new industrial development, but slavery made it impossible. Finally, a long line of distinguished writers and scientists-Hawthorne, Poe, Whittier, Longfellow, Bancroft, Holmes, Prescott, Lowell, Story, Wheaton, Kent, Lieber, Audubon, Asa Gray-was working worthily to bring about the intellectual independence of America, of which Emerson was the chief embodiment.

All other interests were dwarfed into momentary insignificance, however, by the report that California was a land of gold. The discovery of gold, coming at about the same time as the treaty which ceded California to the United States, was followed by such a spontaneous movement of population as the world has never elsewhere seen. From all parts of the country, though least from the cotton-growing South, men flocked to the new El Dorado. Some went by way of the Isthmus of Panama, some by the long way around Cape Horn. Many made the toilsome journey across the plains, their long trains of "prairieschooners," drawn by horses or oxen, threading pathless wastes of unknown prairie, struggling over mountains, fighting hostile Indians, braving hunger, cold, and heat, hardship and death, in the eager pursuit of gold. A short period of lawlessness and crime followed, and then the better element asserted itself; and soon California, though as yet with only a military government to represent the United States, began building for the future. Of slavery on any terms its people would have nothing, nor were they inclined to accept a Territorial status. In September, 1849, a constitutional convention formed an antislavery State constitution, and before the end of the year a State government had been set up. On

February 13, 1850, the constitution of the new State was laid before Congress by the President. Similar steps for the organization of State governments were taken by the people of New Mexico and the Mormons of Utah.

The admission of California as a free State would destroy that "equilibrium of the sections" which for years had been the anxious concern of American statesmen, and in the maintenance of which some had seen the only hope of national safety. The solution of the difficulty was not made easier by the fact that, while there was a safe Democratic majority in the Senate, the balance of power in the House of Representatives was held by a small group of FreeSoilers. There were other questions besides California, too, involved. A part of the Texas boundary was in dispute, and a movement on the part of the United States to assert its claims had been met by threats of resistance. The South was angry at the continued demand for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and at the protection and aid increasingly extended by the North to fugitive slaves. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, had openly declared that he was "for disunion," and the sentiment was endorsed by his colleague Alexander H. Stephens. Since the Presidential campaign of 1848, moreover, the doctrine of "squatter sovereignty," with its claim that the people of any Territory or State should be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they would have slavery, had been making strong headway. Clay once more came forward as the great compromiser. On January 29, 1850, in a series of resolutions, he had laid a basis for settlement, and on May 8th a select committee, of which he was chair

man, reported two bills, "one to admit California as a State, to establish Territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico, and making proposals to Texas for the establishment of her western and northern boundaries, and the other to suppress the slave-trade in the District of Columbia." The different parts of the "omnibus bill," as it was called, were eventually separated, but in September all the propositions reported by the committee became law.

By the compromise of 1850, as finally adopted, two Territories, Utah and New Mexico, were organized, with the provision that either of them, when admitted as a State, "shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe at the time of their admission." California was admitted as a free State. The Texas boundary was adjusted, $10,000,000 being paid to Texas in satisfaction of its claim. A stringent fugitive law replaced the old law of 1793, and the slavetrade, but not slavery, was abolished in the District of Columbia.

The debate on the compromise measures, extending over a period of more than eight months, traversed in its course nearly every phase of the slavery question. It was clear from the beginning that the question of abolition was no longer directly involved, but that the issue lay between free soil on the one hand and squatter sovereignty on the other. The southern members in the main opposed the compromise. Benton dubbed it "compromise plaster." Calhoun, in a great speech on March 4, 1850, in opposition to Clay's resolutions a speech which his failing strength did not allow him to deliver, and which was read by Senator Mason, of Virginia—af

firmed that the Union was endangered by the discontent of the South, and that the admission of California as a free State would destroy the equilibrium of the sections without preventing further agitation of the slavery question. In his view, the United States was a "slave - holding power," and throughout all its territory, particularly in that which had been won by common effort of the whole country, the South had as much right as the North. It was the great Southerner's last word, for before the month had ended he was dead.

The most distinguished convert to the compromise was Webster. Webster was beyond doubt the greatest constitutional lawyer, the most powerful orator, and the most prominent statesman in American public life. That he seriously feared for the stability of the Constitution is as undoubted as that he was, in general, averse to the extension of slavery; but he was also on record as a bitter opponent of the abolition movement, while his anxious pursuit of the Presidency had not served to increase the firmness of his political principles. In a great speech in the Senate, on March 7th, he declared the Wilmot Proviso unnecessary. Slavery was excluded from California and New Mexico by natural causes; no need, then, of a proviso "to reaffirm an ordinance. of nature, or re-enact the will of God." On the other hand, while the South had just grievances against the North in the matter of the treatment of fugitive slaves, the abolition agitation, and the violence of the press, the North could complain that the South was now bent upon encouraging slavery, and violating State comity by imprisoning colored seamen of northern vessels when in southern ports. Of secession,