed disunion.' The North was hardly less excited; the legislatures of all the states of that section except Iowa passed resolutions favoring congressional prohibition of slavery in the territories, and a number took action looking towards the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia."

Thus, amid energy-consuming sectional quarrels that prevented the discharge of urgent national duties, the strenuous Polk administration drew to a close. Though it had accomplished large results, it left much unfinished work involving an exceedingly complex and difficult group of problems. Should slavery be excluded from California and New Mexico by congressional action? Should it be excluded from a part of both by extending the line between slavery and free soil to the Pacific? Or should they be left free to exclude it or not, as they might choose, on the principle of squatter sovereignty? Should that part of New Mexico east of the Rio Grande follow the fortunes of the part west of the river? Or should it be made a slave-holding district by conceding the boundary claimed by Texas? The struggle for solutions to these pressing problems necessarily brought under review the whole subject of sectional differences concerning slavery, and suggested a compromise that should endeavor to adjust them all. Thus were added to the group of troublesome issues those relating to the return of 1 Rhodes, United States, I., 105–107. 2 Ibid., 107.

fugitive slaves, and to slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. The series of problems which had been raised by the expansion movement originally included the question as to whether slavery should be unconditionally excluded from Oregon; but through the earnest endeavors of President Polk the territory was organized, and this question settled separately before a general bargain could be reached. Action, however, in providing for the organization of Oregon did relatively little to simplify the puzzling issue that was absorbing the situation of the president and Congress; and the triumph of the Whigs in 1848 brought them an inheritance of trouble and responsibility which they were illprepared to face.

SOME

CHAPTER XX

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

(1849-1850)

OME aspects of the unfinished work of the Polk administration demanded prompt attention. In default of congressional action, slavery and the slave-trade might still exist in the District of Columbia, as they had existed from its earliest settlement; fugitive slaves might continue to be withheld from their owners as they had been in the past; and the broad waste along the border of Texas and New Mexico might yet remain a sufficient boundary; but some provision must be made for the government of the territories acquired by the war. The discovery of gold in California had carried thither a population that could not remain politically unorganized, nor could the status of New Mexico be allowed to go unchanged without grave inconvenience and peril. Something must be done, and that quickly.

During the interval between the final adjournment of the thirtieth Congress and the assembling of the thirty-first the case of California took on a very different aspect. President Taylor sent

agents thither and to New Mexico with instructions to inform the people of these territories of his desire that they should form constitutions for themselves and apply for admission to the Union as states.1 But before the agent sent to California reached his destination the movement desired by the president was already begun.

2

The conditions, in fact, made such action a necessity. On January 24, 1848, gold was discovered in the lower Sacramento Valley; and when the news spread a mad rush thither began by land and sea from all parts of the world. The settlers already in California left their business to engage in mining, and soldiers and sailors deserted from the service of the United States government to do the same. Everything was neglected except the search for gold, and labor rose at once to inordinate prices. Among the crowd attracted to California was a large proportion of reckless adventurers, who would have made it difficult to preserve order under almost any conditions; and under a government as weak and ill-established as that of the conquered province, the result was practical anarchy. An immediate remedy was found in the rough methods of popular tribunals; but the civic instincts of the settlers in California, as well as of the people of the United

1 Senate Docs., 31 Cong., 1 Sess., IX., No. 18, p. 10; Richardson, Messages and Papers, V., 26.

2 W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, I., 74, 82.

3 Hittell, California, II., 724-726.

States, forbade any continued dependence on a procedure so contrary to Anglo-Saxon traditions, and it was soon decided to adopt the plan which had been recommended by Benton.1 Governor Riley, the head of the de facto government left by the conquest, on hearing that Congress had adjourned without providing a government for California, called a convention to undertake this duty. The convention was held in September, 1849, and a constitution prohibiting slavery was adopted; and in due course of time a state government was set up to which Riley resigned his authority. It remained only for Congress to recognize what had been done.

In his annual message at the opening of Congress in December, 1849, written before the constitution of California had been received at Washington, President Taylor spoke of the movement to organize a state government there and of the prospect that a similar movement would soon take place in New Mexico, and suggested that Congress should await the action, avoiding meanwhile "the introduction of those exciting topics of a sectional character which have hitherto produced painful apprehensions in the public mind." January 23, 1850, in answer to a resolution of the Senate, he transmitted fuller information as to what was happening in the southwest and what he had done to bring it about.2

1 See p. 307, above.

'The message and accompanying documents are printed in full in Senate Docs., 31 Cong., 1 Sess., IX., No. 18.

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