the protection of all the people of the United States in the enjoyment of the rights which those treaties and laws guarantee.

It is exceedingly desirable that no occasion should arise for the exercise of the powers thus vested in the President by the Constitution and the laws. With whatever mildness those powers might be executed, or however clear the case of necessity, yet consequences might nevertheless follow, of which no human sagacity can foresee either the evils or the end.

Having thus laid before Congress the communication of his excellency, the Governor of Texas, and the answer thereto, and having made such observations as I have thought the occasion called for respecting Constitutional obligations which may arise in the further progress of things, and may devolve on me to be performed, I hope I shall not be regarded as stepping aside from the line of my duty, notwithstanding that I am aware that the subject is now before both Houses, if I express my deep and earnest conviction of the importance of an immediate decision or arrangement or settlement of the question of boundary between Texas and the Territory of New Mexico. All considerations of justice, general expediency, and domestic tranquillity call for this. It seems to be, in its character and by position, the first, or one of the first, of the questions growing out of the acquisition of California and New Mexico, and now requiring decision.

No government can be established for New Mexico, either State or Territorial, until it shall be first ascertained what New Mexico is, and what are her limits and boundaries. These can not be fixed or known till the line of division between her and Texas shall be ascertained and established; and numerous and weighty reasons conspire, in my judgment, to show that this divisional line should be established by Congress, with the assent of the government of Texas. In the first place, this seems by far the most prompt mode of proceeding by which the end can be accomplished. If judicial proceedings were resorted to, such proceedings would necessarily be slow, and years would pass by, in all probability, before the controversy could be ended. So great a delay in this case is to be avoided, if possible. Such delay would be every way inconvenient, and might be the occasion of disturbances and

collisions. For the same reason I would, with the utmost deference to the wisdom of Congress, express a doubt of the expediency of the appointment of commissioners, and of an examination, estimate, and an award of indemnity to be made by them. This would be but a species of arbitration which might last as long as a suit at law.

So far as I am able to comprehend the case, the general facts are now all known, and Congress is as capable of deciding on it justly and properly now as it probably would be after the report of the commissioners. If the claim of title on the part of Texas appears to Congress to be well founded in whole or in part, it is in the competency of Congress to offer her an indemnity for the surrender of that claim. In a case like this, surrounded as it is by many cogent considerations, all calling for amicable adjustment and immediate settlement, the Government of the United States would be justified, in my opinion, in allowing an indemnity to Texas, not unreasonable or extravagant, but fair, liberal, and awarded in a just spirit of accommodation.

I think no event would be hailed with more gratification by the people of the United States than the amicable adjustment of questions of difficulty which have now for a long time agitated the country, and occupied, to the exclusion of other subjects, the time and attention of Congress.

CHAPTER IX.

SLAVERY IN CONGRESS-COMPROMISES-THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW OF 1850-THE "IMPENDING

A

CRISIS."

CRISIS was now approaching in public affairs, and the responsibility of giving it a satisfactory turn rested with Congress. Public sentiment was deeply inflamed; it was quite apparent the President was anxious to sanction any fair and honorable plan of adjustment, and in any event was equal to the emergency; and the demand for immediate action on the part of Congress could not be ignored. Accordingly a bill was passed in the Senate, on the 9th of August, for settling the boundary between Texas and Mexico. After a struggle in the House this bill, combined with the one to organize the territorial government of New Mexico, became a law on the 9th of September.

On the 13th of August the bill for the admission of California, after many fruitless attempts to amend it, was passed in the Senate by a vote of thirty-four to eighteen. This result was followed by a strange performance on the part of ten Senators who had opposed the bill. This was the presentation of the following protest:

"We, the undersigned Senators, deeply impressed with the importance of the occasion, and with a solemn sense of

the responsibility under which we are acting, respectfully submit the following protest against the bill admitting California as a State into this Union, and request that it may be entered upon the journal of the Senate. We feel that it is not enough to have resisted in debate alone a bill so fraught with mischief to the Union and the States which we represent with all the resources of argument which we possessed; but that it is also due to ourselves, the people whose interests have been intrusted to our care, and to posterity, which even in its most distant generations may feel its consequences, to leave, in whatever form may be most solemn and enduring, a memorial of the opposition which we have made to this measure, and of the reasons by which we have been governed, upon the pages of a journal which the Constitution requires to be kept so long as the Senate may have an existence. We desire to place on record the reasons upon which we are willing to be judged by generations living and yet to come for our opposition to a bill whose consequences may be so durable and portentous as to make it an object of deep interest to all who may come after us.

"We have dissented from this bill because it gives the sanction of law, and thus imparts validity, to the unauthorized action of a portion of the inhabitants of California, by which an odious discrimination is made against the property of the fifteen slaveholding States of the Union, who are thus deprived of that position of equality which the Constitution so manifestly designs, and which constitutes the only sure and stable foundation on which this Union can repose.

"Because the right of the slaveholding States to a common and equal enjoyment of the territory of the Union has been defeated by a system of measures which, without the authority of precedent, of law, or of the Constitution, were manifestly contrived for that purpose, and which Congress must sanction and adopt, should this bill become a law.

"Because to vote for a bill passed under such circumstances would be to agree to a principle which may exclude forever hereafter, as it does now, the States which we represent from all enjoyment of the common territory of the Union-a principle which destroys the equal rights of their constituents, the equality of their States in the Confederacy, the equal dignity of those whom they represent as men and as citizens in the eye of the law, and their equal title to the protection of the Government and the Constitution.

"Because all the propositions have been rejected which have been made to obtain either a recognition of the rights of the slaveholding States to a common enjoyment of all the territory of the United States, or to a fair division of that territory between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States of the Union-every effort having failed which has been made to obtain a fair division of the territory proposed to be brought in as the State of California.

"But, lastly, we dissent from this bill, and solemnly protest against its passage, because, in sanctioning measures so contrary to former precedent, to obvious policy, to the spirit and intent of the Constitution of the United States, for the purpose of excluding the slaveholding States from the territory thus to be erected into a State, this Government in effect declares that the exclusion of slavery from the territory of the United States is an object so high and important as to justify a disregard not only of all the principles of sound policy, but also of the Constitution itself. Against this conclusion we must now and forever protest, as it is destructive of the safety and liberties of those whose rights have been committed to our care, fatal to the peace and equality of the States which we represent, and must lead, if persisted in, to the dissolution of that confederacy in which the slaveholding States have never sought more than equality, and in which they will not be content to remain with less."