On May 8th, Mr. Clay made the report, and offered the bills, from the grand committee, covering all the subjects referred. The first bill provided for the admission of California, with the Commonwealth organization formed by her people the preceding autumn; for the Territorial organization of Utah and New Mexico, without any slavery restriction, and with restrictions upon the Territorial legislatures against passing any acts in regard to slavery; for fixing the northern boundary of Texas upon a line drawn from a point on the Rio Grande twenty miles above El Paso to the point on the Red River where the line of the one hundredth degree of longitude intersects this river; for quit-claiming, so to speak, to Texas the claims of the United States to the country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande; and for paying Texas a sum of money, in consideration of the discharge of the United States from all obligations to pay the Texan debt, and of the surrender of all claims by Texas to country north of the northern boundary as fixed in the bill.
The second bill provided that a fugitive from labor must be delivered up on the order of any judge or commissioner of the United States authorized by the laws of the United States so to act, and that such judge or commissioner was authorized to issue such order on presentation to him, by the claimant of the fugitive, of a copy of the record of a competent court in the Commonwealth, Territory, or District from which the fugitive was said to have escaped, before which the facts of ownership, identity, and escape had been satisfactorily proven. The judge or commissioner issuing such order was required, in case the fugitive declared himself to be a free man, to demand of the claimant of the fugitive a bond, with surety, for $1,000, pledging the claimant to accord the fugitive a trial by jury of the question of his freedom, in a competent court of the Commonwealth, Territory, or District from which he was said to have escaped.
The third bill provided for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and for the liberation of any slave brought into the District for the purposes of sale or dépôt.
| The debate upon the bills proposed by the committee, and the failure to pass them. |
The debate began immediately upon the first bill, and the opposition to it from both sections advanced about the same arguments as were employed against these same subjects when presented in the form of Mr. Clay's resolutions. The discussion continued through May, June, and July, until, at the end of July, nothing remained of the bill but that part of it which provided for the Territorial organization of Utah. The general plan of the compromise was lost.
| The temper of the country. |
The whole country was amazed, disappointed, and angry. The Senators were quickly and decidedly made to feel that they dare not separate without doing something to heal the distractions of the land.