The President and his cabinet were taken by surprise. Frequent consultations were held. Douglas was repeatedly closeted with the President. All the members of the cabinet agreed that the plan of leaving the slavery question to the people of the new State was ingenious; but many objections were raised to a single State. In repeated interviews, Polk urged Douglas to draft a separate bill for New Mexico; but Douglas was obdurate.[[267]]
To Douglas's chagrin, the California bill was not referred to his committee, but to the Committee on the Judiciary. Perhaps this course was in accord with precedent, but it was noted that four out of the five members of this committee were Southerners, and that the vote to refer was a sectional one.[[268]] An adverse report was therefore to be expected. Signs were not wanting that if the people of the new province were left to work out their own salvation, they would exclude slavery.[[269]] The South was acutely sensitive to such signs. Nothing of this bias, however, appeared in the report of the committee. With great cleverness and circumspection they chose another mode of attack.
The committee professed to discover in the bill a radical departure from traditional policy. When had Congress ever created a State out of "an unorganized body of people having no constitution, or laws, or legitimate bond of union?" California was to be a "sovereign State," yet the bill provided that Congress should interpose its authority to form new States out of it, and to prescribe rules for elections to a constitutional convention. What sort of sovereignty was this? Moreover, since Texas claimed a part of New Mexico, endless litigations would follow. In the judgment of the committee, it would be far wiser to organize the usual territorial governments for California and New Mexico.[[270]]
To these sensible objections, Douglas replied ineffectively. The question of sovereignty, he thought, did not depend upon the size of a State: without doing violence to the sovereignty of California, Congress could surely carve new States out of its territory; but if there were doubts on this point, he would move to add the saving clause, "with the consent of the State." He suggested no expedient for the other obstacles in the way of State sovereignty. As for precedents, there were the first three States admitted into the Union,—Kentucky, Vermont, and Tennessee,—none of which had any organized government recognized by Congress.[[271]] They never furnished their constitutions to Congress for inspection. Here Douglas hit wide of the mark. No one had contended that a State must present a written constitution before being recognized, but only that the people must have some form of political organization, before they could be treated as constituting a State in a constitutional sense.[[272]]
At the same time, halting as this defense was, Douglas gave ample proof of his disinterestedness in advocating a State government for California. "I think, Sir," he said, "that the only issue now presented, is whether you will admit California as a State, or whether you will leave it without government, exposed to all the horrors of anarchy and violence. I have no hope of a Territorial government this session. No man is more willing to adopt such a form of government than I would be; no man would work with more energy and assiduity to accomplish that object at this session than I would."[[273]] Indeed, so far from questioning his motives, the members of the Judiciary Committee quite overwhelmed Douglas by their extreme deference.[[274]] Senator Butler, the chairman, assured him that the committee was disposed to treat the bill with all the respect due to its author; for his own part, he had always intended to show marked respect to the Senator from Illinois.[[275]] Douglas responded somewhat grimly that he was quite at a loss to understand "why these assurances came so thick on this point."
Most men would have accepted the situation as thoroughly hopeless; but Douglas was nothing if not persistent. In quick succession he framed two more bills, one of which provided for a division of California and for the admission of the western part as a State;[[276]] and then when this failed to win support, he reverted to Folk's suggestion—the admission of New Mexico and California as two States.[[277]] But the Senate evinced no enthusiasm for this patch-work legislation.[[278]]
The difficulty of legislating for California was increased by the disaffection of the Southern wing of the Democratic party. Calhoun was suspected of fomenting a conspiracy to break up the Union.[[279]] Yet in all probability he contemplated only the formation of a distinctly Southern party based on common economic and political interests.[[280]] He not only failed in this, because Southern Whigs were not yet ready to break with their Northern associates; but he barely avoided breaking up the solidarity of Southern Democrats, and he made it increasingly difficult for Northern and Southern Democrats to act together in matters which did not touch the peculiar institution of the South.[[281]] Thenceforth, harmonious party action was possible only through a deference of Northern Democrats to Southern, which was perpetually misinterpreted by their opponents.
Senator Hale thought the course of Northern representatives and senators pusillanimous and submissive to the last degree; and no considerations of taste prevented him from expressing his opinions on all occasions. Nettled by his taunts, and no doubt sensitive to the grain of truth in the charge, perplexed also by the growing factionalism in his party, Douglas retorted that the fanaticism of certain elements at the North was largely responsible for the growth of sectional rancor. For the first time he was moved to state publicly his maturing belief in the efficacy of squatter sovereignty, as a solvent of existing problems in the public domain.
"Sir, if we wish to settle this question of slavery, let us banish the agitation from these halls. Let us remove the causes which produce it; let us settle the territories we have acquired, in a manner to satisfy the honor and respect the feelings of every portion of the Union.... Bring those territories into this Union as States upon an equal footing with the original States. Let the people of such States settle the question of slavery within their limits, as they would settle the question of banking, or any other domestic institution, according to their own will."[[282]]
And again, he said, "No man advocates the extension of slavery over a territory now free. On the other hand, they deny the propriety of Congress interfering to restrain, upon the great fundamental principle that the people are the source of all power; that from the people must emanate all government; that the people have the same right in these territories to establish a government for themselves that we have to overthrow our present government and establish another, if we please, or that any other government has to establish one for itself."[[283]]