| The House bill in the Senate, and Mr. Douglas' amendment. Passage of the Oregon bill by Congress. |
On the 10th, the Senate passed this bill, with an amendment, proposed by Mr. Douglas, extending the Missouri Compromise line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to the Pacific. The House immediately rejected the amendment, and the Senate was compelled to recede, or let Oregon go without Territorial government. It wisely voted, on the 12th, to recede from its amendment, and passed the bill, with the Congressional prohibition of slavery, and without compromise as to the settlement of the slavery question in California and New Mexico. Among the Senators who changed their votes upon the amendment were Douglas from the North, and Benton and Houston from the South.
| The Free-soil party in 1848. |
The feeling aroused outside of Congress by the contest within the body was most intense, and had, for its permanent result the organization of the Anti-slavery-extension party. It called itself then the "Free-soil" party. It held a National convention at Buffalo, New York, on August 9th, and nominated Mr. Van Buren for the presidency, on a platform which distinctly affirmed the power of Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories, and its duty to exercise the power. Here was, at last, the principle and the party of the future. Those who composed it held to the Union and the Government, vindicated the national character of both, and while they denied none of the constitutional rights of the Southern Commonwealths, and none of the compromises of the Constitution with the slaveholders, yet they refused to allow the great evil under which the country suffered to spread into regions uncontaminated by it.
| The President's approval of the Oregon bill. |
The President signed the Oregon bill, on August 14th, for the reason, he said, among other reasons, that it preserved the principle of the Missouri Compromise, making the territory north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes free soil. And in his message of December 5th, following, he urged the speedy organization of California and New Mexico, either upon that principle, or upon the principle of non-interference by Congress with the question of slaveholding in them, or upon the basis of an appeal of the question to the Supreme Court of the United States, which body should interpret the Constitution upon the subject. He said he believed the first way contained the true principle, and was the fair thing, but that he was willing to proceed in either of the other two ways.