| The policy of the slavery extensionists. |
The policy of the slavery extensionists was to organize California and New Mexico as Territories, without the prohibition of slavery in them, giving thus time and opportunity for slaveholders to settle in them, with their slaves, and, when the time should come for the formation of Commonwealth governments in them, to vote an organic law perpetuating slavery. This policy was manifested anew in the bill introduced into the Senate, on the last day of December, 1849, by Mr. Foote, of Mississippi, for the organization of the entire Mexican cession into three Territories—California, Deseret or Utah, and New Mexico.
| The elements of the slavery question in Congress. |
The slavery question in Congress had now come, however, to include more than the matter of the governmental organization of the territory acquired from Mexico. There was, in the first place, the question of the Texas boundary, in that, by the Joint Resolution annexing Texas, the adjustment of that boundary, as regarded foreign states, at least, was reserved to Congress. Texas, as we know, claimed the Rio Grande from mouth to source, and thence the longitude to the forty-second parallel of latitude as her southwestern and western boundary. She came into the Union with a law on her statute book asserting this boundary. The Treaty with Mexico, recognizing the line of the Rio Grande to the limits of New Mexico, and ceding New Mexico, made the question of the Texan boundary a purely internal question for the United States, if it was any longer a question. The Abolitionists and anti-slavery-extensionists wanted to reduce Texas in area, since slavery was established by the law of the Commonwealth throughout its entire extent. They therefore interpreted the Resolution of annexation as reserving that power to Congress, even after the question had become purely internal. The slavery extensionists, on the contrary, contended that the power reserved to Congress in reference to the Texan boundary was now obsolete, since it expressly related only to the adjustment of the same with Mexico, and that had been accomplished by the Treaty. Then, there was the war debt of Texas, which was justly a charge upon the United States—although the Resolution of annexation repudiated it—since it was hypothecated upon revenue, the proceeds from which were being covered into the United States Treasury, the customs collected in the Texan ports. And, then, there was the question of the rendition of fugitive slaves, since the execution of the existing law, that of 1793, in regard to this matter, had been rendered so difficult by the movements of the Abolitionists, after 1835, as to make a more strenuous measure necessary, unless the slaveholders would abandon their constitutional rights to the rendition of their escaped slaves. And, lastly, there was the ever-recurring question of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, which was still clamoring for a hearing.
Already, before the closing week of January, 1850, had bills been brought forward, both in the Senate and in the House, touching all of these subjects, except, perhaps, the last, when, on the 29th, Mr. Clay came forward with his famous proposition for the adjustment of them all in one grand scheme.
| Mr. Clay's plan of compromise. |