The anti-slavery crusade must fall to the men of a younger generation, whose work, had it come sooner, would have placed American nationality in deadlier peril than was brought by the Civil War. For Seward's appeal to the "higher law" by which he justified the refusal of constitutional protection to slavery meant one law for the North and another for the South-the very foundation of the "irrepressible conflict," but, from the stand-point of Webster and of Clay, dangerous as precipitating a crisis for which the time was not ripe.

2

April 18, 1850, the compromise resolutions were referred to a committee of thirteen, with Clay as chairman. Seven members of the committee were Whigs and six Democrats; seven were from slave and six from free states, and all but two were moderates.1 May 8 the committee reported two bills, together with an amendment to the fugitive-slave bill already pending in the Senate, which collectively would accomplish nearly all of what Clay proposed. The first of these bills, which because of the variety of subjects it dealt with was called "the Omnibus Bill," provided for the admission of California into the Union, for the organization of the remainder of the Mexican cession into the two territories of Utah and New Mexico, and for a proposition to the state of Texas to fix its boundaries so as to exclude what it had claimed from

1 Cf. Rhodes, United States, I., 171.

Cong. Globe, 31 Cong., 1 Sess., 944-948.

New Mexico and to receive therefor a sum of money from the United States. The other bill provided for the suppression of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia; and the amendment to the Senate bill for the return of fugitive slaves was intended to make that measure more effective. The Omnibus bill was under consideration in the Senate for nearly two months, and was amended until all that was left of it when it was passed on August 1 was the provision for the territorial organization of Utah.

Meanwhile various circumstances and influences worked in favor of the compromise. The selfassertive disposition of the South found expression in a convention of the slave-holding states which met at Nashville June 3, 1850, and in which nine states were represented. The movement took on no great importance except as an indication of potential mischief, but it thus helped to increase the desire for an agreement.1 July 9, Taylor died, and the presidency devolved on Fillmore, who was more under the influence of Clay, and therefore the more inclined to favor the compromise himself. Immediately after he took up his executive duties there arose grave danger of a clash between the national government and that of Texas over the claims of the latter to New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. In a message on the subject, dated August 6, Pres

1 Smith, Parties and Slavery (Am. Nation, XVIII.), chap. i.; Rhodes, United States, I., 173; Benton, Thirty Years' View, II., 780-785.

ident Fillmore communicated information to the effect that Texas was preparing to assert jurisdiction over the disputed part, and indicated his determination to resist such attempt by force. He suggested, however, that the difference might be settled by an indemnity to the state for the surrender of its claim. This, in fact, was one of the features of the compromise, and the efforts of Fillmore were now joined to those of Clay and others who were striving for the proposed adjustment. The various measures which went to make it up were embodied in separate bills which were passed one after another by both the Senate and House, in most cases by a decisive majority. The votes in opposition were cast by the radicals both North and South, and in several cases the result was attained by refusals of opponents to vote at all. Six senators and twenty-seven representatives from slave states voted for the California bill; three senators and thirty-one representatives from free states for the fugitive-slave bill; and six senators and three representatives from slave states for the bill to abolish the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. On the whole, the determining vote for the compromise came from the Ohio Valley states, together with Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. For the rest, the voting followed in the main the lines of sectional interest.1

The actual compromise included so many details 1 Cf. Rhodes, United States, I., 181-185.

that it is hard to know just where and to what degree the two sides gave way. The new fugitiveslave law, with its more drastic penalties for aid and rescue, and its "summary process" of taking testimony, was balanced by the provision for the restriction on the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. Texas accepted a diminution of the. boundaries claimed in 1836, leaving Santa Fé in New Mexico. A division of that territory into a northern half, Utah, and a southern, New Mexico, at the line of 37° seemed an indirect method of asserting the old principle of the compromise line. The crux of the compromise was the territorial clause of the New Mexico and Utah acts, which read as follows: Provided that, when ready for statehood, "the said Territory . . . shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as their Constitution may prescribe at the time of admission.”

Was disunion, absolute and permanent, the only alternative of compromise? The question may now be lightly dismissed; but in 1850 it was more pressing and important. It is no easy matter to look back from the stand-point of present conditions and see the struggle of that year in its true perspective. But as one recalls the evident indisposition of the North to resist secession in 1861, the willingness to "let the erring sisters depart in peace" that disappeared only when Fort Sumter was attacked '—and this after the fugitive-slave law and

1 Hart, Am. Hist. Told by Contemps., IV., 186.

the contest over Kansas had done their work towards quickening the animosity of the fast diverging sections-it does not seem so difficult to believe that peaceful and successful secession in 1850 would have been entirely possible. The compromise, however, both saved the bond and lighted the fire the heat of which was to weld the Union.

The expansion impulse, in spite of the weakening influence of sectional divergence, had accomplished its ends. The boundary of the United States rested at length on the shore of the Pacific, and the territory thus won was given legal status and organized governments. The movement led to occasion of great political discord, and undoubtedly served to emphasize the threatening diversity of interest between North and South. The real causes, however, of the discord were older and deeper, and it would have come without the annexation of Texas or the Mexican War; for neither of these was the necessary antecedent of the struggle for Kansas, the sectional party organization of 1856, the Republican victory of 1860, and the secession which followed. It is well for the Union and for American interests that the quarrel between the sections did not develop so rapidly as to prevent or seriously to delay the last great wave of westward extension.