The remainder of the message presents nothing to be noted, except the congratulations of the President upon the restoration of the federal currency to what he called a sound state, but which was, in fact, a solid state—for it had become gold and silver; and his equal felicitations upon the equalization of the exchanges (which had never been unequal between those who had money to exchange), saying that exchange was now only the difference of the expense of transporting gold. That had been the case always with those who had gold; and what had been called inequalities of exchange before, was nothing but the different degrees of the depreciation of different bank notes. But what the President did not note, but which all others observed, was the obvious fact, that this restoration and equalization were attained without any of the remedies which he had been prescribing for four years! without any of those Fiscal Institutes—Fiscal Corporations—Fiscal Agents—or Fiscal Exchequers, which he had been prescribing for four years. It was the effect of the gold bill, and of the Independent Treasury, and the cessation of all attempts to make a national currency of paper money.
[CHAPTER CXLVIII.]
LEGISLATIVE ADMISSION OF TEXAS INTO THE UNION AS A STATE.
A joint resolution was early brought into the House of Representatives for the admission of Texas as a State of the Union. It was in these words:
"That Congress doth consent that the territory properly included within, and rightfully belonging to the republic of Texas, may be erected into a new State, to be called the State of Texas, with a republican form of government, to be adopted by the people of said republic, by deputies in convention assembled, with the consent of the existing government, in order that the same may be admitted as one of the States of this Union. And, that the foregoing consent of Congress is given upon the following conditions, and with the following guarantees:
"First. Said State to be formed, subject to the adjustment by this government of all questions of boundary that may arise with other governments; and the constitution thereof, with the proper evidence of its adoption by the people of said republic of Texas, shall be transmitted to the President of the United States, to be laid before Congress for its final action, on or before the 1st day of January, 1846.
"Second. Said State, when admitted into the Union, after ceding to the United States all public edifices, fortifications, barracks, ports and harbors, navy and navy-yards, docks, magazines, arms, armaments, and all other property and means pertaining to the public defence belonging to said republic of Texas, shall retain all the public funds, debts, taxes, and dues of every kind which may belong to, or be due and owing said republic; and shall also retain all the vacant and unappropriated lands lying within its limits, to be applied to the payment of the debts and liabilities of said republic of Texas; and the residue of said lands, after discharging said debts and liabilities, to be disposed of as said State may direct; but in no event are said debts and liabilities to become a charge upon the government of the United States.
"Third. New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal constitution. And such States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as the people of each State asking admission may desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory north of said Missouri compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited."
To understand the third, and last clause of this resolve, it must be recollected that the boundaries of Texas, by the treaty of 1819, which retroceded that province to Spain, were extended north across the Red River, and entirely to the Arkansas River; and following that river up to the 37th, the 38th, and eventually to the 42d degree of north latitude; so that all this part of the territory lying north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, came within the terms of the Missouri compromise line prohibiting slavery north of that line. Here then was an anomaly—slave territory, and free territory within the same State; and it became the duty of Congress to provide for each accordingly: and it was done. The territory lying south of that compromise line might become free or slave States as the inhabitants should decide: the States to be formed out of the territory north of it were to be bound by the compromise: and lest any question should arise on that point in consequence of Texas having been under a foreign dominion since the line was established, it was expressly re-enacted by this clause of the resolution, and in the precise words of the Missouri compromise act. Thus framed, and made clear in its provisions in respect to slavery, the resolutions, after ample discussion, were passed through the House by a good majority—120 to 97. The affirmatives were
"Archibald H. Arrington, John B. Ashe, Archibald Atkinson, Thomas H. Bayly, James E. Belser, Benjamin A. Bidlack, Edward J. Black, James Black, James A. Black, Julius W. Blackwell, Gustavus M. Bower, James B. Bowlin, Linn Boyd, Richard Brodhead, Aaron V. Brown, Milton Brown, William J. Brown, Edmund Burke, Armistead Burt, George Alfred Caldwell, John Campbell, Shepherd Carey, Reuben Chapman, Augustus A. Chapman, Absalom H. Chappell, Duncan L. Clinch, James G. Clinton, Howell Cobb, Walter Coles, Edward Cross, Alvan Cullom, John R. J. Daniel, John W. Davis, John B. Dawson, Ezra Dean, James Dellet, Stephen A. Douglass, George C. Dromgool, Alexander Duncan, Chesselden Ellis, Isaac G. Farlee, Orlando B. Ficklin, Henry D. Foster, Richard French, George Fuller, William H. Hammett, Hugh A. Haralson, Samuel Hays, Thomas J. Henley, Isaac E. Holmes, Joseph P. Hoge, George W. Hopkins, George S. Houston, Edmund W. Hubard, William S. Hubbell, James M. Hughes, Charles J. Ingersoll, John Jameson, Cave Johnson, Andrew Johnson, George W. Jones. Andrew Kennedy, Littleton Kirkpatrick, Alcée Labranche, Moses G. Leonard, William Lucas, John H. Lumpkin, Lucius Lyon, William C. McCauslen, William B. Maclay, John A. McClernand, Felix G. McConnel, Joseph J. McDowell, James J. McKay, James Mathews, Joseph Morris, Isaac E. Morse, Henry C. Murphy, Willoughby Newton, Moses Norris, jr., Robert Dale Owen, William Parmenter, William W. Payne, John Pettit, Joseph H. Peyton, Emery D. Potter, Zadock Pratt, David S. Reid, James H. Relfe, R. Barnwell Rhett, John Ritter, Robert W. Roberts, Jeremiah Russell, Romulus M. Saunders, William T. Senter, Thomas H. Seymour, Samuel Simons, Richard F. Simpson, John Slidell, John T. Smith, Thomas Smith, Robert Smith, Lewis Steenrod, Alexander H. Stephens, John Stewart, William H. Styles, James W. Stone, Alfred P. Stone, Selah B. Strong, George Sykes, William Taylor, Jacob Thomson, John W. Tibbatts, Tilghman M. Tucker, John B. Weller, John Wentworth, Joseph A. Woodward, Joseph A. Wright, William L. Yancey, Jacob S. Yost."
Members from the slave and free States voted for these resolutions, and thereby asserted the right of Congress to legislate upon slavery in territories, and to prohibit or prevent it as they pleased, and also exercised the right each way—forbidding it one side of a line, and leaving it optional with the State on the other—and not only acknowledging the validity of the Missouri compromise line, but enforcing it by a new enactment; and without this enactment every one saw that the slavery institution would come to the Arkansas River in latitude 37, and 38, and even 42. The vote was, therefore, an abolition of the institution legally existing between these two lines, and done in the formal and sacred manner of a compact with a foreign State, as a condition of its admission into the Union. One hundred and twenty members of the House of Representatives voted in favor of these resolutions, and thereby both asserted, and exercised the power of Congress to legislate upon slavery in territories, and to abolish it therein when it pleased: of the 97 voting against the resolution, not one did so from any objection to that power. The resolutions came down from the Department of State, and corresponded with the recommendation in the President's message.
Sent to the Senate for its concurrence, this joint resolution found a leading friend in the person of Mr. Buchanan, who was delighted with every part of it, and especially the re-enactment of the Missouri compromise line in the part where it might otherwise have been invalidated by the Texian laws and constitution, and which thus extinguished for ever the slavery question in the United States. In this sense he said: