itories of New Mexico and California are to be left
for the present without governments. None doubt that it is proper to
establish a government in Oregon. Indeed, it has been too long delayed.
I have made repeated recommendations to Congress to this effect. The
petitions of the people of that distant region have been presented to
the Government, and ought not to be disregarded. To give to them a
regularly organized government and the protection of our laws, which, as
citizens of the United States, they claim, is a high duty on our part,
and one which we are bound to perform, unless there be controlling
reasons to prevent it.

In the progress of all governments questions of such transcendent
importance occasionally arise as to cast in the shade all those of a
mere party character. But one such question can now be agitated in this
country, and this may endanger our glorious Union, the source of our
greatness and all our political blessings. This question is slavery.
With the slaveholding States this does not embrace merely the rights of
property, however valuable, but it ascends far higher, and involves the
domestic peace and security of every family.

The fathers of the Constitution, the wise and patriotic men who laid the
foundation of our institutions, foreseeing the danger from this quarter,
acted in a spirit of compromise and mutual concession on this dangerous
and delicate subject, and their wisdom ought to be the guide of their
successors. Whilst they left to the States exclusively the question of
domestic slavery within their respective limits, they provided that
slaves who might escape into other States not recognizing the
institution of slavery shall be "delivered up on the claim of the party
to whom such service or labor may be due."

Upon this foundation the matter rested until the Missouri question
arose.

In December, 1819, application was made to Congress by the people of the
Missouri Territory for admission into the Union as a State. The
discussion upon the subject in Congress involved the question of
slavery, and was prosecuted with such violence as to produce excitements
alarming to every patriot in the Union. But the good genius of
conciliation, which presided at the birth of our institutions, finally
prevailed, and the Missouri compromise was adopted. The eighth section
of the act of Congress of the 6th of March, 1820, "to authorize the
people of the Missouri Territory to form a constitution and St